iPhone 15 Pro Upgraded from a 11 Pro to a 15 Pro and disappointed overall

[winxmac]

iPhone 15 Pro is like the iPhone 14 Pro with A17 Pro and Action Button and uses USB Type C connector and has Smart HDR 5...

Some reviewers say Smart HDR 5 is an improvement over Smart HDR 4 [which is used by iPhone 13 series and iPhone 14 series]

If not for the bigger battery capacity, I would have chosen the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro...

 

[Jackbequickly]

If photography is important, maybe go back to old phone and buy a dedicated camera?

‘Agreed. Who would have thought 10 years ago we would be worried about over sharpening on our phone images.

 

[AlmightyKang]

I’ve always said — if a person cares about the quality of their photographs, don’t use an iPhone.
Apl might slap a “Pro” label on their phones, but they’re still just point & shoot snapshot cameras

This.

I was on a 13 Pro. Decided when it came to replace it recently that I was fed up of the mutilations so I got a basic 15 as a point and snap phone camera and use my mirrorless for anything I care about.

I recently went for a couple of weeks in Iceland and everything the 13 Pro did was horrible. The mirrorless saved the trip.

 

[Shirasaki]

If I wasn't buried deep in the Apple ecosystem I would absolutely leave iPhone over this, since it's utterly ridiculous.

Apple’s fierce stance against customisation and treating customers like toddlers will likely never change.

I’ve always said — if a person cares about the quality of their photographs, don’t use an iPhone.
Apl might slap a “Pro” label on their phones, but they’re still just point & shoot snapshot cameras

It’s a phone camera with tiny lenses and no optical zoom. They will never truly rival DSLR or professional cameras in terms of photography performance. Whether people accept their result is another matter.

You guys saying this sound ridiculous. You're saying "if you care about photo quality, instead of Apple just implementing a very very very simple feature to allow you to take photographs you like, why don't you go buy another separate $1,000 device and lug it around?"

Apple fan typical defence. “Why not you just go Android if you like sideloading too much?”. Serious photographer obviously will go and use a dedicated camera. But for folks like you, it is indeed disgusting yet unsurprising that Apple is staunchly against providing more customisation options.

And more shocking that people continually find excuses for this, going so far as to say "just buy a camera" when the very very simple feature that should be on the phone would completely negate the need for a camera.

Or maybe Apple is doing camera manufacturers a favour by intentionally holding back their crappy camera so those people have jobs to do? I’m on full conspiracy on this one Ngl.

 

[Lift Bar]

The video capabilities of the iPhone 15 Pro Max are outstanding. Its stabilization surpasses other non-gimbal cameras, and the ProRes LOG format effectively addresses issues related to over-sharpening, enabling professional-grade video production. The ability to record directly onto an SSD is great.

Future improvements for Apple could include refining the cinematic mode for a more natural look and integrating it with ProRes LOG. The software's approach to creating a shallow depth of field is impressive, though not yet perfect.

In terms of photography, the 15 excels, but it still faces challenges with portraits. This might be partly due to user technique, as I find shooting without a viewfinder tricky. Traditional cameras with their more natural rolloff and design still hold an edge for portrait photography.

The 11 is fine too but it’s not that great. More likely you’re just feeling nostalgia for pictures from that era. This is very understandable, as this is what photography is all about for most of us!

 

[adrianlondon]

I have the base iPhone 11. It's a great phone, especially as my two cheap €5 cases fell apart after 3 years and I'm now caseless. I have the white one and it looks great! It's a bit slipper though, but it's survived a couple of drops without a scratch. I don't know how long my luck will hold out

It's running iOS 17.3 (beta) really well and the photos I take come out perfectly fine for what I want them for. There are things I'm missing (new action button, AOD which so far seems bugged in Standby mode but will hopefully get fixed) but my main driver for upgrading a phone is not getting the latest OS.

I suspect iOS 18 won't work on the 11, which will be my driver for buying the iPhone 16. Now, whether I'll go "pro" for the first time ever is yet to be seen. Usually the prices put me off the pro.

