Year later - iPhone 15 Pro and Apple Watch Ultra 2

Last Friday people were picking up their new iPhones and Watches and I wasn’t one of them (yet?) so I decided to write my thoughts on my (still) current iPhone 15 Pro and Apple Watch Ultra 2 which I got last year. How have they served me? What’s great? Good? Bad? Ugly?

• Apple Watch Ultra 2 after a year - glorious!
• iPhone 15 Pro after a year - good enough!
  • Great things: size, screen and action button
  • Good at photos and performance
  • Bad at battery life and over-heating…
• Common feature of both devices - Action button!
• Overall - I’m keeping my devices for now!

Apple Watch Ultra 2 after a year - glorious!

To my surprise Apple Watch Ultra 2 is still the top of the line Ultra watch! Apple hasn’t upgraded it but instead they introduced a black “Batman” color. Yeah, the new color is sick but not cool enough to tempt me. Now, they did upgrade the Watch 10, but instead of a major redesign they slimmed it a little, made the screen bigger (as big as the Ultra on the 46mm size) and added temperature sensor which I already have.

For this reason people on the Internet say that there are only 3 differences now between the regular watch and the Ultra:

1. Bigger battery life (twice on the Ultra)
2. Action button
3. Brighter screen (2K vs 3K nits)

The thing is, these 3 differences are the ones I actually care about as I outlined in my initial Ultra 2 review:

1. Bigger battery on the Ultra means I never worry about battery life and it lasts for 2 days with trainings in between… and after a year of intensive usage (sleeping with it, trainings, all that jazz…) I still have 99% of capacity of the original battery. It might be because I hardly ever charge it to 100%, I just top it up during the day to around 80% when I’m showering or on some evenings when I’m watching a tv series in bed. Having such an amazing battery life on the watch is glorious.
2. Action button on both the Watch and the iPhone has been amazing for me. Check out my Action button Shortcut, or my WatchNote Shortcut or my whole WatchNotes note-taking set up. I wouldn’t want to have a watch without this button.
3. Yes, the new watch is 40% brighter in some angles, but the peak 3K nits brightness has been crucial for me as I live in a place with lots of sunlight ☀️

To sum it up, I’m still extremely happy with the Ultra 2 and can’t recommend it enough. It’s safe to say I’m not changing it anytime soon.

iPhone 15 Pro after a year - good enough!

My iPhone 15 Pro is no longer the top-of-the line iPhone because the new 16 and 16 Pro models are in town. However, it’s still eligible for Apple Intelligence when/if it eventually ships.

Unlike the Ultra 2 watch, the iPhone 15 Pro is not as much of a slam dunk of a device. So let’s talk about the great things about it, the good stuff and the bad:

Great things: size, screen and action button

• Smaller form factor than 14 Pro and 16 Pro - it’s both smaller in dimensions and in weight. Together with Pitaka carbon fiber case it’s still as light as the ceaseless iPhone 16 Pro. This makes the iPhone 15 Pro so handy for me - it’s not that much bigger or bulkier than iPhone 13 mini and it’s a true “PRO” phone. I can carry it in loose short pants and I hardly feel I have a Pro phone in my pocket.
• Bright screen - I’ve come to this phone from having iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Mini and they both had just 1K nits brightness and from 14 on, all Pro phones have 2K peak nits brightness outdoors and it has made a difference. My daughter now uses my Mini as her phone and when I compare her screen and mine it’s like night and day. And yes, I do appreciate the ProMotion 120Hz screen. I love to have it back.
• Action button - ‘nuff said, the Action button is the killer feature. I use it a lot and I love it. In fact I’m gonna introduce an updated version of both my Clipboard and Action Shortcuts in the future when I’m fully upgraded to the iOS18. I use this button every day and would want a phone without it. That’s why I think it was smart of Apple to be giving this button to all the phones in the 16 line up.

Good at photos and performance

• Performance is really good - nothing to complain here, it’s a great former top-of-the line phone. Actually the Geekbench score as compared to my previous iPhone 13 Pro is 40% more and the new 16 Pro is another 20%. That’s great, but not enough to say it’s sluggish. In fact, my wife is still rocking her 13 Pro Max and for her it’s still a great iPhone.
• Photos are good, too! - I do feel a little jealous about the fact that the new 16 Pro gets a 5X telephoto. Other than that, the three lenses on the iPhone 15 Pro are producing great results… and the most important camera - selfie lens - got an update from 14 Pro (ƒ/2.2) to 15 Pro (ƒ/1.9) and it’s the same on the 16 Pro. Compared to my Mini, I like that I have macro photography back. Can’t tell how many times I had to take a very close up photo of something and it helped!

Bad at battery life and over-heating…

• Battery life still sucks - yeah, it’s still nominally better than the Mini, but not much. I use the iPhone a lot and in the evening I need to top it up as it goes below 30% consistently. After almost a year battery health is at 91% and has 345 cycles. Unlike the watch Ultra 2 where I’m not thinking about the battery at all, with the iPhone I have to be thinking about it much. It’s good I have MagSafe pucks all over house and in the cars, but still…
• Overheating - one of the contributors to that sucky battery might be the tendency of the phone to overheat. It still has that and I’m not running any particular apps that should cause that. My main app is Nozbe and sometimes some social apps or CapCut when recording videos but other than that, it should be cool. And very often it’s not. I heard that the 16 series is better cooled. We’ll see.

Common feature of both devices - Action button!

As mentioned above, the Action button is the single best productivity focused feature I got on both of these devices and designing Shortcuts for it is lots of fun. Soon on this blog I’ll post updates to some of them, so stay tuned!

Overall - I’m keeping my devices for now!

The iPhone 15 Pro is still the smallest and lightest Pro phone in years. The only three things that would entice me to upgrade would be:

• the new Camera Control “don’t call it button”
• the 5X telephoto
• …and better heat handling.

What I don’t like about the 16 Pro is that it’s bigger and heavier, so I’m OK with not getting the latest features and I’m (im)patiently waiting for any of the Apple Intelligence functionality, but as I live in Europe, I’m not sure I’m ever getting it over here as Apple really doesn’t want to comply with the Digital Markets Act.

Last year I made a good decision to upgrade both the iPhone and the watch and that’s why I can keep them for another year or more and I’m not feeling much FOMO when seeing all the people unboxing their latest iPhones.