it has been 4 years since I've upgraded my phone so I think it's time the iPhone 11 is actually what I've been using since 2019 and there are a few reasons why I've held off upgrading and I mean first of all I think these days people treat smartphones more like a fashion accessory or like a thing to flex rather than something that actually adds value to their life or like a tool to use in a like professional capacity and secondly since the iPhone 11 came out there hasn't really been a massive spec bump or you
know a really attractive feature that has made me desperate to upgrade and believe it or not I almost didn't upgrade for another year but I thought you know what 4 years later let's see what we're working with I do want to dive into more short form content next year I want to share some training footage more behind the scenes stuff as well as just like some quirky Quick videos and I want to make those in the highest quality possible but still shot nice and fast on a phone so I picked up the 15 Pro a
couple of weeks ago here's what I think and the first thing I noticed on the 15 Pro was that yeah it does feel like a more premium experience which is not something that I expected you know the 11 already felt nice to me in the hand but when I picked up the 15 Pro I was like damn this feels over engineered it feels expensive which I hate to say about an Apple product it just sounds really cliche and what you would expect a tech reviewer to say about an Apple product but honestly it is true
it feels like a really nice expensive phone in the hand I think it's that smooth back plate in particular that feels really good it just stays extremely clean it has like a really nice Sur Sur texture to it and it doesn't collect smudges like normal glassback phones and yeah I usually go for black phones but man this natural titanium just looked way too good in person to pass up the camera bump and lens group on the 15 Pro is just enormous as well I mean take a look at this it's the first phone I've had
that doesn't sit flat on a table I don't know I find it kind of funny and it is actually smaller than my iPhone 11 2 which is interesting I do actually prefer that but thankfully the screen is a tiny bit bigger because it has Slimmer bezels speaking of the screen this this is an area where I just kind of went in blindly because I didn't really do a whole lot of research you know of course four generations later there is going to be a better screen on the 15 Pro but yeah I would say this
is one of those like main experience differences between the two devices the iPhone 15 pro has an OLED display versus the IPS screen on my 11 and look using the iPhone 11 I didn't like hate the screen when I was using it but now looking back at it after using the 15 Pro I honestly kind of do the difference in contrast is just absolutely nuts black are pure black the rest of the contrast band as well is insanely Vivid and it does have a 41% higher pixel density as well like most of you I watch
a bunch of content on my phone and yeah the screen four generations later is a massive massive difference the 15 Pro was also my first experience with a 120hz display on a phone now when it comes to high refresh rate gaming monitors which I've reviewed a bunch of one of the biggest things is motion Clarity that is when you're tracking something with your eyes it will actually appear clearer on a higher refresh rate display then it will at say 60 HZ and it's really interesting to see no one really talking about this when it comes
to 120 HZ phone screens because it is exactly the same when I'm scrolling through my Instagram feed on the iPhone 15 Pro I can literally like read mid scroll I don't have to do this weird like scrolling and stopping thing which I did have to do on my 60 HZ iPhone 11 and yeah there are other things too like smoother animations and home screen swiping that stuff is cool but yeah it's really the speed at which you're able to process a timeline or content feed that is dramatically better I feel at 120 HZ now for
some of the stuff that I'm not really too fussed about uh the new USBC Port versus the old lightning Port I mean I only charge my phone once overnight using the same cable so it's not really something I even noticed the titanium edges I will say they do get a bit oily but it's not something that's really bothered me and it is still way cleaner than the constant fingerprint smudge look of my iPhone 11 the action button is kind of cool uh I mean I have mine set up to open notion which I use for
basically everything but I haven't built up that muscle memory and repetition to actually use it the dynamic Island kind of goes in that same basket it's more functionality in the same amount of space which I always think is better it's like optimizing the design no complaints here but it's also not one of those things that I'd solely upgrade for this is also my first 5G phone which is not something that I even really cared about going into it I actually completely forgot about it until I needed to use it and Hotpot to my laptop and
then I was like damn this is actually really quick I was getting speeds of like 280 megabits per second when I was you know downloading a resolve Studio update it downloaded like 5 gigs in about 2 minutes which was really surprising and made me thankful for 5G as opposed to just 4G which would have taken at least over 10 minutes but the biggest upgrade here is the camera system and this is what I was most interested to test out man shooting on the iPhone 11 compared to the 15 Pro there is no contest whatsoever it
