Apple is in the strange position of having to slowly improve a product while also trying to reinvent it.
Some say their success requires them making small, evolutionary steps seem revolutionary. I don’t quite agree with that.
As iPhones become better and better over the years, small steps eventually bring tip-over points, when technology starts to enable things that we couldn’t imagine years before. These developments enable not mere steps, but leaps forward: the iPhone X’s all-screen form factor and Face ID; iPhone 7’s Portrait mode; last year’s Dynamic Island and 48 megapixel main camera.
So here’s iPhone 15 Pro Max. This year brings a leap in materials and silicon, but marks an evolutionary photography step. Or does it?
I have to get this out of the way: I find physical camera design important. It seems superficial, but camera design has been a playground and muse for artists and designers through the history of photography. There’s nothing more magical to design than a box that traps light and converts it to creativity.
Few companies appreciate this, but Apple certainly did this year. The new Pro line depart from jewel-like appearance of last year. Gone are the reflective, shiny polished stainless steel rails, replaced with an almost imperceptible brushed finish titanium frame that feels fantastic and grippy thanks to its soft finish. The rounded edges make it comfortable in the hand and contoured to your fingers. It might be an illusion, but even the clearance and contour of the buttons make the entire thing feel more tactile.
For the first time, I actually shot the new iPhone on the old one. This product shot was captured with the iPhone 14 Pro.
I chose the iPhone 15 Pro Max this year, as its optical zoom lens extends to 5× the default camera, or a 120mm focal length equivalent . Its smaller, non-Max sibling maintains its excellent 3× lens.
My previous Large iPhone Experiences— especially iPhone 12 Pro Max— were enough to make me prefer the smaller screen sizes for every subsequent release. Even my standard-sized iPhone 14 Pro felt borderline too large and heavy.
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I went into the 15 Pro Max expecting a little discomfort with a giant slab of glass and metal in my hand, but to my surprise, it felt manageable. That titanium frame and rounder edges really make a difference. If next year’s standard size models offer same telephoto lens, I’m not sure if I’ll downsize. It’s that comfortable.
Tactile feedback improves camera usability, and there’s a reason that dedicated cameras still have physical buttons: it’s hard to make tapping glass feel satisfying. This year we gained a button, which we’ll dive into later.
Ultra Wide
We’ll kick off this review looking at the lens that has come standard on every iPhone for the last four years: the ultra wide. Its sensor and lens are unchanged, according to Apple — with the notable exception of the coatings on the lenses, which means fewer flares and reflections when shooting into light sources. Additionally, the ultra wide camera benefits from better processing.
Its field of view remains so incredibly wide that if you don’t watch yourself, your body can accidentally end up in your frame. This is a solid, sharp lens that’s always fun, because there’s almost no framing involved.
I noted very clear improvements in its handling of very bright light: while the occasional ghost can glint around the viewfinder, it happens a lot less often. In the dark it does fine, but in daylight, it does great. Shots are incredibly detailed and sharp, and the macro mode is astonishingly close focusing.
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One thing that I’d love in a future iPhone: an extra ‘lens’ in between this hyper-ultra wide and the regular camera, offering me a 16/18mm equivalent field of view. It would help keep subjects framed with a bit less distortion near the edges and fewer accidental finger photos. Hopefully this can be achieved similar to 2× mode, using a higher-resolution sensor that creates a virtual lens.
Main
Last year, I waxed poetic about the main (or ‘wide’) camera on iPhone 14 Pro — taking it through Bhutan by motorcycle and Tokyo by foot. Without hyperbole, it was easily the most dramatic shift for my personal photographic process. Not only did the iPhone suddenly take 48 megapixel photos — the camera itself began to render in a way that I could only ineffectively describe as ‘real-camera-like’: I really got shots that were great. Not ‘great for a phone’ — genuinely great photos.
This year’s main sensor and lens combo feels just like one on the iPhone 14 Pro. Zero complaints. It’s a great camera.
Apple’s touting some serious improvements on this camera as a result of an improved imaging pipeline. While not mentioned explicitly during the event, the iPhone camera now combines a 48 megapixel high-resolution frame with a 12 megapixel frame to create a highly detailed, high-resolution-but-manageable 24 MP shot by default.
This is going to be a huge jump for most users, which have previously shot 12 MP shots (even on iPhone 14 Pro, which always shot 12 MP images unless set to ProRAW 48) and it makes absolutely perfect sense.
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48 megapixels are far too much for most images, take up a ton of space and are slower to capture. I think I can state without exaggeration that it’ll be a huge upgrade—potentially one of the biggest ever— for the average iPhone user, on par with the introduction of Night mode.
Speaking of Night mode: in some modes, the camera app will output lower resolution images where needed. Night mode, for instance, combines pixels for higher light sensitivity on-sensor and only gets you 12 MP, no matter the capture format. I found it a solid tradeoff in my usage.
Unfortunately, I can’t personally shoot in 24MP, because it isn’t available when shooting ProRAW. Your choices are only 12MP or 48MP. It’s a real bummer because 48MP ProRAW files get absolutely massive.
