One Month Check-In: We Tested the iPhone 15 Pro's and Pro Max's Batteries
Phones
Speaker 1: I reviewed the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max a month ago, and since then I have a few thoughts I've gotten to test the battery more the performance, more the action button, more iOS 17 and the cameras more. And I've survived some of the scandals with Overheating Gate and the fine woven case gate. So let's talk about everything. Hey, so first thing we're going to start off with is let's talk about some of the scandals and there's kind of three types of scandals that have been going on with the iPhone 15 [00:00:30] series. There are those that Apple has acknowledged, those that Apple have not acknowledged and well ones that are kind of in between. And let's start with the ones that are in between. Some of these might include the fact that you've heard that the iPhone 15 is easier to bend than other iPhones, or the fact that the redesign on the 15 pro means that the back glass is easier to crack with your fingers, or the fact that some people have experienced a burn on the screen.
Speaker 1: I have not experienced any of this. My colleagues at CNET have not either, but it doesn't mean [00:01:00] that these are not things that people have actually experienced are real. I just don't think they're as widespread as some of the other problems we're going to talk about. Then there are the scandals that Apple has not acknowledged, but a lot of people have covered, and that includes fine woven case gate. So you may have heard that these cases aren't great. In fact, these cases were meant to be a premium replacement to Apple's previous leather cases, which were pretty fantastic. And if you mark those up or had wear and tear on them, it actually gave it an attractive [00:01:30] patina on the fine woven cases. Dirt shows up easily on there, scratches show up easily. I even had in the first week and a half my mag safe circular magnet made it imprint on the case.
Speaker 1: So what have I been using since then? Well, not a fine woven case. I use the distant phone naked and I for a wallet. I have this peak design wallet. It's also a fabric, but I can touch it. I could even drag my nail across it. There's no scratches. I don't see any dirt or stains [00:02:00] on it from everyday yeast. I've been using this for about three weeks now. All that said, if you are someone who's getting a fine woven case for your iPhone, just know that Apple does have a support page that walks through care and maintenance of the case. Actually did a cleaning that they recommended on the case. It got pretty much all the dirt out of it. I just don't want to have to own a case that I have to clean every couple of weeks or every month. And now let's talk about the scandal that Apple has actually a knowledge, and that's how the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 series and well in the iPhone running iOS 17 [00:02:30] really overheats.
Speaker 1: And you may have heard different headlines that, oh, Instagram was causing the phone to overheat or the new USB charging caused the phone to overheat or people's iPhone 15 Pro Maxes overheat, but not the other ones. So let's see if we can clear a few things up. Fortunately, I was one of two or three reporters that Apple briefed about what was actually the cause of the overheating problems. And let's just walk through a couple of those things. So the very first thing is anytime you get a new phone and set it up, it's going to be warm to touch, especially [00:03:00] if you are restoring from a backup, whether that's an iPhone 13, 14 or new 15 bam. Next is going to be iOS 17. So there was kind of two issues going on apps like Instagram, the Game Asphalt nine and Uber caused the phone to overheat.
Speaker 1: And this is not just the iPhone 15 series, it was any phone running this, and you could see videos where people documented on their iPhone 14 people document, of course, the iPhone 15 pro. And then there is the larger bug that [00:03:30] was part of iOS 17. Apple didn't go into specifics about what caused the bug or if the bug was for a certain category of apps, but they have since released a fix for the bug. Last Apple emphasized the fact that the new design of the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max with the alloy of titanium and aluminum did not cause any of the overheating problems. They also acknowledged the fact that with USBC that people were experiencing their phones getting [00:04:00] warm. And here's what they told us, that if you're using a 20 watts charger or less, the iPhone should feel normal when you're charging it. But if you're using a charger that's higher than 20 watts, that the phone might actually feel warmer than normal. And to test this theory, we ran a bunch of charging tests before the update to iOS 17 that Apple did to see if they were throttling the charging speeds at all and after. And the charging has
Speaker 2: Been not only consistent before [00:04:30] and after the bug fix, but also consistent with the iPhone 14 series that use lightning cables. So the first test I ran was a charging test using a 20 watt powered charger, and the results were largely on par with last year's iPhone 14 series. So last year the 14 Pro increased 48% in 30 minutes. The 14 Pro Max increased 45% and the 15 Pro increased 62%. The highest of all of these. And the 15 Pro Max increased 49%. I [00:05:00] used 140 watt charger for my MacBook Pro and ran the same test again on the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. The 15 Pro went from zero to 63% in 30 minutes, and the 15 Pro Max went from 18% up to 67% in the same time. Then I ran the same test one more time after the software patch came out for iOS 17 nearly identical scores.
