1-minute news: Apple iPhone 15 Pro launches with Action button

iPhone 15 Pro showing the new Action button

(Image credit: Apple)

What's the story?

The iPhone 15 Pro might inhabit a slightly awkward place in the iPhone 15 range this year. While the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro Max got some really big upgrades, the Pro has slightly less to shout about.

That's not to say that the phone, which was announced at today's Apple September event, is without merit. It still gets some neat new features and will be available for a decent-looking price of $999 / £999 / AU$1,849 for the 128GB model when it goes on sale next Friday (September 22). Here's all the info.

What do I need to know about it?

The big story with the iPhone 15 Pro - check out our ongoing Apple event 2023 live blog for the very latest - is that it gets the new Action button in place of the traditional mute switch. This can be used to trigger custom actions such as swapping between camera modes without delving into menus.

Design-wise, it gets more curved sides which are now crafted from titanium plus thinner edges, and of course as with the other iPhone 15 models it now charges via USB-C rather than Apple's Lightning cable.

There's also an updated A17 Pro chipset and and it will be available in four titanium colors. But though the cameras get some upgrades too, you only get 3x zoom on the telephoto sensor, compared to 5x on the Pro Max.

What do we think of it?

While it may not have any headline-grabbing upgrades beyond the Action button (and possibly USB-C), there's enough here to make it a contender for our best phones list all the same.

That's because the iPhone 14 Pro was an excellent device which we said "may be the perfect iPhone" and much of that remains true here. It still offers more than the base iPhone 15 - for instance the extra telephoto camera and the more powerful processor - but without the extra size and price of the Pro Max. It could still be the best option for most people.

We've not yet been hands-on with the iPhone 15 Pro, but look out for our early verdict soon.

Marc is TechRadar’s Global Editor in Chief, the latest in a long line of senior editorial roles he’s held in a career that started the week that Google launched (nice of them to mark the occasion). Prior to joining TR, he was UK Editor in Chief on Tom’s Guide, where he oversaw all gaming, streaming, audio, TV, entertainment, how-to and cameras coverage. He's also a former editor of the tech website Stuff and spent five years at the music magazine NME, where his duties mainly involved spoiling other people’s fun. He’s based in London, and has tested and written about phones, tablets, wearables, streaming boxes, smart home devices, Bluetooth speakers, headphones, games, TVs, cameras and pretty much every other type of gadget you can think of. An avid photographer, Marc likes nothing better than taking pictures of very small things (bugs, his daughters) or very big things (distant galaxies). He also enjoys live music, gaming, cycling, and beating Wordle (he authors the daily Wordle today page).