Even if you’re fine shooting HEICs, native 24MP capture is sadly not available to third-party apps like Halide. Some apps now take 48MP photos and then downscale to 24MP, for the slowest possible experience with none of the processing benefits. We’re here just hoping Apple will roll out genuine 24MP support in an update.
As for the files as they are today, I noticed colors are ever so slightly more pleasant. Maybe it’s software—we’ll dig into that later—but it’s always possible this is due to lens coating changes this year.
Last year’s iPhone pro added an ‘optical’ 50mm (2×) lens, and this year adds 28mm and 35mm equivalents. You can disable or enable any of these, even making, say, the 35mm (1.5×) ‘lens’ your only main camera, comfortably sitting between the extremes of 12 (0.5×) and 120mm (5×).
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Last year’s virtual lens was, more or less, a straightforward crop of the higher resolution sensor. Apple says that these new modes use a special capture pipeline to get more detail out of the sensor.
I have to say, I love this approach. It’s a great way to add depth and control to the camera. For most users, it’s not more than a stop along their zoom wheel, but for those that care it is a discrete lens. I can’t help but escape the feeling that it’s still kind of a digital zoom. The quality is certainly there, but there’s more freedom in shooting at 24mm and cropping afterwards.
Maybe they were on to something with this being the field of view of the main camera after all.
Revisiting the Virtual Telephoto
I suppose I should really be reviewing both the main camera’s ‘optical’ 2× lens here, and the new telephoto.
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For everyday use, the 2× shines, but there are times where you’ll find that it is indeed an extra-crispy, zoomed version of the main camera. Sometimes the depth of field isn’t quite as sharp as you’d expect from a dedicated lens. But as a device with only 3 real lenses, the virtual 2× ‘lens’ holds up surprisingly well:
I am not sure if the 15 Pro is any better, but one year later, it’s clear that the 48 megapixel sensor has enough resolution headroom to make these kind of virtual lenses work quite well. I was a skeptic in last year’s review, and this year I’m a cautious believer.
And now for the main attraction…
The 5× Telephoto
I will not quit until I have shown you an inordinate amount of comparisons between the main camera and its new, long 5× telephoto counterpart. Not because it’s just fun to see how much it zooms, but also to show you how differently you have to look at the world around you.
A crop of the 5× image above. Even when cropped, the lens retains lots of detail and sharpness in decent light.
Previously, you could see a shot that you wanted to capture because it was part of what you were seeing. Now, you have to look for a detail and then capture it. It’s a very different way of composing shots, and kind of tricky.
If it helps, I have overlaid our ‘director’s viewfinder’ framelines on a regular image here so you can see just how much tighter of a shot you are lining up.
The frame of a 5× zoom can take some getting used to…
… but the sharpness is easy to warm up to. A purely ‘digital’ zoom on the right is still retaining impressive detail at 48MP in the dark, but the sharpness of the shot left showcases just how much more reach this lens brings to iPhone.
This has a funny psychological effect: once I shoot at 5× for a while, the Main lens feels… wider somehow. I’ve had to double-check a few times if I am not accidentally shooting at 0.5×. I suspect that this is what led to Apple adding the 28- and 35mm ‘lenses’ to the camera — once you are going between such extreme ranges, the change is just a bit jarring.
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Is it a great lens?
It is, hands down, the sharpest telephoto lens Apple has ever shipped. “Of course!”, you could argue. “Why wouldn’t it be? It’s 2023 and technology gets better. Why wouldn’t it be sharper than the last one?”
Well, it’s a long lens. It is truly remarkable how nicely this new lens captures detail despite that length.
The challenge here is serious: the longer the lens, the harder it is to keep it steady from your shaky, pathetically unstable human hands. Most people do not take photos the way a tripod does — which means the iPhone camera has to do several things:
Take a stream of photos from the telephoto lens and stabilize them in space to offer a less shaky viewfinder;
Take said stream of photos and manage to capture enough photos from them for their multi-frame Smart HDR process despite the large amount of shake potentially misaligning them;
Take photos preferably with a higher shutter speed than 1/focal length, which is 1/120th of a second without too much noise despite using a significantly smaller sensor than the main camera.
It does all that splendidly.
It’s very fun to play with the first point. Simply open the camera app and move around at telephoto zoom range to see how there is some ‘inertia’ to the movement. The heavier, slower movement of the viewfinder is a result of keeping that image somewhat stable instead of a trembling mess that is your minuscule (or large) amount of hand shake magnified by ten.
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The more fun experiment, however, is taking a photo. For someone who has always loved taking photos at night, it was kind of mind blowing:
Getting a handheld shot, at night, without a tripod, or really too much effort on my part on a 120mm-equivalent lens is magic. There’s no other word for that, because there’s such complicated technology involved on a hardware and software level that it makes my head spin.
This is a cool thing, because whether or not you’re a photography nerd or an absolutely average iPhone user, the lens will impress. It’s just really neat.
That random shot out of an airplane window? You can count trees on a mountain now.
Out near a popular bridge? Take a closer look and count the rivets.
All in, it leaves one difficult photography problem that you have to solve that the stack of machine learning and three-axis optical image stabilizer cannot: framing.