As for cameras:

I used to have a really nice Canon SLR, which I sold and replaced with a "point and shoot", albeit one with full manual controls, as I got fed up of carrying the SLR and its lenses when travelling Then, one year, on a cycling holiday in Asia and worried the vibrations, or a drop, or a theft, would mean the photos in the SD card would all get wiped I risked taking only my phone with iCLoud photos enabled (for almost instant backups). The photos on my 5S were OK. Not great, but good enough. And that's when I sold the P&S and have been phone-only since.

 

[Mebsat]

TL;DR: Apple's automatic and uncustomizable Live Photo processing has drastically increased since the 11 series, leading to a very punchy "Instagram-esque" with lots of sharpening and contrast as opposed to a more natural look. You can use burst mode to get around this, or use ProRAW MAX, or use Halide, but no matter what you do, you will not be able to use Live Photos.

So does this only apply to Live Photos? Or does it apply to all photo processing done at OS level? Does using a non-Apple camera app solve the problem? Thanks for clarifying if you can.

 

[jntdroid]

As for cameras:

I used to have a really nice Canon SLR, which I sold and replaced with a "point and shoot", albeit one with full manual controls, as I got fed up of carrying the SLR and its lenses when travelling Then, one year, on a cycling holiday in Asia and worried the vibrations, or a drop, or a theft, would mean the photos in the SD card would all get wiped I risked taking only my phone with iCLoud photos enabled (for almost instant backups). The photos on my 5S were OK. Not great, but good enough. And that's when I sold the P&S and have been phone-only since.

Great point. And honestly most people don't need DSLR / mirrorless quality. They just want a saved memory.

But even if they want more than that... I have a friend who has taken some incredible photos on an iPhone 7 and even blew them up into wall mounted metal and matte panoramic shots. I've yet to hear or see a single person see those and criticize them for... whatever reason.

It's really as much (or more?) about the photographer than the camera (within reason obviously).

 

[schnitzel-pretzel]

‘Agreed. Who would have thought 10 years ago we would be worried about over sharpening on our phone images.

Nobody, because any sane rational person would assume that, by the time smartphone cameras got good enough to worry about that, there would be a f---ing slider to customize the sharpening...

Apple fan typical defence. “Why not you just go Android if you like sideloading too much?”. Serious photographer obviously will go and use a dedicated camera. But for folks like you, it is indeed disgusting yet unsurprising that Apple is staunchly against providing more customisation options.

Pretty much exactly this. The crazy part is they already offer far more complex camera customizations -- resolution control, ProRAW, three different physical lenses, 8 different focal lengths, several shooting modes, and photographic styles which basically just needs a "sharpness" option added... So it's not even like they're rejecting customization at all, they're rejecting specifically the idea that customers might maybe want their photos to not be sharpened so much that things have halos around them.

It’s a phone camera with tiny lenses and no optical zoom. They will never truly rival DSLR or professional cameras in terms of photography performance. Whether people accept their result is another matter.

That is true in terms of true quality of image and ability to blow something up to a 50" print, but for smaller screens I really think ProRAW takes shots that rival many entry level mirrorless or DSLR cameras, in my experience. The main issue is simply that Apple ruins snapshots because they shove the sharpening down your throat and tell you that you like it.

So does this only apply to Live Photos? Or does it apply to all photo processing done at OS level? Does using a non-Apple camera app solve the problem? Thanks for clarifying if you can.

It applies to Live Photos as well as photos you take using the standard photo mode in the main camera app even if you turn off the Live Photo. Basically it applies to snapshots you take by just pressing the shutter.

It doesn't apply nearly as much to burst mode (implying directly that Apple can turn this stuff off, they just choose to decide for us when it will happen), and it doesn't apply nearly as much to ProRAW. And, even more frustratingly, it appears to not apply to third party camera apps -- when I take a photo with Halide, the result looks brilliantly natural without the ridiculous overly contrasted Instagram look -- so basically Apple is saying "I don't care if you don't like this processing but still want a Live Photo -- pound sand buddy"

 

[schnitzel-pretzel]

As a secondary point, for those like OP who dislike the camera processing, please please please submit feedback to Apple. That is realistically the most useful "complaining" you can do. They do have a human read every piece of feedback. Is one feature request going to make a difference, no, but enough of them will. I have already submitted feedback twice about the camera and explained we really should be able to disable processing. Apple may continue to treat us like toddlers and refuse to allow it, but the very least you can do is take ~2 minutes of your time to give them direct feedback. I do tend to think that people saying they do not like their brand new $1000+ phone will get their attention, at least a little bit.

