On Saturday I bought an iPhone 15 Pro from my local Apple store.
I've wanted a new phone for a while and finally saved up enough money to be able to afford it.
My 15 Pro (not Max) has a 6.1 inch display with the blue titanium colour. I think it's very pretty.
I got the lowest amount of storage at 128GB. I'd love to have more storage but I just don't really need it especially given the price difference.
I paid $1578 total. The math on how this worked out was a bit weird.
I was able to price match the same phone from Officeworks which took $184 off the price. I also traded in my old iPhone XR which took a further $165 off the price.
Add on a storm blue silicone case I bought for $79 (I know that's a rip off) and we get the final price of $1578 from the original $1849. I felt like I got a decent deal.
The Apple store was honestly a really good experience. I got served quickly (within 5 minutes without an appointment) and had what I felt like was a positive interaction with the staff member.
They helped me re-enable the iCloud backup setting which I had turned off accidentally (on my old phone) and we restored the new phone. It was a quick process and when I got home all I had to do was install and sign in to some apps.
I did do one classic stuff up.
I forget that I hadn't backed up all of my two factor 6 digit codes in Google Authenticator so I had to go through the rigmarole with some services via my Mac and scan the QR codes to be able to sign in.
Anyway here are some of my initial thoughts on the phone in rapid fire:
- The screen is out of this world amazing, it's crisp, text and video look fantastic
- Apps open up super fast, things feel snappy, this is always the case with a new phone but holly crap the A17 Pro chip is a beast
- The speaker is shockingly loud, it's annoying Emma as I can listen to podcasts in the house louder than ever
- Having the extra camera lenses (0.5, 2x, 3x) to zoom in and out gives me way more flexibility, I went for a walk a few days ago and I used all the lenses at different moments, it's useful
- Face ID is much faster, I noticed this especially with using 1Password to sign in to web apps in Safari, there's way less lag
- The dynamic island is nice without being life changing, it gives you useful information at the right moments
- The action button is nice but I don't have anything cool assigned to it, it's currently just the boring mute/ring switcher
- Night mode photos seem great, they're not as nice as daylight photos in most cases but they're very usable
- The battery is fantastic, I've easily got 1 and a half days out of it with normal usage before needing to charge, USB-C is just a better port, it's a shame it took so long for Apple to kill the lightning port
- I'm thankful Apple Intelligence will work immediately with both my new phone and Mac, it would have been very annoying if my phone wasn't compatible