iPhone 15 and 15 Pro review: The final form

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It has been six years since the iPhone X hit store shelves, but at a glance, 2023’s iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro aren't all that different. Thanks to a few steps of iteration, though, these smartphones still feel like an upgrade—maybe not compared to last year’s iPhone, but certainly compared to 2017's, or even 2020’s.

Although I don’t have any insight into what’s coming next year, the iPhone 15 seems like the final form of a product that has gone through a multi-year cycle. It sees Apple cementing a likely long-term strategy of treating the cheaper model as a rerun of the previous year’s pro model, it addresses one of the longest-standing complaints about iPhones (even if Apple’s hand was forced by regulation), and it refines a tried-and-true design.

The iPhone 15, its pricier siblings, and its strong competitors on the Android side make the case that, for better or worse (mostly better), we’ve reached peak smartphone.

Table of Contents

Specifications

Specs at a glance: iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max
Screen	2556×1179 6.1-inch OLED (15 & 15 Pro), 2796×1290 6.7-inch OLED (15 Plus & 15 Pro Max)
OS	iOS 17.0.2
CPU	Apple A16 Bionic (15 & 15 Plus), Apple A17 Pro (15 Pro & 15 Pro Max)
RAM	6GB (15 & 15 Plus), 8GB (15 Pro & 15 Pro Max)
GPU	Apple A16 Bionic (15 & 15 Plus), Apple A17 Pro (15 Pro & 15 Pro Max)
Storage	128, 256, or 512GB for 15 & 15 Plus; 128, 256, 512GB, or 1TB for 15 Pro; 256, 512GB, or 1TB for 15 Pro Max
Networking	Wi-Fi 6 (15 & 15 Plus) or Wi-Fi 6E (15 Pro & 15 Pro Max), Bluetooth 5.3, 5G
Ports	USB-C
Camera	48 MP main camera and 12 MP ultra-wide (15 & 15 Plus); 48 MP main camera, 12 MP ultra-wide, 12 MP 3x telephoto (iPhone 15 Pro); 48 MP main camera, 12 MP ultra-wide, 12 MP 5x telephoto (iPhone 15 Pro Max); 12 MP front camera; 4K HDR video
Size	147.6×71.6×7.8 mm (15), 160.9×77.8×7.8 mm (15 Plus), 146.6×70.6×8.25 mm (15 Pro), 159.9×76.7×8.25 mm (15 Pro Max)
Weight	171 g (15), 201 g (15 Plus), 187 g (15 Pro), 221 g (15 Pro Max)
Starting price	$799 (14), $899 (15 Plus), $999 (15 Pro), $1,199 (15 Pro Max)
Other perks	MagSafe, Face ID, Dynamic Island, always-on display (Pro models)

Storage capacities are mostly the same as last year, except that Apple has removed the cheapest 128GB option for the iPhone 15 Pro Max, raising the minimum price for that phone by $100 to $1,199, perhaps not so coincidentally matching the entry-level price for the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

The regular iPhone 15 starts at $799 with 128GB of storage. For $100 more, you can move up to 256GB. 512GB costs $1,099. The iPhone 15 Plus has the same storage options but starts $100 higher at $899.

The iPhone 15 Pro starts at $999 for 128GB of storage. 256GB is $1,099, 512GB is $1,299, and there’s a 1TB option at $1,499. The larger iPhone 15 Pro Max is $200 more at each storage size, sans the missing 128GB configuration.

Given the high-quality video these phones take, and the increasing size of mobile games, 256GB or 512GB is probably the sweet spot for most buyers. Folks who don’t plan to record a lot of videos or play many games will be fine at 128GB, and if you’re one of the crazies who needs 1TB, you know who you are. (I’m one of you, I’m afraid. I have more than 500 apps installed and record 4K videos regularly. That’s far from typical, though.)

The iPhone 15 still has 6GB of RAM, but the Pros have jumped to 8GB.

Displays

Not too much has changed on the display front. The screen sizes are the same—6.1 inches for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro and 6.7 inches for the iPhone 15 Plus and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The screen resolutions for these OLED displays are 2,556×1,179 pixels and 2,796×1,290 pixels, respectively.

The Pro models have a variable refresh rate of between 1 Hz and 120 Hz, whereas the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus land at a standard 60 Hz. As far as brightness goes, all four phones have 1,000 nits of max brightness typically, with up to 1,600 for HDR highlights and up to 2,000 for outdoor, sunny situations. Unfortunately, it has been overcast most of the time I’ve had these phones, so I haven’t had first-hand experience with that higher outdoor peak brightness.