 

[ric22]

I think I had a really special 11 Pro. My battery health was 91%, after 4 years of heavy use. It made some fantastic pictures. It was the perfect size, for me. But it was starting to show its age, it was slow or freezing up sometimes (maybe due to iOS 17) and I was constantly low on storage (it was 64 GB).
So I bit the bullet and upgraded to the 15 Pro.

There are a few positives, definitely: the larger storage, the 120Hz screen, and the CPU/RAM increases which are noticeable. The speaker is louder (yey!). Oh, and props to USB-C, finally.

But other than that, I'm surprised to find that:
- the camera is a mess. Ok, the ultrawide is better, but the rest of them are very hit and miss, and overall worse than the 11 Pro. There is a kind of processing that happens after I take the picture that dramatically modifies the final result from the preview. I cannot turn HDR off. The skin tones especially are way off, with a gray/blue tint that I can't get rid of. The lighting overall is altered, the colours modified, the shadows are murdered, I even made side by side comparisons with the 11 Pro in my home under different lighting/shade conditions. It just changes the pictures so much and there's nothing I can do about it. The focusing distance for both the main camera and the zoom have increased, up to a point where I need to adjust distance sometimes, something which had never happened on the 11. This also creates some kind of weird perspective shift between the cameras, especially when trying to use the zoom lens at closer range. Even the selfie camera is worse, the skin just looks horrible now. (To account for display differences, for comparison purposes the pictures were transfered to a neutral display, my 5k iMac)
- there is a gigantic camera bulge on the back for no reason. Like, seriously, this thing takes worse pictures with all its huge sensors and lenses
- the battery life is marginally better, if at all
- the hand feel is... meh. As I said, the 11 Pro was the perfect size, and the straight edges are making this one harder to hold comfortably
- the screen itself is worse quality. Looking at them side by side at similar brightness levels, the 11 Pro is just a tiny bit richer, warmer and more vivid, while the 15 Pro is a bit washed out.. like when you turn on gamma correction too much on a display.

So overall, 4 years later, I was very surprised that some the most important aspects of the phone are kinda worse. And since photography is very important for me, I'm actually debating whether I should keep the new one or try to live one more year with the old 11 Pro.

Rant over
Is anyone else in the same boat, or am I crazy?

One screen issue aside, I'm happy with mine. However, the camera does do some ****ing crazy processing... someone take a photo of a bookcase from a few metres away and zoom in. When you take it you can read all the words on the books clearly, but the processing kicks in a couple of seconds later and mucks it all up so it's then it's either difficult to read or unreadable.

Here's an example from 2 metres away- it went from crystal clear to this over processed mess: (this isn't even a bad example)

And again on a different lens:

 

[klasma]

- the screen itself is worse quality. Looking at them side by side at similar brightness levels, the 11 Pro is just a tiny bit richer, warmer and more vivid, while the 15 Pro is a bit washed out.. like when you turn on gamma correction too much on a display.

From my experience, there are always display variations for the same model between individual devices. Not only due to different display manufacturers, but also because there are analog aspects to display production which simply result in a certain variation. When buying a new iPhone, I’ve gotten into the habit of comparing several devices and picking the one with the least bad screen. There are always variations in contrast and color accuracy.

This is just to say that this isn’t necessarily a consistent difference between the 11 Pro and 15 Pro, but instead you might just have been luckier with the display lottery for your 11 Pro vs. your 15 Pro.

 

[sdante]

One screen issue aside, I'm happy with mine. However, the camera does do some ****ing crazy processing... someone take a photo of a bookcase from a few metres away and zoom in. When you take it you can read all the words on the books clearly, but the processing kicks in a couple of seconds later and mucks it all up so it's then it's either difficult to read or unreadable.