almost feels kind of dumb to compare them because yeah four generations later there is a massive difference between them but it is like a completely different ball game the ultra wide camera which I enjoy using a lot to document my own work take Studio photos of a certain set or lining setup which worked really well the 15 Pro looks leaps and bounce better in terms of overall quality and detail I was finding the 11 can tend to get a bit muddy and noisy especially in low light to the point where I wouldn't even bother using
them for something like Instagram if I wanted to but the 15 Pro just looks super clean all the time the main camera though is where the biggest differences and aside from the upgraded lens coding the sensor itself and even aside from the like AI computational upgrades the big thing for me is the amount of data that you can capture the 15 Pro can shoot 48 megapix proor dng files which I believe were first introduced on the 12 Pro but wow the amount of detail that you can capture the flexibility that you have when it comes
to color grading and editing you can push the image an unreasonable amount before it starts breaking down and punching in and reframing is no issue now I'm I'm not going to sit here and say that it's the best smartphone camera on the market because there are a lot of great smartphones out there that I have not tried but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because the images look amazing now a lot of the things that we've talked about so far have actually been introduced on previous iPhone Generations which a lot of you will know
this even as early as the 12 Pro we've had things like the oad screen the 120 HZ Pro motion and pro raw photography but the iPhone 15 Pro is the first one to get pror video recording which is absolutely absolutely insane prores is a file format which you really only see on Cinema cameras I don't even have this on my Sony fx3 so the fact that we have this on a phone is just nuts in really simple terms you can think of this as Pro roll photography but in video so think of higher bit rates
much higher color grading potential if you need it and with less of that smartphone processing and sharpening and yeah I've been playing around with this for a bit and it's really impressive especially because you can now record in log which is a super flat color profile which captures more dynamic range it does require color grading but again just crazy that this is coming from a phone the default point and shoot compressed video is extremely good too more than good enough for social media and it's honestly what I'll be using most of the time for grabbing
quick clips and stuff like that especially because the file sizes of pror are just huge but if I ever want to create a specific feeling or look to my video or if I need to use the 15 Pro as a backup camera for an actual shoot then I'll be shooting prores Apple log for sure and these camera upgrades they're not about replacing normal cameras no matter how many shot on iPhone cinematics you'll see there are still real limitations to shooting Pro stuff on Tiny phone sensors the biggest one being the lack of depth of field
and no matter how well you do this computationally there'll still be some problems with Edge detection and all of that weird stuff that's happening there that's still evident on the 15 Pro so the Cinematic mode the portrait modes you know they're improving but I don't see myself using them a bunch personally what shooting on a smartphone is mostly about though is speed you know the fact that we can get that kind of video quality from a smartphone that fits in your pocket that also makes calls and can also browse Instagram is just absolutely insane again
the depth of field is lacking it's not really there compared to a fullsize mirrorless camera but I wasn't really expecting that anyway even if I was to shoot in prores which is a much slower workflow compared to the compressed just point and shoot mode I can just aird drop that to my MacBook color grade it really quickly air drop it back to my phone and that is like no time at all all so the bottom line is that I am glad that I upgraded and I do have to reiterate that because going into this I
really didn't know whether there was going to be a big experienced difference between these two phones but of course four generations later there evidently is quite a big gap and as much as I hate to admit it I am kind of one of those cynical smartphone people you know I don't like spending more time on my phone uh it's something that I want to do a lot less of and you know my iPhone 11 it shoots good photos it still has a great battery life it connects to social media makes calls sends messages all of
that really basic stuff but the 15 Pro is legitimately a pro phone like the fact that I can incorporate this into my you know video workflow with prores is kind of insane and I've never felt that way about the iPhone 11 and of course the other quality of life differences as well are really nice on a day-to-day basis the 120 HZ OLED screen the refined build quality is super nice as well that's stuff that the Casual consumers can appreciate as well depending on what phone you're coming from the camera system though is what is really
mental on the 15 Pro so if you're interested in picking one of these up just be aware that is kind of like the main Flex that is happening here so yeah I'm really looking forward to using this a lot more next year