All told, these are outstanding displays. I haven’t noticed any difference one way or the other over last year’s, but it’s hard to improve on near-perfection. For most people who buy these phones, these will be by far the highest-quality screens they own. Only very high-end OLED TVs and a couple of pricy Android phones can compete with them.

A16 returns, A17 arrives

As for the other internals, the story of the system-on-a-chip in the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus is simple: It’s the A16 Bionic, the same one that shipped in last year’s Pro iPhones. The A16 isn’t a big jump over the A15 in the standard iPhone 14 except for one thing: It has much higher memory bandwidth, which matters a lot for 3D games and some camera features.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Max get a new chip, though. Apple has dubbed it the A17 Pro—no “Bionic.” For the longest time, I rolled my eyes at Apple’s “Pro” nomenclature for phones, arguing that most professional photographers wouldn’t use a phone. But as I’ve spent more time on TikTok over the past year, I’ve realized that “Pro” can easily refer to some impressive content creators on that platform and others like it, so I’m trying to ease up on the eye-rolling just a bit.

Apple’s 3 nm A17 Pro has a 6-core CPU that promises a 10 percent improvement over the A16’s and a 6-core GPU that promises up to 20 percent faster performance. The GPU now supports mesh shading and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, two cutting-edge graphics technologies that could enable some features typically reserved for PC gaming or current-generation consoles.

Additionally, Apple has brought MetalFX, its own AI upscaling technology in the same general category as AMD’s FSR or Nvidia’s DLSS, from the Mac to the iPhone for the first time with the A17.

The company has announced that a handful of AAA games built for PCs and consoles (Resident Evil Village, the recent Resident Evil 4 remake, Death Stranding, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage) will make their way to the iPhone soon. Note, though, that Apple’s hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI upscaling are far less advanced than what we’re seeing on Nvidia GPUs with DLSS in a number of ways.

Beyond the GPU, Apple also says the A17’s NPU (dubbed the Neural Engine) has doubled past performance in some situations. Lastly, there are a handful of additional features on the chip tailored to “pro” user edge cases, including a new AV1 decoder, dedicated hardware for dealing with the ProRes codec, and a new USB controller to handle the USB 3 transfer speeds.

And yes, I wrote “USB.” Let’s jump right into that new development!

USB-C

The big news for specs isn’t the A17; it’s that Apple has finally ditched its proprietary Lightning port in favor of USB-C, an established standard across the industry.

In my past couple of iPhone reviews, I’ve speculated that Apple was seeking to ride Lightning out until the company reached the point that it could ditch physical ports altogether. Whether that was Apple’s plan or not, regulations in the European Union mandating the use of USB-C in several types of consumer devices led to a detour.

Apart from the long-term environmental goals associated with such a mandate, there are also clear benefits for many users. The most obvious is that since most other gadget-makers have settled on this port, a charging cable from one will usually work just fine for almost all the others. You can now borrow your Android-wielding friend’s charger!

For all the hullabaloo, the reality is that it won’t make much of a difference most of the time. And there are short-term downsides, too; landfills are about to get a huge influx of deprecated Lightning cables, and users living in Apple’s ecosystem who still have AirPods or whatever else that use Lightning may now have a little more hassle on their hands. Further, a long-term, continent-wide mandate that consumer devices all have to use a certain port could prevent future innovations not just from Apple but other companies, too.

A USB-C port at the bottom of an iPhone — This is the iPhone 15 Pro Max's USB-C port. Credit: Samuel Axon

But despite those things, I think most people will feel that sanity prevailed here. Over the next few years, the bifurcated world of smartphone charging cables will slowly give way to an easier situation.

There are extra pluses for those who buy the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Their USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports are capable of much faster file-transfer speeds—10Gb/s to Lightning’s and the iPhone 15’s 480 Mb/s. That could be a huge benefit for content creators, as this allows for recording 4K, 60fps video directly to an external hard drive via the port. It’s a niche use case, but I’m sure it’s welcome for that crowd.

The iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max also gain the ability to output to an external monitor via USB-C, though we’re just looking at simple screen mirroring, which I don’t consider that useful.

Apple has included a USB-C-to-USB-C cable in the box to aid in the transition, but it doesn’t support the faster transfer speeds the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are capable of. The inclusion of any cable at all is welcome at this point, but it seems weirdly cheap for Apple to skimp on including one that's suitable for its most expensive phones.