This might be the reason why I have noticed when taking photos of my cats, there is really not much hair detail when viewing photos in detail and zooming them. Comparing to my previous 12 Pro that is very obvious where 12 Pro photos have plenty of fine detail.
From quick glance the photos from 15 PM seems punchy compared to photos taken with 12 Pro. I guess most people prefer high contrast punchy photos.

 

[Berti10]

I think I had a really special 11 Pro. My battery health was 91%, after 4 years of heavy use. It made some fantastic pictures. It was the perfect size, for me. But it was starting to show its age, it was slow or freezing up sometimes (maybe due to iOS 17) and I was constantly low on storage (it was 64 GB).
So I bit the bullet and upgraded to the 15 Pro.

There are a few positives, definitely: the larger storage, the 120Hz screen, and the CPU/RAM increases which are noticeable. The speaker is louder (yey!). Oh, and props to USB-C, finally.

But other than that, I'm surprised to find that:
- the camera is a mess. Ok, the ultrawide is better, but the rest of them are very hit and miss, and overall worse than the 11 Pro. There is a kind of processing that happens after I take the picture that dramatically modifies the final result from the preview. I cannot turn HDR off. The skin tones especially are way off, with a gray/blue tint that I can't get rid of. The lighting overall is altered, the colours modified, the shadows are murdered, I even made side by side comparisons with the 11 Pro in my home under different lighting/shade conditions. It just changes the pictures so much and there's nothing I can do about it. The focusing distance for both the main camera and the zoom have increased, up to a point where I need to adjust distance sometimes, something which had never happened on the 11. This also creates some kind of weird perspective shift between the cameras, especially when trying to use the zoom lens at closer range. Even the selfie camera is worse, the skin just looks horrible now. (To account for display differences, for comparison purposes the pictures were transfered to a neutral display, my 5k iMac)
- there is a gigantic camera bulge on the back for no reason. Like, seriously, this thing takes worse pictures with all its huge sensors and lenses
- the battery life is marginally better, if at all
- the hand feel is... meh. As I said, the 11 Pro was the perfect size, and the straight edges are making this one harder to hold comfortably
- the screen itself is worse quality. Looking at them side by side at similar brightness levels, the 11 Pro is just a tiny bit richer, warmer and more vivid, while the 15 Pro is a bit washed out.. like when you turn on gamma correction too much on a display.

So overall, 4 years later, I was very surprised that some the most important aspects of the phone are kinda worse. And since photography is very important for me, I'm actually debating whether I should keep the new one or try to live one more year with the old 11 Pro.

Rant over
Is anyone else in the same boat, or am I crazy?

This is something I experienced as well, upgrading from the 8+ to the 13PM. People who upgrade every year cannot relate, but if you do those big 4y jumps, it is so noticeable and annoying. Like the frog, that jumps from the boiling water but would stay if you boil slowly to the same temperature

 

[schnitzel-pretzel]

One screen issue aside, I'm happy with mine. However, the camera does do some ****ing crazy processing... someone take a photo of a bookcase from a few metres away and zoom in. When you take it you can read all the words on the books clearly, but the processing kicks in a couple of seconds later and mucks it all up so it's then it's either difficult to read or unreadable.

Here's an example from 2 metres away- it went from crystal clear to this over processed mess: (this isn't even a bad example)
View attachment 2325738
And again on a different lens:
View attachment 2325740

Yup.

Again I'll plead with you guys to submit feedback to Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Simply explain that you want to see the Photographic Styles feature expanded to include options for sharpening, contrast enhancements etc -- to let us take photos that don't have sharpening applied if we want. I am fine with softness and noise.

If enough people ask for it Apple might do it.

 

[wave84]

OP here.

For anyone that says: "if you want serious photography, get a professional camera", you're missing the point. The iPhone is always there with me. I go running at 6 AM, I see a beautiful sunrise, I take a picture. Etc.
Besides, the iPhone already WAS very good at this, they just ruined it with their software updates.

