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Iphone Apple

Apple Launches iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max Featuring Titanium Bodies (theverge.com) 101

Posted by msmash from the feed-and-speed dept.
Apple just announced its new high-end iPhones: the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. The Verge: They're made of titanium, they have Action Buttons, and Apple promises they're the most powerful smartphones Apple has ever made. The 15 Pro starts at $999 with 128GB of storage, and the Pro Max at $1,199 with 256GB of storage. Both will be available for preorder this Friday and on sale September 22nd. This year's Pro has a 6.1-inch screen, and the Pro Max has a 6.7-inch display -- same as the new iPhone 15 and 15 Plus. Both are powered by the A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has the fastest performance in any smartphone and can even challenge some high-end PCs. Along with a redesigned GPU, Apple seems to think these devices could be poised to level up the kinds of games you can play on your phone.
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Apple Launches iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max Featuring Titanium Bodies More

Apple Launches iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max Featuring Titanium Bodies

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  • OOh, heavier than Al and more embodied carbon (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @04:05PM (#63842596)

    Proving that you can't beat marketing, now we have Apple swapping Aluminum for Titanium.
    Aluminum is less dense than Ti and only lags Ti in specific strength (and some other physical properties that don't matter for a phone). Titanium takes a lot more energy to make, too.

    None of that matters when you have to put it in a case to protect those camera lenses.

    Marketing wins!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      That's why I bought the original Z Flip years ago. I ended up spending over a month in the hospital after the fact. Nurses would pull the table I had to get access to run routine tests, which in turn caused the phone to fall countless times. The internal display remained and remains uncracked despite all of the falls. Now we have the Z Flip 5, where Samsung listened to product reviewers instead of common sense and put a large display on the exterior of the phone. Now you have a phone with a new display to c

      • That's why I bought the original Z Flip years ago. I ended up spending over a month in the hospital after the fact.

        Yeah, I'd want nothing to do with that phone when the act of purchasing it causes you to spend a month in hospital.

    • Glass (Score:5, Funny)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @06:47PM (#63843216) Journal

      Aluminum is less dense than Ti and only lags Ti in specific strength

      Which does not really matter at all when half the phone is a large glass screen. It's not the aluminium body of a phone that fails if you drop it. What they need is transparent aluminium.

      • I always appreciate that they needed this exotic, un-invented material as opposed to just buying some 1" steel plates just so we can see the whales when they're in the ship. What a great movie (no sarcasm, i love it even with the gigantic time travel holes).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by torkus ( 1133985 )

          I always appreciate that they needed this exotic, un-invented material as opposed to just buying some 1" steel plates just so we can see the whales when they're in the ship. What a great movie (no sarcasm, i love it even with the gigantic time travel holes).

          Exotic? I guess.

          Un-invented? Um...you do realize that transparent Aluminum exists, right?

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          It was obviously a plot element in the movie but there's plenty of use cases IRL where plate steel is not a viable substitute for a transparent ceramic.

        • I always appreciate that they needed this exotic, un-invented material as opposed to just buying some 1" steel plates just so we can see the whales when they're in the ship.

          Yes, but most good movies have at least one transparent plot device.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 )

        I like how my neglectful childhood self found it impossible to damage a $90 Gameboy while my infinitely more careful adult self is one accident away from trashing a four digit smartphone. Gameboy, out of the box, nearly indestructible, without third party accessories. Was there some regression in materials science in the last 30 years?

        • And let's not forget all of those antique toys made of pig iron which today just need a new coat of paint (preferably non-lead) to make them look new.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by torkus ( 1133985 )

          You mean the gameboy that actually fit in your hand, lasted days (weeks?) on a set of swappable batteries, could be disassembled for repair, and even had a headphones jack?

          Today they'd slim that puppy down and remove all the empty space so it's impossible to hold comfortably, make it of shiny metal and fragile glass, glue everything together and...oh wait.

