iPhone 15 models are here!

Coming from an iPhone 14 Pro, it was quite difficult to decide whether or not to upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro. For a moment, the iPhone 15 Pro Max was really attractive, considering that the weight has been reduced, thanks to titanium, and the 5X zoom. The price and the pocketability were the dealbreaker, though. Next was deciding whether 128GB is still the sweet spot (and the lowest priced) or going the next tier, 256GB, because of the bigger file sizes of the photos and videos. Finally, decided to get the entry level iPhone 15 Pro with 128GB storage and in natural titanium color.

It has been a long time since I started and configured an iPhone from scratch. Why? Well, the health data (and the streaks) does not get restored from iCloud. This may not be the case now, considering that the health data can now sync between iPhone and iPad, but I’d rather not try it out - not when I am less than 200 days away from achieving my 3,000 workout goal award badge. Anyway, the usual procedure usually goes encrypted backup to a Mac (so I have the option to tether the new device and restore) and then transferr data and all from iPhone 14 Pro to iPhone 15 Pro, which was  extremely easy. It even re-paired my Apple Watch Ultra right away. Unfortunately, though, my other Apple Watch (which I use for monitoring sleep) needed to be paired as new.

I have both Globe and Smart SIMs on the phone - an eSIM from Globe and a physical nanoSIM from Smart. I had my Globe eSIM QRCode reissued a few days earlier, anticipating the iPhone lovers will crowd the Globe store. As for the Smart eSIM, well, whilst prepaid and consumer postpaid SIMs can now be converted to eSIM, my Enterprise Extension plan is still not qualified. Yeah, weird.

Data, such as Face ID and Apple Pay needed to be reconfigured as these aren’t transferable. The same can be said of some third-party applications, such as banking apps and secure, end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, like Signal and Wavelength. The Grab app, however, needed to be uninstalled and re-installed for it to work. Aside from those, all third-party apps and data were restored to the new phone. Awesome!

With the entry level 128GB storage, the first test I did was to find a fast USB Type-C cable (I used a short USB 4 cable) and connected it to a 1TB portable SSD drive. With an external drive connected to the iPhone 15 Pro via USB Type-C, I fired up the Camera app, selected video and enabled ProRes at 4K@30, and shot a few seconds worth of video. Yes! ProRes at 4K@24/30 usually pops-up an error message on 128GB on-device storage iPhones. Now that limitation is no longer an issue, if and when I decide to use ProRes video, which is very, very rare anyway. I wish photos can be automatically saved to the external drive, too, though (a third-party Photon app can do it, which Camera and Halide can, too).

Next thing that is new with the iPhone 15 Pro models is the Action button, which replaced the physical Mute/Unmute slider. By default, it is set to toggle mute/unmute, but it can be configured in any of the following: set Focus, open the camera, toggle the flashlight, turn on voice memo or magnifier, access accessibility settings, set it to run a shortcut, or no action at all. I set mine to run a shortcut I made. The shortcut toggles the mute/unmute setting and then asks whether another action needs to be launched. If there is no input for a few seconds, the shortcut times out and exits.

The Journal app is still in incubation. Hopefully it gets released soon, as I intend to go back to journalling - specially with what I eat. LOL.

So, how are you liking your iPhone 15 Pro so far?