Whether it’s an iPhone or DSLR, it’s tricky to take great photos at this focal length. You’re left with details, closeups and portraits — even the latter perhaps a bit too long. It’s worth returning to iPhone portraiture in another post, but suffice to say, this is a challenging focal length to get fantastic shots, despite its excellent execution.
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This is perhaps personal, but I’ll go back to what I said about the ultra wide camera: you essentially don’t have to think about framing with a field of view that wide. With the old, shorter telephoto lenses on iPhone, I enjoyed the creative challenge. I had to think a lot more: one has to be very intentional with what you frame, and how you capture it.
A 5× lens requires a lot more planning and thought. It feels at least twice as challenging.
While uncomfortable at first, it isn’t bad. If you stick through it, you can get much more original and interesting perspectives— ones we’ve never seen taken on iPhones.
Does It Really Have 7 Lenses?
It seems that a lot of people in the photography world are a bit hung up on the idea of claiming that this phone packs 7 lenses. For what it’s worth, if you rewatch the Apple Event, it seems nobody says that exactly. It’s phrased as being like having seven lenses.
Is it like having seven lenses? For me, I wouldn’t say so. I would not mind seven actual lenses, but I suspect most people would find that cumbersome and borderline insane. For most people, the iPhone 15 Pro feels like it has a bunch of extra lenses. It even managed to make me a pretty happy user of a virtual 2× lens.
For most intents and purposes, what Apple really succeeds in with this major camera update is to bring much-needed depth to the photographic experience for average users — not just pros.
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I found it pleasantly surprising that Apple chose to maintain real photographic verbiage and iconography throughout all this, too. Field of view is expressed as a focal length — 24mm, 28mm, 35mm and so on. F-stops are used for Portrait mode’s depth of field, even down to the icon of an ƒ.
This matters, because it helps expose and teach average users to photography’s essentials. It’d be easy to toss in a slider that goes from 1 to 100 for portrait blur.
Anyone can design an interface that just dumbs things down. Great interface design, on the other hand is easy to use — while helping you learn. Great interfaces make users smarter.
Becca Farsace of the Verge has an excellent video review of the iPhone camera in which she said it best when talking about the new virtual lenses: it’s accessible.
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Where Are You Coming From?
Just a quick check here: not many people should really be upgrading their phone every year. iPhones get excellent, long term software update support and can easily last you a few years. I tested the iPhone 15 Pro against my iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 14 Pro, and for each you’ve got a pretty nice set of upgrades:
Coming from iPhone 11 Pro:
Higher Resolution: The iPhone 15 Pro Max packs a 48-megapixel main camera which is a significant upgrade in resolution compared to the iPhone 11 Pro’s 12-megapixels.
Sensor-Shift Image Stabilization on the Telephoto lens: This feature, which stabilizes the sensor instead of the lens, helps in capturing sharper images and smoother videos, especially in low-light conditions.
Enhanced Zoom Capabilities: 3× or 5× optical zoom options vs 2×.
Photography Modes: Features such as Action mode, Macro mode, Cinematic mode, ProRAW photos, ProRes video, Night mode portraits, Photographic Styles and a whole lot more has been added.
Upgraded Front Camera with Autofocus: Improves the clarity and focus of selfies and video calls — a big one.
Much better Low-light performance: Night mode and sensor-shift stabilization are one thing, but with larger sensors and faster lenses the iPhone 15 Pro Max performs better in low-light conditions on all of its cameras.
Ultra Wide Upgrades: Very significant upgrades to the ultra wide camera in recent years enable it to shoot much sharper shots.
Next Generation Portrait Mode: Portrait mode is now automatic and does not require switching into a discrete mode anymore, with the Camera app capturing depth data when it detects a person, cat, or dog.
Coming from iPhone 12 mini:
Higher Resolution: The iPhone 15 Pro Max packs a 48-megapixel main camera which is a significant upgrade in resolution compared to the iPhone 12’s 12-megapixels.
Telephoto: Having a telephoto lens is one thing, but you’ll be upgrading to a 3× or 5× optical zoom. That’s a lot of reach.
Advanced Photography Modes: Including Action mode, Macro mode, Cinematic mode for video, ProRAW for photos, and ProRes video, among others.
Upgraded Front Camera with Autofocus: Improves the clarity and focus of selfies and video calls — a big one.
Much better Low-light performance: With larger sensors and better processing, plus faster lenses the iPhone 15 Pro Max performs better in low-light conditions on all of its cameras than the mini.
Next Generation Portrait Mode: Portrait mode is now automatic and does not require switching into a discrete mode anymore, with the Camera app capturing depth data when it detects a person, cat, or dog.
Coming from iPhone 14 Pro:
120mm 5x Telephoto Lens: The iPhone 15 Pro Max features a 5x 120mm telephoto lens, providing more reach and creative photography options.
Improved Night Mode: The Night mode feature has been enhanced for better low-light photography.
Next Generation Portrait Mode: Portrait mode is now automatic and does not require switching into a discrete mode anymore, with the Camera app capturing depth data when it detects a person, cat, or dog.
Lens Coatings: Updated lens coatings result in fewer lens flares when shooting into light sources.
Pro Video: Recording to external media and ProRes Log capture.
