iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max Specs vs. Galaxy S23 Ultra, Pixel 7 Pro, OnePlus 11 – CNET [CNET]

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We break down how Apple’s high-end iPhones compare to the flagship models of their competitors.

Sarah Lord covers TVs and home entertainment. Prior to joining CNET, Sarah served as the tech and electronic reviews fellow at Insider, where she wrote about everything from smart watches and wearables to tablets and e-readers. She began her career by writing laptop reviews as an intern and subsequent freelancer at Tom’s Hardware. She is also a professional actor with many credits in theater, film and television.

Expertise TVs, Home Entertainment, Streaming, Computers Credentials

• Member of Screen Actors Guild and Actors Equity Association

Apple’s latest iPhones are finally here. The tech giant launched a slew of new products on Tuesday as part of its September Wonderlust event, which included four new iPhones, the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. 

Apple’s iPhone 15 lineup consists of the 6.1-inch iPhone 15 and 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Plus, along with the high-end iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. All four iPhone 15 models now come with the Dynamic Island, a new USB-C connector, satellite connectivity for Emergency SOS and support for the Qi2 wireless charging standard. The base model of the iPhone 15 and larger iPhone 15 Plus get a design upgrade this year and come in five new colors: pink, yellow, green, blue and black. The main camera also gets a new 48-megapixel sensor that is capable of taking pictures at a 2x telephoto zoom at 12 megapixels. 

Watch this: iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max: First Look

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But like most years, the larger changes are reserved for Apple’s flagship iPhone Pro and Pro Max lineup. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max come equipped with the new A17 Pro processor, Apple’s first 3-nanometer chip. Apple claims the chip’s GPU is up to 20% faster than last year’s A16 chip and is powerful enough to enable ray tracing in games and other applications. This should make the phone powerful enough to run games that are also coming to current-gen consoles, with versions of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Resident Evil 8 and others announced for iPhone.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max also get a new titanium design that Apple touts as being lighter and stronger than previous iPhones. Additionally, the Pro and Pro Max iPhones have a customizable Action button on the side of the device, along with faster USB-3 charging speeds of up to 10Gbps. 

The iPhone 15 Pro Max also gets a unique upgrade in its ability to zoom in on a subject. Even though both the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max include a 48-megapixel main camera, only the larger Pro Max model gets a 5x optical zoom with a “tetraprism” design that refracts light multiple times. Meanwhile, the camera on the iPhone 15 Pro retains the 3x optical zoom capabilities that were found on last year’s Pro models. 

As impressive as the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max may appear, rival phones from Samsung, Google and OnePlus actually have very similar — or even better — specs. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra features a four-camera setup that includes a whopping 200-megapixel wide camera. Of course, megapixel count isn’t everything in digital photography, and it remains to be seen how the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s camera stands up to the S23 Ultra’s camera. 

That said, the S23 Ultra, the Google Pixel 7 Pro and OnePlus 11 all have something to offer for those who are looking at upgrading to a flagship phone. We’ve outlined how both Pro versions of the iPhone 15 stack up against those three Android phones in the below chart, which compare the phones by their specs.

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