Finally, all the new iPhones (standard 15 included) can now charge other devices via the port, so you can connect your AirPods, Apple Watch, or whatever else to draw power from the phone. That’s particularly nice for the larger iPhones with their sizable batteries. This is, of course, a feature that owners of premium Android handsets have enjoyed for ages.

All told, the much-discussed move to USB-C is more interesting from an industry and regulatory perspective than it is for the user, but it will be a net win for most, regardless.

Other specs changes

Not much has changed in the wireless department for the iPhone 15, but that’s not the case with the iPhone 15 Pro. The Pro phones now support Wi-Fi 6E, which promises faster speeds in certain contexts. The phone is designed to switch seamlessly between Wi-Fi standards based on the situation. I didn’t have Wi-Fi 6E hardware with which to test this.

There’s also an upgrade to the latest Qualcomm cellular modem for highly situational improvements to 5G speeds and a new, second-generation ultra-wideband chip that allows for more precision in the Find My app.

Lastly, there are obviously a bunch of camera things to go over, but we’ll get to those later. For now, let's look at the design of the hardware.

Design

Over the past several years, Apple has ever-so-slightly tweaked the basic design of its flagship iPhones each year. The initial design introduced with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro came in two screen sizes (6.1 inches and 6.7 inches, just like this one) with a wireless, charging-ready glass black, a nearly edge-to-edge screen with a camera notch at the top, two volume control buttons, a single port, a mute switch, and an array of cameras on the back—all wrapped in an aluminum (non-Pro) or stainless steel (Pro) enclosure.

But you could actually argue a lot of the elements of that design go all the way back to the iPhone X in 2017 when Apple introduced Face ID—that was the last really significant change to the iPhone's design. The appearance and feel of the body have shifted noticeably, as have the size options, but the basic building blocks are exactly the same.

Over time, more (and noticeably larger) camera lenses have been added in slightly different configurations on the back, the whole line switched to OLED, and the bezels have shrunk slightly. Last year, the Pro models replaced the notch with the “Dynamic Island,” a pill-shaped cutout near the top of the screen that Apple cleverly uses in various UI elements and actions.

Apart from the previously discussed introduction of USB-C for that one port, there are a few notable design changes again this year. First up, the standard iPhone 15 now has the Dynamic Island, just like the Pro phones do. The Dynamic Island is not a total game changer (and the name is ridiculous, of course), but it’s a much better use of that space than the notch was, and it’s used to solve a few UI oddities endemic to the previous iPhones, so I’m glad to see it coming to everybody.

The back of the iPhone 15 has a new treatment, and all the phones have slightly more curved edges—a sort of middle ground between the slippery curved sides of the iPhone X and XS and the harsher cutoffs on the sides of the iPhone 12 and later. The iPhone 15 is a dream to hold. It’s light but sturdy, the colors look nice sprawling around the whole of the device’s body, and the camera bump is manageable, if not ideal. Adding in the Dynamic Island makes it even better, and it’s hard to find fault with this phone’s look and feel.

The Pro and Pro Max saw a couple of additional changes. Apple has moved these phones from a stainless steel frame to a titanium one, and it has replaced the mute switch with a multi-purpose alternative called the Action button. The camera bump on the Pro phones is ridiculous, but that's what it takes to get that kind of camera performance on a phone.

It’s titanium, in case you didn’t hear

Apple’s advertising blitz around the iPhone 15 Pro has been centered on the fact that the enclosure is now made of titanium. Well, partly. The part of the frame you touch on the outside is titanium, but it’s bonded with aluminum on the inside. Anyway, the message has been hard to miss. But what improvements does that offer?

Most notably, these phones are much lighter than last year’s models. Some people like the weighty feeling of the iPhone 14 Pro, but many others find it to be too heavy, especially with the 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The Max is down from 8.47 ounces to 7.81. That might not seem like a huge difference on paper, but you can really feel it. It’s still not the lightest phone of its size out there, but it’s a bit more comfortable to hold, especially with the softer-feeling, more curved edges.

There is one side effect of the move to titanium that I’m not a fan of, though. In my time with both Pro models, I found that the phones got noticeably hotter than I was used to with previous iPhones—sometimes to the point that they were uncomfortable to hold without a case.