Speaker 2: The iPhone 15 Pro went from zero to 62%, so 1% difference. And the 15 Pro [00:05:30] Max went from 17 to 67%. Again, a 1% difference. At the end of the day, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are pretty much at the same charging speed as the 14 Pro and Promax, the outlier being the 15 pro where it did charge a little bit faster than the other three phones. So then I ran the battery test. The first test I ran is an endurance test. It's over the course of 45 minutes. And during that time I play games, I watch videos, I do a video call, I scroll social media, and here are the results for the 14 Pro [00:06:00] and 14 Pro Max last year. And for the 15 Pro, it dropped only 6% less than both. And for the 15 Pro Max, it only dropped 3% in 45 minutes, and that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: The second test I ran is a new test for CNET this year and involves playing back a video. The battery's at a hundred percent and every hour for three hours we check in to see how much that battery has dropped. Here are the results. And as you can see, after three hours, the 15 Pro dropped 14%. [00:06:30] The 15 Pro Max dropped 13%. No, compare that to the Samsung Galaxy S 23 Ultra, which in the same three hour tests drop 18%. So iPhone looking pretty good in terms of battery. And to be honest, in my daily life, it gets through a day on a single charge. The Pro Max, I can usually get through a day and a half even, sometimes two days on a single charge, but usually around early afternoon that second day, I need to plug it in.
Speaker 2: [00:07:00] Hey, but let's talk about a few things that I like about this phone. At the top of the list is going to be the camera, especially that five times optical zoom on the Promax model, which is the one I've largely been using the most. I was recently on a trip to New York and I went for an early morning photo walk with the camera and just got some absolutely gorgeous shots with this. And same goes for the video. I'm very impressed with the five x telephoto lens especially, but the main camera and that 24 [00:07:30] megapixel resolution just means I get a little more detail out of the photos than maybe I got on the 14 Pro and pro max. The other thing I really like about this phone, as I advertised before, I'm not using a case on it. I love the way this thing feels in my hand.
Speaker 2: I feel like Apple found a very good balance between the weight and the size of the phone and just making it a little more friendly to hold by curving the edges. It sounds like a small detail, but it's something that I notice every time I pick the phone up. And then there's iOS 17 and there's so many aspects to that [00:08:00] that really shine on this phone. One of my favorite parts of it is actually stickers and iMessage and being able to take photos, especially live photos and turn them into animated stickers and just annoy the hell out of my friends with them. I just love it. I love it so much. One of my other favorite features in Iowa 17 is standby mode. At home. I'm using a Belkin dock for this and at work I have a 12th south dock, and it's just nice to be able to see a very contemporary interface, have all these lovely widgets laid out, especially with photos.
Speaker 2: It's just really nice. But let's talk about a couple of things that are some drawbacks. [00:08:30] So I have experienced a couple of software bugs. Sometimes an app will get hung up or a page in Safari is unresponsive. These have largely only happened a couple of times at most, but it doesn't seem problematic, but it's kind of annoying. Another thing is I really do like the action button. It largely lives as a silent mode for me, just like the mute switch did. I do wish I had a little more functionality to be able to program it so it could have a double long press will activate one thing, a single Long Press [00:09:00] would activate another. Now, I do know there are people out there who've taken advantage of the shortcut aspect of the active button and done some elaborate shortcuts to enable some functionality like that, but I just wish it was built in.
Speaker 2: And then there are things that we don't have, and the two that stick out to me is one is iOS 17 specific, and that's the journal app. I'm very excited about this app. And the other is spatial video. So what Apple said is it would take these two cameras on the top and be able to make basically three D video, [00:09:30] or is Apple calls it spatial video that you could watch back on the Vision Pro headset. I don't know if this is something that's going to roll out to the phone first and then later to the headset. It would probably make more sense that this would come out at the same time as a headset. And so that's been my experience after one month with a 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. But I want to hear from you guys. If you have either of these phones, what has your experience been like? Please throw your thoughts at the comments. [00:10:00] Do you want to know more about any of the iPhones, the 15 series or before? Check out cnet.com. Also, if you like this video, give it a thumbs up. And until next time, thank you for watching.