          Sarcasm aside, it's this never-ending quest for sleek, shiny, and smaller that's done it. I wouldn't really prefer an OG gameboy-sized phone but somewher

    • >Aluminum is less dense than Ti and only lags Ti in specific strength

      Yeah! Who need higher density and strength on incredibly thin, expensive electronics that get routinely dropped sat on!

    • Proving that you can't beat marketing, now we have Apple swapping Aluminum for Titanium.
      Aluminum is less dense than Ti and only lags Ti in specific strength (and some other physical properties that don't matter for a phone). Titanium takes a lot more energy to make, too.

      None of that matters when you have to put it in a case to protect those camera lenses.

      Marketing wins!

      Sorry dude, but the previous iPhone frame was made of steel, not Aluminum. heavier than Ti, but about the same strenght.

      And even if it were made of aluminum , the tradeoff is a sensible one on a luxury product, aluminium is softer, so a drop would dent or deform the fram, with titanium, that is less likely*

      * And yes, I know that a hit with enough force to defor the luminium will crack the screen or glass back, or both... but still, is a nice marketing point ;-)

    • Apple used to make laptops with titanium bodies. If I remember right, they stopped because the titanium scratched easily. Maybe they've found a way to fix the problems with titanium, or maybe they've forgotten.
      • Titanium is a 6 on the Mohs scale.


        The only thing that can scratch it is tungsten.


        If you jab it with a steel screw driver it will damage the screw driver while the titanium is unharmed
        • Titanium still scratches [basicappleguy.com]. If you look for pictures of scratched titanium macs, you can find those too. I don't think Mohs can be used that way with metals, since metals are so malleable.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            The Mohs scale just measues what materials can sctrach each other. It's what you want for this question.

            However, the GP seems to have forgotten that steel can be hardened, which pretty easily makes it harder than titanium. Just about any rock, including the sand and grit that's probably in your pocket, is also going to be harder.

            Anodized titanium, particularly under the right conditions, can be a lot more scratch resistant though, because it has a thick layer of much harder oxide on the surface.

        • that is not true, Titanium marks easily but because of the oxidation that superficial damage will soon become less obvious.
          Titanium grade 2 watches are made from pure titanium. Lovely to wear but utter scratch magnets
          Titanium grade 5 is a much more scratch resistant alloy.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cgwprs ( 7969202 )
      No user swappable battery or physical switches for Camera or microphone. Made to fail and made to spy.

    • It's kind of weird to claim it's all marketing and not, you know, respond to what their marketing says. From what I can tell, they literally only make one claim about it:

      "Titanium has one of the best strengthtoweight ratios of any metal, making these our lightest Pro models ever. You’ll notice the difference the moment you pick one up."

      Is that not true?

      The main complaints I can see is that its cost isn't worth shaving off a tiny bit of weight, but it isn't all marketing, it's still just fact that no o

  • Action button (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dan Posluns ( 794424 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @04:06PM (#63842598) Homepage

    It would be great if they could move that action button to the middle-bottom of the display, around where my thumb naturally gets positioned. Then I could use it for things like quickly exiting the current app to the home screen, fast switching between apps, etc.

  • Both phones, of course, have a USB-C port on the bottom rather than the old Lightning port. But in the Pro’s case, it could be for more than charging: Apple says the 15 Pro is the first phone with 10Gbps transfer speeds, which will make getting photos and videos (or large files of any kind) off your phone vastly easier.

    But I thought Lightning was just superior and that being mandated to use USB-C was a shitty evil thing for the EU to do to poor Apple who is only trying to include the best solutions for their customers?

    Are the Apple Fanboys gonna come in here and admit they were massively wrong now, or are they just going to ignore all the stupidity they've been hosing out for the last few weeks and start gaslighting everyone like this was the master plan all along and everyone that thought otherwise is an idiot?

  • Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, actually cares about high-end gaming graphics on their phone.

    • bla bla bla, Apple Arcade, bla bla bla bla bla bla.