Action Button
You can’t write about iPhone 15 Pro hardware without diving into its other signature feature — and I am not talking about a new element on the periodic table.
The Action button is an interesting addition with some clear photography applications. Apple showcases opening the Camera app to snap a photo in its keynote, and I was excited about a potential new physical control for the camera. This could have a huge impact on the usability of the iPhone as a proper photo-taking device.
In practical use, the devil’s in the details. I didn’t find using the button to open the Camera — or Halide — particularly useful. Yes, it’s quick, but the button on the iPhone 15 Pro Max sits quite high up, making it less ergonomically feasible to quickly hold.
In the Camera app, the Action button also takes a photo. This is great, as a dedicated shutter button is wonderful to have, but it doesn’t do more than the volume buttons. There’s no half-press for focus before the shot and you cannot hold the button down for a burst of shots.
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I ended up really missing the regular old ringer switch behavior (this was not helped with iOS 17 having wonderful, non-disruptive new ringtones and sounds). As a result, I kept it on the default ‘Silent Mode’ setting for a while, until I discovered thanks to Steven Robles that the button can also show a list of options through the use of a Shortcut.
I grabbed his version and put together a personal Shortcut that shows a list when triggered:
This was getting somewhere. This small, personal Control Center let me toggle the most useful things very quickly.
I still think there’s a lot more potential for a dedicated button on an iPhone. Shortcuts unlock a lot of potential: some people have orientation-sensitive triggers, so your Action button can do different things depending on which way you hold your phone. There’s some limited ways you can add a single- and double-click functionality.
In Halide, we decided to really try to push it to its limit: with the use of Shortcuts, we can actually use the button for in-app triggers. Our latest update, which is out today, has an entire Action button menu:
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From there, we guide users to either set up our special ‘In App Trigger’ shortcut, which opens Halide and enables you to use the Action button while in the app to switch lenses, modes or more, or to set up the Action button the old fashioned way: with a single action or a custom menu as shown above.
This particular bit of clever engineering made me excited about the future of having a dedicated Action button on iPhone. Cameras are all about phyiscal controls. Delightfully tactile buttons and dials that live in fixed places, allowing you control in a way that can become reflexive — so the camera can become an extension of your own body.
We hope this update and further iterations on the Action button from Apple will start to bring that kind of flexibility and power to this newest tiny hardware addition. I’m excited that it’s only going to get better from here.
Processing and Process
One of the best things I have done to educate myself as a photography instructor and camera app developer is joining a Facebook group of novice iPhone photographers. In the last few years, I’ve watch many novices run into the same issue: distracting processing on the latest and greatest iPhones.
People in photos are blown out and seemingly over-processed, and telephoto shots reduced to a sloppy, smudgy mush. Some argue that Apple has gone too far in processing, to the extent that it makes images unrecognizable. Many Halide users reduce processing in Capture Settings, or just shoot native RAW to circumvent processing altogether.
But what’s really happening is that the iPhone has gotten better as rescuing photos. Back in the days of the iPhone 7, if I shot my subject backlit by the sun, the result would be unusable. At best, you’d see a silhouette. The iPhone can now take those once-unsalvageable and make them passable. Sometimes even good.
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A camera torture test: Coast redwood trees backlit on a sunny day. Deep shadows and sunlight highlights produce extreme dynamic range that only modern cameras can handle.
The tradeoff is that today’s novice photographers have lost the feedback loop we had back when we learned photography on big, dumb cameras. When a camera never fails, you can be fooled into thinking you’ve mastered photography.
Apple is in the position where they design a camera for everyone. I don’t mean all of us reading camera reviews on this blog. I don’t even mean all of us in this hemisphere, or country, or culture. I mean every person, of every age, on the planet. And if they get an unusable photo where other cameras give an overprocessed shot of a loved one, they will pick the camera that gives them something over nothing at all.
We’re photographers who make camera apps for other photographers. We want the freedom to take bad photos.
Regardless, this is the iPhone 15 Pro. Does the Pro in the name give us a bit more feedback? Will it let us make mistakes? Surprisingly, yes.
iPhone 15 Pro Max has significantly more feedback in its processing, in a form that I missed in the last iterations of Apple’s image processing pipeline. As I edited my photos, I was delighted to see… noise.
When it isn’t stylistic choice, noise indicates your camera lacked light. When noise gets stronger in an image, we understand that we were taking a literal shot in the dark.
On iPhone 15 Pro, ProRAW files contain a bit more noise. This is most pronounced on the telephoto lens, which tells you in no uncertain terms that it’s punching above its weight when light levels dip too low.³
This is a welcome change, as previously iPhone generations tried to hide this behind heavy noise reduction, resulting in that smudged, ‘watercolor’ effect. It seems odd to cheer on noise, but this is genuinely a huge improvement as fewer details are lost, and it might even help people take better photos.
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3 — I will have to admit that this is, at times, a difficult task to test. The new telephoto lens is engineered to collect a lot of light, and the larger sensor and optical image stabilization took sharp, handheld shots in conditions that seemed almost unbelievable to me. This takes a lot of work — from the image being stabilized for users in the camera to capturing a sharp image — and it was hardly mentioned in the event. Well done to the team that worked on that.
