Apple said during its special event this week that the iPhone 15 Pro will offer “the fastest performance of any smartphone currently on the market” and will support hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
In an interview with IGN, Jeremy Sandmel, Apple’s Senior Director of GPU Software, elaborated on the device’s capabilities: “The iPhone can connect to these 4K displays, and it can drive them externally doing whatever you do on the phone, including gaming to these other displays.”
“The building blocks are there. We can enable applications to enable those experiences, and then the developer’s job is, of course, to try to take those tools, piece them together and build an experience for you, the gamer,” said Tim Millet, Apple’s VP of Platform Architecture.
Addressing concerns about potential overheating, Kaiann Drance, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide iPhone Product Marketing, stated: “Certainly, this is part of the benefit of us designing for a specific iPhone model. So at a system level, we’re able to work across teams to understand how the performance that we’re enabling, how it’s going to manifest in the actual gameplay.”
The device will also feature native versions of AAA games like Resident Evil Village and Assassin’s Creed Mirage. These are not simplified versions but fully-featured games optimized for the iPhone 15 Pro.
When asked about the device’s comparison to other gaming consoles, Drance said, “It is like everything you love and depend on, your device, your phototaking, your memory capturing, and now it’s a powerhouse game console, but one that is in your pocket that you can take anywhere.”
Jeremy Sandmel summed up the device’s gaming potential: “It’s going to be the best game console.”
The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro are slated for release on September 22, 2023.