      • The top ten Apple Arcade games at this moment when I check the app store:
        1. Hello Kitty Island Adventure
        2. Solitaire
        3. Retro Bowl+
        4. NBA 2K23 Arcade Edition
        5. Bloons TD 6+
        6. Snake.io
        7. Sneaky Sasquatch
        8. Angry Birds Reloaded
        9. Stardew Valley+
        10. Sudoku

        The only one of those that makes even a feint at console-style 3D graphics is NBA 2K23, and its name even outright states that it's an "Arcade Edition". The rest all have highly stylized artwork, some more "2.5D", some with the kind of simplified 3D you'd see

    • Apple uses the same GPU tech in the chips for their laptops and desktops. Macs aren't exactly known for being gaming powerhouses, but being able to play mainstream titles casually is certainly welcome. Phones getting it for "free" is welcome to for anyone who might care, even if that's not most users.

    • Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, actually cares about high-end gaming graphics on their phone.

      Sure we do - that high-end GPU makes a phone a great hand warmer in the middle of a Canadian winter.

  • Titanium yes, leather no? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @04:28PM (#63842742)

    Who let marketing loose? Apple says no more leather because why would we want to use all the parts of the animal we just ate?

    But they start using titanium? It's one of the most environmentally unfriendly materials available.

    1) Take ilmenite ore and boil in sulfuric acid until breaks down leaving you iron in solution and titanium dioxide.
    2) Filter and dry the TiO2 then put it into a reactor. Heat to red heat, then add chlorine gas.
    3)The reaction is endothermic so ever so often you have to turn off the chlorine and reheat the reactor and remaining TiO2.
    4) Now you have titanium tetrachloride in a vapor and you can run that through a distillation column to clean it up.
    5) The TiCl4 is now put into a closed container informally called the "the bomb" for reasons that will become obvious.
    6) Now you add your choice of metallic sodium or metallic calcium, close up the bomb and light it.
    7) The resulting reaction is highly exothermic and after the vessel is done bouncing around you let it cool completely.
    8) Open the vessel up and you have salt and titanium metal in sponge form. That gets lightly crushed and the salt washed away.
    9) Take the Ti sponge and put it into either a vacuum induction furnace or an argon blanketed induction furnace. Melt it down, add alloying elements if any, and cast it under argon and now you have a useful piece of metal.

    One other note, titanium is hard to ignite, but if you do set it on fire you are not putting it out. I've seen the results of two titanium fires and it was spectacular. The result of the last titanium fire was than the company using titanium stopped using it. They went to zirconium ball is the valves (even harder to set on fire) and Ferallium 255 in the shafts. That corroded away, but in a slow and peaceful manner.

    I don't know what Apple was thinking.

    • It's all marketing. Leather costs go up and you don't want to pay the additional premium or your BoM has gone up due to other parts and you need to cut costs somewhere else? Dump it as an option and find an excuse as to why it's a good thing. If people care they can buy a third party strap. Otherwise they can feel great about their carbon neutral smart watch as they sip on their gin and tonic while flying first class across country.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )
        I solved the carbon neutral problem years ago with an automatic watch and doing the extra weight lifting involved with lifting my phone out of my pocket. Note also that Apple's margins are so large that cost doesn't significantly factor into the equation.

    • I don't know what Apple was thinking.

      They hadn't redesigned the body of the phone in awhile and clearly had to do something so that the latest, most expensive models would be immediately identifiable as such for the conspicuous consumption crowd.

      Car companies do exactly the same thing.

    • Numbers and context (Score:5, Informative)

      by nickovs ( 115935 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @06:52PM (#63843226)

      These days most industrial titanium production is done with the Kroll process [wikipedia.org], where TiCl4 (obtained as above) is reacted with liquid magnesium in an inert atmosphere, and the resulting magnesium chloride drawn off in liquid form. The bulk of the energy used in the whole process is consumed converting the resulting MgCl2 back into magnesium and chlorine. Current estimates of the end-to-end energy consumption of this process that I could find online suggest between 295 to 420 MJ/Kg. This compares pretty dreadfully to the numbers for the Bayer process [wikipedia.org] for extracting aluminium from bauxite, which Wikipedia puts at between 7 and 21 MJ/Kg. So per unit mass, titanium is 20 or 30 times worse than aluminium.