The Camera
Apple expends monumental efforts to make the iPhone camera feel natural. The vision is clear: “You should never know there are separate lenses, sensors and processing pipelines.” They strive for an uninterrupted whole, a utopian vision of a technology-enabled camera that just works.
Most of their work is invisible. At manufacturing, components are matched with microscopic measurements so their tolerances are aligned for better optical and color performance, ensuring fewer visual hiccups as the camera switches lenses transitioning through the zoom range. Once impossible feats are made possible with custom silicon and highly optimized pipelines that few companies could dream of matching. Only Apple can achieve this thanks to their integration of hardware and software.⁴
(It surprises me every year that Apple uses a design that reveals individual camera, when a big self-contained camera module could blend them all together, visually reflecting their philosophy so much more.)
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But every approach requires tradeoffs. It means the camera software has to swap out lenses — even in ProRAW mode. It will lead you to think that you’re using one lens when it is substituting another,⁵ because it thinks it’s for your own good.
I am not envious of the team designing Apple’s Camera app. It has to be one app that does everything, and with every new iPhone that adds even more capabilities, that camera app runs the risk of getting heavier and more complex. However, this year they managed to integrate the new 28mm and 35mm quite well.
With the portrait mode turning on automatically when it detects humans and pets, I could see the discreet ‘Portrait’ mode disappearing altogether. With spatial Photos and Videos just around the corner, it could make sense to just capture depth data all the time, regardless of subject.
4 — An example of this has been real-time Portrait mode. Long before Cinematic Mode, Apple managed to do a real-time preview of the Portrait effect blur in iPhone Camera’s viewfinder. Google’s computational photography powerhouse, the Pixel, only managed to apply the blurred background post-capture, after a few seconds of processing. Apple first applied this blur in realtime using a highly optimized process of computing depth with the parallax of two camera in iPhone 7 Plus, but has started using a real-time machine learning network that segments subjects and generates depth from a single image along with focus pixel data that works even on single camera iPhones since iPhone XR. This is insanely impressive stuff, and solidly in the realm of things only Apple can do thanks to its super-tight integration between software and hardware.
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5 — fun test: cover the telephoto lens on your iPhone, then point the camera at stuff close to you. You’ll notice that once the minimum focus distance of the telephoto camera is exceeded, Apple Camera simply swaps in a cropped portion of the main camera, instead. I think this is clever, and reasonable, but perhaps not in a ProRAW capture mode where you want the camera to, well, let you get raw camera output.
Conclusion
The annual iPhone announcement feels like the Superbowl of tech — a huge event that everyone tends to have an opinion about. It’s exciting to have a quick hot take, and in the interest of a quick response, it’s easy to look at specifications and fact sheets and jump to conclusions. That would lead you to believe the iPhone 15 Pro Max offers little beyond its 120mm equivalent lens, but this is impossibly far from the truth.
For the every day user, iPhone 15 and 15 Pro probably offer one of the biggest camera upgrades in the history of the iPhone. Yet, people seemed to have missed this. How did that happen?
It is the details that tie all of Apple’s camera hardware and software improvements together. Most iPhone users took 12 megapixel photos, had a small-ish zoom range, and had to switch to a separate mode for portrait Photos.
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With iPhone 15 Pro Max’s default 24 megapixel resolution, added ‘lenses’ under the main camera lens, automatic depth capture for portraits, and that 5× lens, this release might not blow away on a spec sheet, but is massive for everyone who uses an iPhone to take photos.
Meanwhile, the pros get the Action button, a big step towards the phone itself becoming a dedicated camera. While I did not touch on it in this photography article, ProRes Log capture and external video recording is a big deal.
For photography, this was the year of reach and depth — and that’ll be up to us ‘pros’ to pour our own creativity into to appreciate.
Once again, Peacock has reshuffled its movie lineup. Many of the films that were around in October are gone in November. It is honestly kind of annoying because we prefer the streamers to have consistent lineups. Stability may not be Peacock’s strong suit, but it will gain another summer blockbuster this month with Twisters on November 15.
This month, we’re also throwing the spotlight on Peacock’s other recent arrivals, including Die Hard, Ted, and the 2005 remake of King Kong. For younger fans, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Harry Potter films are still around, too. You can find these flicks and more in our complete roundup of the best movies on Peacock below. Remember: some films are only available to Peacock subscribers on the two premium tiers.
Twistersdoes not have any major characters in common with the 1996 film that spawned the franchise, but it rode its flashy tornado special effects to summer box office gold in 2024. The story follows Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a woman whose dream to make tornadoes weaker goes horribly wrong and costs her the lives of most of her team and her boyfriend. Years later, Javi (Anthony Ramos) offers Kate a chance to earn some redemption by working alongside him on a research project.
Out in the field, Kate and Javi encounter a rival storm chaser, Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), who is a tornado social media influencer. Despite being initially repulsed by Tyler, Kate finds him to have deeper motivations than she suspected. But just as romantic sparks start to fly, both teams are endangered by a massive storm.
