Apple recently announced their much-awaited iPhone 15 series in the “Wanderlust” event held at Apple Park, California on September 12. The event introduced a revamped Pro series with some interesting upgrades all across the board, especially the standard 15 and the 15 Plus. With a large display and a new front design. There’s a lot that the iPhone 15 Plus brings to the table. Let’s have a detailed look at what’s changed and what’s improved.
Key Specifications of iPhone 15 Plus
Design and Build Quality
The external design of the new iPhone 15 Plus has been slightly changed from the previous generation. It has much to do with the sharp edges, which have now been replaced with a more rounded one. Apple is calling it their “Contoured” design, which is a fancy way to describe a minor upgrade.
The next thing that’s apparent is the USB Type C port on the bottom. Apple has finally made the switch to Type C meaning the days of the lightning cable on iPhones are finally over. That is at least, for the iPhone 15 series and onwards. However, the Type C is still 2.0 on the 15 Plus, meaning reading and writing speeds would be much slower compared to the newer 3.0 found on the Pro model.
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The display has also been upgraded from the last generation. This year, users will get the Dynamic Island display first introduced in last year’s pro model. The change has much to do with the design itself as the 15 Plus is not getting the same specs as the Pro model.
Dimension-wise, the 15 Plus comes in at 160.9 mm by 77.8 mm by 7.8 mm with 201 gm weight. Apple is using Corning-made glasses for both the front and back of the device. The front glass comes with Ceramic Shield protection. The back glass now has a color-infused design which gives it a very light and toned-down look. Other than the black, the blue, green, yellow, and pink color variant looks like a lighter shade of their original color.
The 15 Plus will come with a nano sim and e-sim support for international release. The USA model will have dual e-sim support with the Chinese variant coming with dual nano-sim support. The device also has IP68 water and dust resistance. Apple claims that the device can survive up to 6m underwater for 30 minutes.
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The Display
Similar to last year’s 14 Plus, the 15 Plus comes with a Super Retina XDR OLED display. The panel supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision for HD-quality content streaming. The HBM mode goes up to 1000 nits with the peak hitting at 2000 nits. That is a massive 800 nits upgrade from the 14 Plus.
The 6.7-inch display with an 88% screen-to-body ratio has a flat symmetrical design on the front which gives it an aesthetic look. The display has a resolution of 1290 x 2796 pixels which makes for an uncommon 19.5:9 aspect ratio and 460 ppi. The glass front is protected by Ceramic Shield glass.
The performance of the display is as usual stellar here. The colors look sharp with great contrast all around. The upgraded peak brightness makes it even better than the already amazing outdoor legibility seen on the iPhone 14 series. The Dynamic Island also makes for a useful upgrade over the last generation. Apple has included a lot of useful features over the last year on the Dynamic Island like turn-by-turn map direction, active timers, Uber waiting time, and many more. It's great that non-Pro users will be able to experience these perks as well.
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However, the major drawback with this otherwise stellar display is the refresh rate. The 15 and the 15 Plus still come with a 60 Hz refresh rate which is a massive letdown by 2023 standards. Apple has kept the high refresh rate only for the Pro models this year too.
The Camera
Like last year, there’s a dual diagonal camera on the back. The main sensor has been upgraded to 48 MP from last year’s 12 MP. The sensor has an f/1.6 aperture with sensor-shift OIS and 100% focus pixels.
The main sensor is complemented by a 12 MP 2 times telephoto lens with the same f/1.6 aperture. It enables the sensor to achieve lossless optical zoom of up to 4 times and digital zoom of up to 10 times.
The front side has the same 12 MP f/1.9 aperture sensor from last year.
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This year, Apple has infused a lot of cutting-edge camera tech on the 15 Plus, owing to the upgraded sensor that is now on par with the main sensor on the Pro model. Users will be getting true tone flash, a photonic engine, smart HDR 5, next-generation portraits and depth controls, photographic styles, and many more.
The camera samples from the launch event looked right on par with the flagships out there. The real-world performance remains to be seen.
The videography on the 15 Plus remains the same as last year. There’s 4K at 24,25,30 and 60 fps. The cinematic mode is also here with 4K HDR at 30 fps. The action mode which can shoot hyper-stabilized videos at 2.8K is also here. The sensor shifting OIS coupled with an improved main sensor will provide some excellent videography, probably the best among any smartphones of 2023.
