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Phones · Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone Pro

14owners with an opinion
55%of verdicts positive
1/2positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for portability and battery; criticized for performance and display.

What people wrote

Doesn’t like it
It's dark outside. I'm sitting in my living room with reasonable indoor lighting. I point my "Pro" phone camera on the tele setting (but no digital zoom) at the wall and take a photo. I zoom in on the capture and there is basically no real pixel detail anywhere in sight. It's all smudged to algorithmically cover up severe sensor noise. Crown moulding edges are not even straight lines and all have weird jaggies. If I go and grab my full-frame mirrorless, every pixel of the image will be usable at 1:1 crop. "Taking photos indoors and wanting to zoom in and crop" is not an extreme test. The usability of 1:1 crops from cell phones is limited even in daylight. But yeah, if you look at a photo taken in good light with no cropping and at screen display resolutions, it looks pretty close to the output from a pro mirrorless. My only point is that you get maybe 3-5 good megapixels, not 45+. And that's before we get into dynamic range, bokeh, etc, all of which phones more or less need to fake to approach the look and feel of photos taken with grown-up cameras.
Doesn’t like it
I walked through a tech store recently and I saw the new iPhones with the liquid gimmick. I opened the camera app on one of their pro phones and it was lagging . I was shocked, I found it mind-boggling. Brand new phone, up to date OS, marketing material BS and for it to lag just feels unprofessional. I’d understand it if it was a Pinephone or whatever but from Apple? My expectations are reaching lower and lower depths.
Doesn’t like it
And then because on screen keyboards suck so bad we had to make phones BIGGER which meant they needed to be THINNER which meant cameras needed to stick out, and here we are, in a world where an iPhone Pro Max takes up the full height of my jeans pocket and digs into my hip when I sit down. Yeyyy.
Neutral
I LOVE the iPhone SE. Excellent phone for the value. I had the OG one (the one with the iPhone 5 form factor) and finally framed it on my collection of iPhones once Apple deprecated it. I love the Mini even more. I'm only using the Pro for the wide angle lens, but I'm ditching it once the Mini gets the triple camera array, if it ever does.
Neutral
I bought a Mini with great excitement, thinking that it would take me back to the glory of the "my phone fits my my pocket and I can type with one hand" days. I kept it for 3 months, and then traded it in for a Pro. It turns out that the world has moved on. Web pages are getting harder to read on small screens. I had to squint a lot. The phone's short height means that it often doesn't charge "vertically" in Qi chargers. It doesn't fit in my car's integrated phone holder, it just rattles around. And I really missed the zoom lens. So I'm OK with the Pro, and I will get used to slightly larger phones. (The "Max" is still stupid.)
Likes it
Same—I just bought a new iPhone…I thought the mini was right for me, but after three days of using it, it was clear that the battery life was worse than my years-old Pro. So I returned it and got the Pro instead. The other challenge was that I found it hard to go back to the smaller onscreen keyboard and display. I think I was deluded about my vision being as good as it was 10 years ago!
Doesn’t like it
Plenty of Android phones already do this. The Pixel 4a 5G is an example of one, and the always on clock / information screen drains very little battery, while still being really nice. It is baffling to me that Apple still hasn't implemented this feature even on their top end "Pro" iPhones... but this feature by itself isn't enough for me to switch to Android full time.
Doesn’t like it
I'm iOS dev and few limitation: 1) Biggest one Lidar is only on iPhones Pro in contrast to TrueDepth that after iPhone X landed in all iPhone devices 2) Lidar has very low resolution I wish the added Lidar to all iPhones + combined this with TrueDepth (both in front and back of iphone) - true depth has better resolution but is slower (only 30fps + higher latency) and only works best for distance < 1 meter
Neutral
I'd guess that they are having product differentiation issues between the iphone and the iphone Pro. Most people just don't see the value in faster screen, stainless band, and a not-so-great telephoto camera (I own a pro, but I'm hardly their primary market). An entire processor generation difference would give a big selling point to average consumers for paying the extra few hundred dollars. There's been rumors that they'll be skipping A15 cores for the upcoming M2 processors. If they skipped over the best-selling iphone, that would give them a TON of extra space for M2 chips. This would allow them to put a little more ground between the new Air with the M1 and the pro iPads. It would also allow them to drop a new version of the macbook air and drive a lot of sales there. I know I'd gladly upgrade to a M2 model -- especially with a decent CPU bump and a 24/32GB RAM option. Then again, they could just stick with what people expect. I wouldn't be surprised either way.
Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it
Because they can. Most people are remarkably tolerant of ads, time wasters, attention sinks, and disrespect. It won’t sell that many fewer pricey laptops or high margin phones if the nonstop subscription nagging on a $1.5k pro iphone already doesn’t.
Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it
> The iOS keyboard has been broken since at least iOS 17...But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty So the keyboard has been broken since iOS 17 (>2 years [1]), and to show your displeasure, you bought an iPhone Pro? Your threat of leaving in 3 months rings hollow. All Apple has to do is verbally say things will get better and, if they can' even do that, you only commit to leaving for two years. If you want to leave, just leave. I am confident that blue bubble pressure will exist in 3 months. I am also confident that the iPhone 18 Pro will be pretty. If a nice color and blue bubbles are enough to keep you in the iOS ecosystem today, why should anyone believe you will leave tomorrow? [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/ios-17-makes-iphone-m...
Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it
>Better camera (arguably already achieved) For the Pro Model. Yes. Not for the normal iPhone though. 2x Optical Zoom is barely enough. Especially when I default to taking photos with 1.8x which fits my view point a lot better. So when I get 5x optical zoom it is more like 2.5x only. And if there is one thing I would add to the list is weight. The Pro model is too heavy.
Likes itDoesn’t say they own it
Agreed. For photos instead of video you can find tons of amazing pictures that people took on iPhone pros. People take the picture in raw and then process it themselves like they would if it was from a DSLR and they come out incredible. Yeah the stock camera app meant to be point-and-shoot doesn’t re-create the same results as a professional spending a bunch of time in Photoshop, but what do you expect? Apple does a pretty good job of making very good photos under incredible constraints of tiny sensors, possibly low light, and every other condition that someone might whip their phone out in.