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Rotten Tomatoes: 75% Genre: Disaster Stars: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney Director: Lee Isaac Chung Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 122 minutes
It must be Peacock’s turn to have John McClane (Bruce Willis) over for the holidays. Willis established himself as a movie star in Die Hard, even though John was anything but a typical action hero. The only reason John came to Los Angeles was to reconcile with his wife, Holly Gennaro-McClane (Bonnie Bedelia), at the holiday party for her company at Nakatomi Plaza.
Before John knows it, the entire building has been seized by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his team of terrorists. With Holly among the hostages, John has to take on this group of killers by himself and alert the LAPD to what’s really happening inside the building. That would have been a lot easier if John still had his shoes, but he always finds a way to survive.
Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Genre: Action, Thriller Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman. William Atherton, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson Director: John McTiernan Rating: R Runtime: 132 minutes
Through a fluke or some kind of miracle, a teddy bear named Ted (Seth MacFarlane) came to life when John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) was a child. The title character ofTed is the biggest reason why John has never really grown up, despite the wishes of his long-term girlfriend, Lori Collins (Mila Kunis).
When Ted finally goes too far, Lori makes John kick him out of their apartment. John just can’t quit being Ted’s best friend, even when it derails his life and threatens to ruin his romance with Lori by driving her to John’s rival, Rex (Joel McHale).
Rotten Tomatoes: 69% Genre: Comedy Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Seth MacFarlane, Joel McHale, Giovanni Ribisi Director: Seth MacFarlane Rating: R Runtime: 106 minutes
Peter Jackson fulfilled his ambition to remake King Kong thanks to the success of the Lord of the Rings movies. Jackson wisely kept the time period in 1933, the same year the original film came out. Naomi Watts has a charming turn as Ann Darrow, a struggling actress who accepts a job with filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) and his expedition to Skull Island because she has no other prospects.
Ann and Carl’s screenwriter, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), fall in love during the trip, but they face the first real test of their relationship on Skull Island. Kong (Andy Serkis in a motion-captured performance) isn’t the only threat waiting for them there. And Carl is determined to capture it all on film, even if it kills them all.
Rotten Tomatoes: 84% Genre: Action, Adventure Stars: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Colin Hanks Director: Peter Jackson Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 167 minutes
It took a few decades, but Nintendo finally got a film that recaptured the spirit of the games that inspired it. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a massive success, both in theaters and on Netflix. Now that it’s back on Peacock, it’s bound to remain a perennial hit. The story mashes up several of the Nintendo games while introducing Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), a pair of ordinary plumbers from Brooklyn who find themselves transported to the Mushroom Kingdom.
Luigi is quickly captured by Bowser (Jack Black), a villain who wants to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom and marry its ruler, Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). But Peach isn’t feeling that romantic pairing, so she teams up with Mario and her subject, Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), to find new allies and rescue Luigi.
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Rotten Tomatoes: 59% Genre: Fantasy, Comedy Stars: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key Director: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic Rating: PG Runtime: 92 minutes
The Harry Potter movies are back on Peacock, and the third film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, is widely recognized as the best in the series. It’s the third year in Hogwarts for Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and this trio are growing up fast even as the danger around them grows more intense.
Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) is the titular prisoner who has escaped from Azkaban. Word among the wizards is Sirius betrayed Harry’s late parents and he intends to finish the job by killing Harry. Young Harry thinks he’s ready for a fight with Black, but he’s unaware that someone has been pulling the strings the entire time.
Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Genre: Fantasy Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon Director: Alfonso Cuarón Rating: PG Runtime: 131 minutes
Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho is an unusual ghost story, as a young fashion student, Eloise “Ellie” Turner (Thomasin McKenzie), somehow finds her dreaming hours to be filled with vivid visions of a woman named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who wanted to be a singer in the ’60s. Ellie is so enthralled by Sandie that she models herself after her and takes inspiration from her fashions.
However, Ellie’s visions take a darker turn when she sees Sandie’s lover, Jack (Matt Smith), apparently murder her in the past. Ellie becomes obsessed with finding Jack and avenging Sandie, even as reality breaks down around her. There’s more than one ghost, which may drive Ellie completely out of her mind.
Rotten Tomatoes: 75% Genre: Horror Stars: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Rita Tushingham, Michael Ajao Director: Edgar Wright Rating: R Runtime: 116 minutes
Coming off of his Oscar-nominated turn in Barbie, Ryan Gosling headlines The Fall Guy as Colt Seavers, a worn-down Hollywood stuntman who is ready to leave showbiz behind after suffering a severe injury. But he gets one last shot when his ex-girlfriend, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), needs his help on her directorial debut.
Jody doesn’t really want Colt around on her set, and more pressingly, her leading man, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), has gone missing. If Colt can’t track down Tom, Jody’s career as a director will be over before it begins. Yet there’s more to Tom’s disappearance than either Colt or Jody suspects. And it’s going to be a wild ride to get him back.
The Bikeriders raced through theaters like the law was on the trail of the titular motorcycle gang. That may not have been what Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy) intended when he formed The Vandals as a motorcycle club in the ’60s. Johnny assembles like-minded bikers including Benny (Austin Butler), who soon courts and marries Kathy (Jodie Comer).
Through the eyes of Kathy and photographer Danny Lyon (Mike Faist), we see the rise and fall of The Vandals. At times, Johnny’s creation threatens to spiral out of his control. And it’s going to take more than just words for Johnny to hold on to his authority over the gang.
