Is the brand-new 15-inch iPhone Pro a portable DSLR?

 I went out and got my first DSLR and a 15-pound video camera when my son was born many, many years ago. Like the majority of parents, they believe it is important to document their children's development through photographs.

I had only ever traveled with a modest, budget-friendly mainstream digital camera up until that point. However, having a child made me upgrade to my first DSLR.

However, I also longed for the power of a DSLR in a smartphone, and only recently have smartphone cameras become more DSLR-like. They now provide enhanced imaging, more innovative controls and new computational software that allows people to take great photos without carrying a bulky and heavy DSLR around under most circumstances.

But as soon as camera phones became available, I largely abandoned my DSLR in favor of using the camera on my smartphone, which was always close at hand and allowed me to capture whatever photo I needed.

But I also yearned for a smartphone with the capabilities of a DSLR, and only recently have smartphone cameras begun to resemble DSLRs. They now offer improved imagery, more creative options, and new computational software that enable people to take amazing pictures without typically carrying a big, hefty DSLR about.

Apple made it abundantly apparent during this week's unveiling of the new iPhone 15 Pro that it has the best camera phone they have ever produced, and that, without explicitly saying so, its features are on par with many popular DSLR cameras of the present day.

The new A17 Pro CPU from Apple, which is twice as fast as the A15 chip in the iPhone 14 Pro, was unveiled first. There are 19 billion transistors on the 3nm A17 Pro chip. With a 16-core neural engine and a new CPU core with 4 high-efficiency cores, it can process 35 trillion operations per second.

Higher-resolution photos are produced by Apple's new 6-core GPU using a 48-megapixel, 7-lens camera. With computational photography, this processing power produces the greatest camera images and videos of any smartphone currently available. Complex applications, such as camera computing tasks, can be executed on the new GPU. For instance, the GPU is extensively used in on-device computational photography. Portrait mode and Night mode both benefit from it. The GPU represents the biggest redesign of an Apple GPU to date.

I had the opportunity to compare Apple's shots to those of other top-tier smartphones with extremely high-resolution cameras, and it was evident that Apple's pictures were clearer, had more accurate lighting, and had better color saturation. The most recent pictures I viewed were as accurate representations of the subject or setting as possible given that they were taken in the moment.

Apple also unveiled a two-camera spatial imaging technology that enables users to record their vision in 3D. There are two reasons why this functionality is important. It is the first smartphone camera using spatial imaging, to start. The real impact will be felt when those visuals are seen on Apple's upcoming Vision Pro headset, which goes on sale early in 2019.

Apple has made a huge stride with this new feature. Apple has numerous spatial cameras on the headset itself, as it showed during the Vision Pro's introduction in June 2023. That would make it possible for someone wearing the headset to record what they see in real-time and replay it whenever they choose. This means that a spatial video of your child's birthday party might be recorded and replayed in the future such that it appears as though you are seeing it as it happened years ago.

But now that the iPhone 15 Pro can capture spatial photographs and videos, Apple is constructing the library of content that will be compatible with the Vision Pro when it is released the following year. That is a significant step that can increase demand for the Vision Pro in 2024.

Although the more potent cameras and processors underlying them are expected to rival any smartphone camera system now in use, these chips allow the iPhone 15 Pros to be used for a brand-new application.

The ability to perform ray tracing, a crucial technique for realistic mobile video games, is made feasible by the new GPU.

The new iPhone 15 Pro will now be able to run console games thanks to this upgraded GPU. Apple announced that the iPhone 15 Pro will soon support console titles like Capcom's Resident Evil 4 and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed. Other console game developers will also soon offer this level of realistic console gameplay on the new iPhone, according to Apple.