My problem isn't mainly with the extra sharpening, but especially with the modified exposure, lighting and color balance.
I just tested it to take pictures of my couch, which is a dark green. The iPhone 11 Pro captures it perfectly, as is. The 15 Pro in ProRaw mode or in preview mode does a decent job. But the moment I take a default picture, the result turns out almost blue. If I show someone the picture, they tell me it's a blue couch (although trust me, it's a really nice dark green!). The carpet, which is white, instead of taking a slight yellow hue from the indoor lighting, takes a reddish hue. The colors are just messed up.

I think I'm gonna do a camera comparison test and topic in the following days, the examples will speak for themselves.

Btw, simply taking pictures with your 15 Pro without any frame of reference or comparison and saying "it takes nice pictures" doesn't really mean anything. Sure, in a void, it takes good pictures. But when you see my comparison examples, you will better understand what I mean.

 

[Jackbequickly]

Nobody, because any sane rational person would assume that, by the time smartphone cameras got good enough to worry about that, there would be a f---ing slider to customize the sharpening..

‘Good luck on getting your slider! Not going to happen.

 

[schnitzel-pretzel]

‘Good luck on getting your slider! Not going to happen.

k

 

[schnitzel-pretzel]

OP here.

For anyone that says: "if you want serious photography, get a professional camera", you're missing the point. The iPhone is always there with me. I go running at 6 AM, I see a beautiful sunrise, I take a picture. Etc.
Besides, the iPhone already WAS very good at this, they just ruined it with their software updates.

Yup. This is exactly how I feel when people say that. It's like, what a ridiculous statement. "Buy a $2,000 professional camera since your new phone takes worse photos than your old phone, just carry an extra device with you." Some of these people just don't care to be honest and are only in these threads to goad people on or to be tools about it. I can't imagine going into a thread where someone is complaining about an issue I do not personally have (such as eye fatigue from PWM on the screens or something like that) and just saying "get a Nokia then". Like, what does that contribute, besides a snarky comment?

I think I'm gonna do a camera comparison test and topic in the following days, the examples will speak for themselves.

Btw, simply taking pictures with your 15 Pro without any frame of reference or comparison and saying "it takes nice pictures" doesn't really mean anything. Sure, in a void, it takes good pictures. But when you see my comparison examples, you will better understand what I mean.

Yes, please do.

But you hit the nail on the head too -- and also elucidated why Apple is doing this processing. Most people want their photos to look good. They want them to be sharp, punchy, with contrast and colors. They don't want them to look natural or realistic. When you look at an 11 Pro photo next to a 15 Pro photo, without having been at the scene, the 15 Pro photo will look "better", because it will have brighter colors, more light, more contrast, more sharpness.... It's only when you are sitting there in real life taking the photo, that you look at it going -- "what in the f happened to this photo, this doesn't look at all like what I'm looking at"

You can comfortably ignore the commenters who seem to not understand why someone might want their new, expensive phone to be able to take photos like their old phone did. In my experience you are never going to convince them of anything. "Okay you're right, I like the way the photos look but Apple should allow you to turn that processing off too" is a sentence they will simply not type, ever.

 

[motorazr]

I think I had a really special 11 Pro. My battery health was 91%, after 4 years of heavy use. It made some fantastic pictures. It was the perfect size, for me. But it was starting to show its age, it was slow or freezing up sometimes (maybe due to iOS 17) and I was constantly low on storage (it was 64 GB).
So I bit the bullet and upgraded to the 15 Pro.

There are a few positives, definitely: the larger storage, the 120Hz screen, and the CPU/RAM increases which are noticeable. The speaker is louder (yey!). Oh, and props to USB-C, finally.