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Rotten Tomatoes: 80% Genre: Drama Stars: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus Director: Jeff Nichols Rating: R Runtime: 116 minutes
Marry Me is based on an independent comic by Bobby Crosby that features Jennifer Lopez playing a very J.Lo-like pop star, Katalina “Kat” Valdez. With three failed marriages under her belt, Kat is ready to tie the knot again at one of her concerts to the latest love of her life, Bastian (Maluma). But when Kat discovers that Bastian was unfaithful before the ceremony on stage, she makes an impromptu decision to wed a man in the crowd who was holding a “Marry Me” sign.
The man in question is Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson), an unassuming teacher whose life is turned upside down when he accepts Kat’s offer to marry him. Rather than breaking off things quickly, they agree to stay together for a while. And without the glare of the media on them, Kat and Charlie start developing real feelings for each other, even if no one expects them to last.
Rotten Tomatoes: 61% Genre: Romance, Comedy Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Maluma, John Bradley, Chloe Coleman Director: Kat Coiro Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 112 minutes
Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled private detective, Philip Marlowe, isn’t exactly in vogue anymore. But the classics never truly go out of style. In the 1975 adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, Robert Mitchum steps into the role of Philip as he finds himself in the midst of two difficult cases that may be related.
In the first, a bank robber named Moose Malloy (Jack O’Halloran) hires Phillip to find his missing girlfriend, Velma (Charlotte Rampling). In the second case, Phillip is helpless to prevent the murder of his client, Lindsay Marriott (John O’Leary). Not even police intimidation can keep Phillip from finding answers and solving the mystery.
Rotten Tomatoes: 76% Genre: Mystery, Suspense Stars: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Anthony Zerbe Director: Dick Richards Rating: R Runtime: 95 minutes
The Google Pixel 9 is without a doubt one of this year’s best smartphones, and Amazon is offering a really good limited-time deal on it right now that you do not want to miss out on. Normally, the 256GB Google Pixel 9 would end up costing you $899. However, Amazon has it on sale right now for only $749, and that’s the lowest price we’ve ever seen this phone since it launched just a couple of months ago. This is also the all-time low price from Amazon according to price tracking from Camel Camel Camel.
While there are lots of things to love about the Pixel 9, one of its best features is the longer battery life. Compared to past Pixel devices like the Pixel 8, the Pixel 9 has noticeably longer battery life. Google says it will last for 24+ hours, and we found that to be more than true. With a decent amount of screen-on time. The Pixel 9 is also packed with Gemini AI integration. And that’s on top of the already available AI features from last year’s phones.
And of course, it has one of the best smartphone cameras available on the market. The Pixel 9 has a 6.3-inch Actua display and it comes unlocked which means you can use it on most US carriers. This includes AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Metro, Mint Mobile, Cricket, Google Fi, and many others.
While all of that stuff is nice, the best feature of the Pixel 9 is unquestionably its long update support. Google will support this device with OS version and security updates for seven whole years. So you can buy this phone in 2024, and it’ll get updates all the way until 2031. Which means you won’t have to upgrade for quite a long time if all you’re worried about is new software.
This time of year has a lot of merry and bright things to be excited about, but it can be stressful if you’re stumped on what to get your mom, dad, best friend, coworker or kids’ teacher as a holiday gift. Whether you enjoy or dread buying gifts for people, it’s safe to say we all want to give our loved ones things they will enjoy and appreciate. But there’s a lot of noise, junk and bad deals disguised as good deals to sift through as we get closer and closer to the holidays.
Allow us at Engadget to help you through it. Here, you’ll find all of our holiday gift guides collected in one place, so you can more easily find the best Christmas gifts you need this year. Are you looking for white elephant gift ideas? Are you struggling to come up with a good gift for the father figure in your life? Are you just looking for a good board game to pick up for your own family? We’ve got you covered with gift ideas for all of those scenarios and more. We’ll update this post as more of our gift guides hit the internet, so check back for even more gift ideas throughout the season.
Table of contents
Best white elephant gift ideas
According to legend, the King of Siam would give a white elephant to courtiers who had upset them. The recipient had no choice but to simply thank the king for such an opulent gift, knowing that they likely could not afford the upkeep for such an animal. It would inevitably lead them to financial ruin. This story is almost certainly untrue, but it has led to a modern holiday staple: the white elephant gift exchange. These gift ideas will not only get you a few chuckles, but will also make your recipient feel (slightly) burdened.
We could all use more time away from screens of all types and sizes, and board games are a fun way to do that and bond with friends and family. You can find plenty of unique sets out there now, from word puzzles to whodunnits to calming playthroughs that showcase the beauty of the little things in life. From games with giant monsters to those with haunted mansions, we’re sure at least one of our suggestions will be a hit with you and your loved ones.
A million new video games seem to come out every week, but for some of us, nothing beats the classics. If you know someone who is way into retro gaming but don’t feel like hunting through eBay and local shops for gear to add to their collection, we’re here to help. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite gift ideas for the nostalgic gamer in your life, from video upscalers for old consoles to retro-themed books and artwork.