      Having said all that, if you look past the marketing headline at what Apple actually announced, you will see that the iPhone 15 Pro isn't made from titanium. It has an aluminium chassis with a titanium band around the outside for strength. From their press release:

      Using an industry-first thermo-mechanical process, the titanium bands encase a new substructure made from 100 percent recycled aluminum, bonding these two metals with incredible strength through solid-state diffusion.

      I suspect that the total mass of titanium in the device is pretty small, but provides useful strength. Coupled with using recycled metal for the aluminium, it might even have a lower carbon footprint than previous models.

    • Who let marketing loose? Apple says no more leather because why would we want to use all the parts of the animal we just ate?

      But they start using titanium? It's one of the most environmentally unfriendly materials available.

      [...]

      I don't know what Apple was thinking.

      Titanium is lighter than the Steel frame it is replacing, and has a marketing "cachet"/allure that is befiting of a luxury product like an iPhone. What you say is 100% true, but then again, I guess people buying iPhones think: If it is good enough for artificial Hips and the SRS-71, it must be ideal for my iPhone...

      PS: android user, Blackberry KeyOne to be specific. But Mac user, about to migrate back to Windows

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      And also, a Ti body must absorb most of the signal coming from the antenna which is *inside* the body... So you need a much stronger signal, meaning shorter battery life. I wonder how that can even work. If the body itself is the antenna, then the signal must be muddied by the width of the body.
  • So other than 'the button' there is nothing exciting about the new phone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      There hasn't been a good iPhone since the 6S and there hasn't been a good iOS since 5.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by torkus ( 1133985 )

      'the button'

      Wait, did they add a home button back? With fingerprint... ...
      Got my hopes up there for a second. That was mean! :)

  • I'm not masochistic enough to watch the keynote - Tim Cook has the personality of a dead fish, and there haven't been any exciting products in years. But did they replace the real buttons with haptic "buttons", as was rumored?

    • Who gives a shit? I legitimately can not remember the last time I used my iPhone to transfer data to or from a computer using a Lightning cord. Who cares? Maybe like 15 people?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by torkus ( 1133985 )

        Who gives a shit? I legitimately can not remember the last time I used my iPhone to transfer data to or from a computer using a Lightning cord. Who cares? Maybe like 15 people?

        Same here because Apple makes that process as absolutely painful as they possibly can.

        With my android phone however, I do this somewhat regularly as it's fast, easy, and you get pictures with usable file names via a straight file copy. Oh, and I can easily put stuff onto my phone if i'm traveling and want to bring some movies with me.

        Just because Apple broke it doesn't mean the use case isn't there.

        • As long as I am on a cellular network, the photos I took on my phone are already on my computer when I turn it on. I can't think of a single use case where I would need to transfer data from my phone at 10gbps.
    • FALSEHOOD!

      (if I may copy your style).
      The article is about the 15 Pro/Pro Max so the supported transfer speed is 10Gb/s, not 480Mb/s as you suggest.
  • it was the most "pro" Macbook ever! ...at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] My lap area's burn marks have healed but the memories survive. $7500 in 2001 dollars! When the US median home price was $174,100!

  • That's it??
    No 1TB option? Obviously no removable storage because apparently that too complicated or whatever..

    • That's it??

      No 1TB option? Obviously no removable storage because apparently that too complicated or whatever..

      Not sure what you're referring to...

      I just went and looked and on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, there is an option for a 1 TB storage phone.

  • Woah, hold on! Newest phone is the most powerful? (Score:4, Funny)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @11:38AM (#63845038)
    WOW! Who would have thought that the newest top-of-the-line phone would also be the most powerful they've made since the last one? I'm absolutely shocked by this. Apple must be on some kind of incredible winning streak if each new generation of device manages to be faster than the one before. The oddity of that streak must be significant given how the marketing is touting it.

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