But other than that, I'm surprised to find that:
- the camera is a mess. Ok, the ultrawide is better, but the rest of them are very hit and miss, and overall worse than the 11 Pro. There is a kind of processing that happens after I take the picture that dramatically modifies the final result from the preview. I cannot turn HDR off. The skin tones especially are way off, with a gray/blue tint that I can't get rid of. The lighting overall is altered, the colours modified, the shadows are murdered, I even made side by side comparisons with the 11 Pro in my home under different lighting/shade conditions. It just changes the pictures so much and there's nothing I can do about it. The focusing distance for both the main camera and the zoom have increased, up to a point where I need to adjust distance sometimes, something which had never happened on the 11. This also creates some kind of weird perspective shift between the cameras, especially when trying to use the zoom lens at closer range. Even the selfie camera is worse, the skin just looks horrible now. (To account for display differences, for comparison purposes the pictures were transfered to a neutral display, my 5k iMac)
- there is a gigantic camera bulge on the back for no reason. Like, seriously, this thing takes worse pictures with all its huge sensors and lenses
- the battery life is marginally better, if at all
- the hand feel is... meh. As I said, the 11 Pro was the perfect size, and the straight edges are making this one harder to hold comfortably
- the screen itself is worse quality. Looking at them side by side at similar brightness levels, the 11 Pro is just a tiny bit richer, warmer and more vivid, while the 15 Pro is a bit washed out.. like when you turn on gamma correction too much on a display.

So overall, 4 years later, I was very surprised that some the most important aspects of the phone are kinda worse. And since photography is very important for me, I'm actually debating whether I should keep the new one or try to live one more year with the old 11 Pro.

Rant over
Is anyone else in the same boat, or am I crazy?

You’re not crazy.

Been this way since 12 pro with little differences per generation and becoming more pronounced with 13 pro on. Bothers some more than others.

I found turning off Live Photos helps a lot with the overkill post processing done by ai. Beyond that, shooting raw and manually correcting is next.

Good luck

 

[schnitzel-pretzel]

You’re not crazy.

Been this way since 12 pro with little differences per generation and becoming more pronounced with 13 pro on. Bothers some more than others.

I found turning off Live Photos helps a lot with the overkill post processing done by ai. Beyond that, shooting raw and manually correcting is next.

Good luck

Unfortunately turning off Live Photo no longer changes the Deep Fusion pipeline like it used to. For 14 and 15 Pro at least, there is no difference.

Shooting ProRAW and editing does produce stunning results, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the point and shoot iPhone camera. If you are someone who doesn't care about Live Photos though, ProRAW basically should always be ON.

 

[schneeland]

Unfortunately turning off Live Photo no longer changes the Deep Fusion pipeline like it used to. For 14 and 15 Pro at least, there is no difference.

Shooting ProRAW and editing does produce stunning results, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the point and shoot iPhone camera. If you are someone who doesn't care about Live Photos though, ProRAW basically should always be ON.

Knowing this now, I guess I will hold on to my 11 Pro a bit longer than expected. So far I had expected that you could optionally disable processing, or at least reduce it to a minimum.

 

[jntdroid]

To be clear here - it’s not all bad all the time. Sure, sometimes the photos are over-HDR’d, and over-sharpened, but sometimes they come out looking incredibly good as well, with the lighting focused on the subjects while not blowing everything else out (or over darkening…).

 

[Elusi]

iOS 17 was laggy at launch on my 11 Pro but I diligently waited and now a couple of patches later it works like before and is really snappy.

Great phone, great size (ok, a bit too big for my liking but unfortunately the size creep has gotten worse..), great battery life. Won't replace until it breaks.

 

[Mebsat]

It applies to Live Photos as well as photos you take using the standard photo mode in the main camera app even if you turn off the Live Photo. Basically it applies to snapshots you take by just pressing the shutter.

It doesn't apply nearly as much to burst mode (implying directly that Apple can turn this stuff off, they just choose to decide for us when it will happen), and it doesn't apply nearly as much to ProRAW. And, even more frustratingly, it appears to not apply to third party camera apps -- when I take a photo with Halide, the result looks brilliantly natural without the ridiculous overly contrasted Instagram look -- so basically Apple is saying "I don't care if you don't like this processing but still want a Live Photo -- pound sand buddy"

I have to admit I never saw the point of Live Photos and turned it off a while ago.

I wonder if this is somehow related to video (.MOV/H.264) part of the Live Photos file. A Live Photo contains both a JPG and the .MOV. Maybe this ML algorithm is coming from the video side of things which could explain the exagerrated blacks. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple was double dipping on a technique from iMovie/FCP.

Unfortunately, the Instagram look probably pleases way more of their customer base than those who are annoyed.

I appreciate the explanation, I had noticed this but mostly use my iPhone for unimportant stuff so hadn't really looked into why the latitude looked so off.