When it comes to making a great cup at home, coffee nerds are constantly learning and love to try new things. Whether the person you’re shopping for is a newly indoctrinated pour over lover or obsessive over every brewing parameter, we’ve compiled a list of the best gear for coffee geeks that you can get this holiday season.
There are few things more rewarding than making good food for your friends and family. But after a while, it’s easy to get bored with the same tried and true recipes. And what better way to inject some fun into your favorite home chef’s routine than with a brand-new kitchen gadget? To help you find the right gift for the cook in your life, we’ve put together a list of our favorite kitchen gadgets across a wide range of prices and categories.
We’re all having a bit of a budget crunch this year, but the good news is that when it’s time to bestow presents on the young ones (or young at heart), you don’t have to break the bank. Our list of our favorite tech, science and design toys is stacked with items under $100, with plenty of reuse packed in so the fun can extend far beyond the holiday season.
In Engadget’s Slack rooms, our pets are high on the list of stuff we chat about — just behind work-adjacent tech stuff, insane current events, video games and food. We’ve bought plenty of high- and low-tech stuff to keep our furry friends fed, occupied, safe and happy and we’ve put together the best of what we tried here. Perhaps you’re shopping for your own very good boy or girl, or maybe you have a dutiful pet parent on your list — either way, the gadgets gathered here will make great gifts, according to the enthusiastic tail wags (or aloof meows) of our own fur babies.
You know that thing where, just after you’ve opened Instagram and become invested in whatever video was already loaded, a new video pops in and seemingly yeets the old video into the void, never to be seen again? That’s a thing of the past, according to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who says in an AMA from his Instagram Story yesterday that the app now waits for you to scroll to show you the new stuff.
That behavior — which Instagram apparently called “rug pull” internally — wasn’t just some weird bug. Mosseri says the app did it “because we were trying to load new content, and it was taking a while, so we showed you something that was already downloaded in the meantime, and it is generally good for engagement.”
But that’s “really annoying,” he acknowledges, “so we stopped doing it.”
Instagram has taken “a little bit of an engagement hit for this,” Mosseri concludes, saying it’s a much better experience for those of us using the app.
Viewing the Taurids may be affected by the illumination of the Moon, which could obscure some of the fainter meteors. The Moon will be in a waxing gibbous phase – going from half moon to full moon.
Plus, as we have seen recently, it is hard to see anything in the sky if there is a blanket of low cloud. However, there could be some timely changes in cloud amounts at the time of peak viewing.
A weather front crossing the UK on Sunday will bring a change in air mass. Even though an area of high pressure will build again, it may not contain as much cloud.
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It is possible that the clouds will part on Monday night and give us a better chance of seeing some spectacular meteor displays.
Keep across your local forecast on the BBC Weather website or app.
Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
Your Connections expert
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Your Connections expert
Marc McLaren
NYT Connections today (game #518) – today’s words
(Image credit: New York Times)
Today’s NYT Connections words are…
RAVEN
GOLFER
PILOT
PENDULUM
DRUM
USHER
SALOON DOORS
CASK
COWBOY
CYLINDER
STEER
JET
TANK
RAM
SWING
SHEPHERD
NYT Connections today (game #518) – hint #1 – group hints
What are some clues for today’s NYT Connections groups?
Yellow: Could hold beer, oil etc
Green: Show the way
Blue: Bear is another
Purple: They make a side-to-side motion
Need more clues?
We’re firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today’s NYT Connections puzzles…
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NYT Connections today (game #518) – hint #2 – group answers
What are the answers for today’s NYT Connections groups?
YELLOW: BARREL-SHAPED CONTAINER
GREEN: GUIDE
BLUE: N.F.L. TEAM MEMBER
PURPLE: THINGS THAT SWING
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Connections today (game #518) – the answers
(Image credit: New York Times)
The answers to today’s Connections, game #518, are…
YELLOW: BARREL-SHAPED CONTAINER CASK, CYLINDER, DRUM, TANK
GREEN: GUIDE PILOT, SHEPHERD, STEER, USHER
BLUE: N.F.L. TEAM MEMBER COWBOY, JET, RAM, RAVEN
PURPLE: THINGS THAT SWING GOLFER, PENDULUM, SALOON DOORS, SWING
My rating: Easy
My score: Perfect
I can’t help thinking it’s a bit of a cop out for the NYT to include the word SWING in a group where the answer is, um, SWING. I mean come on! This was the purple group, too, so supposedly the hardest of the four.
Admittedly, the others were easier still. Blue – the second toughest – was N.F.L. TEAM MEMBER, and even a UK soccer/cricket fan such as myself could spot that COWBOY, JET, RAM and RAVEN were the answers. Green, meanwhile, was simply four things that were all BARREL-SHAPED CONTAINERs: CASK, CYLINDER, DRUM and TANK. My finger hovered over the submit button with that one, because I thought it couldn’t possibly be as easy as that. But it was, and for once I completed this game with no trauma.
PURPLE: WORDS BEFORE “ROOM” TO MEAN LAVATORY BATH, POWDER, REST, THRONE
What is NYT Connections?
NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.
On the plus side, you don’t technically need to solve the final one, as you’ll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What’s more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.
It’s a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.
It’s playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
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