Thanks! So beside the lens and zoom, it's mostly artificial differentiation?

This is a skip a generation iPhone for me, USB-C is cool and all but by the time I'm ready to upgrade they should have something much better out there.

I skipped a few generations and if things going like this (no new feature that I’m interested in), at this rate I will change it when Apple drops the support.

if you think proraw/prores vs h.264 encoded videos is an artificial differentiation, then you clearly don't do video editing. that's fine, but don't write differences off just because you don't know/use them.

I assume by artificial they mean software, as in the iphone 15 and 14 Pro use the same SoC so they should have the same coding capabilities. Although it's possible prores is handled by a separate controller chip on the Pros (AFAIK only the M-series have hardware prores).

that is a much different take that what i had on the use of artificial, and does put a different look to it entirely. an artificial limitation imposed by Apple vs and artificial difference from user's non-use of a feature.

Correct, I'm referring to artificial limitations on products used to differentiate between tiered price points. I don't like to use the other definition of artificial when describing features themselves for the reason you point out... even the smallest features might be very useful to certain people.

I’d assume the display hardware is also different, seems dumb to waste panels able of 120Hz variable refresh rate. The always on display is probably from the ability to run it at very low refresh rates, so that’d also be linked.

And the macro photo could be using the telephoto lens, I’ve no idea (photography does not even remotely interest me).