My IPhone 15 Pro Is Finally Getting the Visual Intelligence Upgrade It Deserves
When Apple announced the iPhone 16E yesterday, it also confirmed that the new budget phone will feature Visual Intelligence from Apple Intelligence, marking the first time the AI trick will be available on a phone without a Camera Control button. While other phones in the iPhone 16 series use camera control buttons to access visual intelligence, the iPhone 16E may instead map it to an action button—a simple change that begs the question: why shouldn’t the iPhone 15 Pro do the same?
Personally, as an iPhone 15 Pro owner, I’ve been asking this question for months now because I’ve long suspected that my phone’s internals are definitely capable of this – it can run every other Apple Intelligence feature without issue. Instead, it felt like Apple was arbitrarily holding back the feature because it wanted to tie it to a specific button press that I didn’t have. Well, with the iPhone 16E using an action button workaround, it looks like Apple is finally listening. Apple representatives have confirmed that Visual Intelligence will come to the iPhone 15 Pro using the same strategy.
Speaking to Daring Fireball ‘s Jeff Gruber, an Apple spokesperson said that the iPhone 15 Pro will indeed gain visual intelligence “in a future software update” and that users will be able to map it to an action button. Sweet excuse.
There’s no word yet on when exactly this software update will come out, and frankly, I’m not sure if I’ll be using Visual Intelligence much, but it’s encouraging to see that my phone’s software is no longer held back by an arbitrary desire to ensure hardware integrity.
For the uninitiated, Visual Intelligence brings artificial intelligence to your iPhone’s camera. You could, for example, point your camera at a menu in a foreign language to get a translation, or point it at a book to get a summary of what’s on the page, or point it at a dog to try to find out what breed it is. It can also display information about businesses just by looking at their storefront or sign (US only), and works with Google and ChatGPT for advanced searches. In other words, it’s similar to Google Lens , but puts artificial intelligence first and is built into your operating system. Again, I wasn’t allowed to play with it much, but at least now I have the option.