The times when they were so hot I didn’t want to hold them usually happened while downloading multiple large files or apps or after charging, but anecdotally, it felt that the phones ran a little warm in general.

A couple of days after noticing this, I started seeing reports online about folks who had just gotten their new iPhone 15 Pros experiencing the same thing. As some have pointed out, these phones aren’t actually overheating, per se—the temperatures users are seeing are safe and within Apple’s expected range. That’s good to know, but this is still enough of a spike to be jarring.

It's possible Apple will be able to address this with software updates, but it's also possible it would have to do that by reducing performance. Apple hasn't publicly commented on this yet, so it's a little bit up in the air.

I haven’t had the same problems with the iPhone 15 and Ultra, which are still using aluminum like their predecessors.

Overall, I’m not sure the move to titanium is a net positive. It feels like more of a lateral move to me due to the heat challenges, but your experience with it may vary, especially if you’ve been one of those folks complaining that Apple’s premium phones are too heavy.

Action!

Apple reps have said that many people just switch the iPhone’s long-standing mute switch to “on” and never touch it again, and while I do occasionally switch it off, most people close to me fit that mold. So it's odd that the mute switch has stuck around for so long, particularly coming from a company infamous for being stingy about physical controls.

Enter the Action button, which is only available in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The mute switch has been replaced by a simple button above the volume controls. By default, you hold it to toggle between mute and unmute, but you can program it to do basically anything you want.

An almost needlessly slick UI guides you through the default options when you first set up your phone. You can make it open the camera app, turn on the flashlight, change the phone’s focus mode, or open the voice memo app. Tapping again after initiating one of these actions performs a related function—for example, you can tap it once to launch the camera app, then again to snap a photo.

All that is awesome, but it gets even more powerful with Shortcuts. Granted, most users will not want to mess with Shortcuts. But for those who do, we can make this button do just about whatever our nerdy hearts desire.

The Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Credit: Samuel Axon

Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that Apple has added the mute/unmute function to iOS’s Control Center on these phones by default in case you still want to access that functionality while having the button mapped to something else.

The only downside to the Action Button is that you have to hold it for a moment to get something to happen, which is obviously slower than a quick switch if you keep it mapped to mute. I see why Apple did this, though; you wouldn’t want to accidentally tap the button in your pocket to perform any of these functions.

It does strike me as strange that this is a Pro-specific feature. I’m no industrial designer, but I have trouble imagining it costs a ton (or even any) more money to implement and include the Action button than it does to include the mute switch.

I sometimes suspect that Apple withholds features from entry-level devices to drive users to buy its more expensive products, even if it doesn’t make sense at face value that those features should cost that much more money. (Consider also M1 and M2 Macs not supporting multiple external displays.) It’s not my favorite thing the company does, to say the least, and the Action button seems like an example of it.

I only say that because I think it’s a great change, though; I wish everyone buying a new iPhone got it.

Repairability improvements

There’s one other positive design story with these phones: Apple has put some effort into making them easier to repair. Most significantly, you can now easily remove the glass back, which is one of the most common things for users to break.

That significantly reduces the difficulty of making that repair, and it reduces the cost of the repair for the customer in Apple’s own stores and service programs. More of this, please, Apple!

Cameras

The flashiest bit of news on the camera front is that the Max has a new telephoto lens capable of 5x optical zoom, up from last year's (and the regular 15 Pro's) 3x. This is the perfect zoom level for many concert venues and the like, and it's probably the best argument for going all the way to Apple's most expensive handset this year. Apart from that addition, the Pro phones' camera systems are mostly the same as last year's. There's a new software-driven option to switch the main camera's focal length between 24 mm, 28 mm, and 35 mm, giving you more granular control. That same main camera produces 24-megapixel photos by default, though you can take a 48-megapixel image if you choose to.

Below: Daytime shots at 2x, 3x, or 5x zoom (as applicable) on the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 14 Pro Max, and iPhone 13 Pro.

That said, I think it's more interesting that the regular iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus have jumped to 48 MP for the main wide-angle lens, just like both Pro phones did last year (this year's Pro phones also still have this). The main goal here isn't actually taking 48MP photos, though—as I said, the default output is 24 megapixels. Instead, the benefit is that by using a combination of cropping and some AI trickery, Apple has managed to give these phones 2x zoom at a level of quality that's pretty much indistinguishable from an actual 2x optical zoom in, say, an older Pro's dedicated telephoto lens, at the same quality level as the regular 1x zoom.

Apple and its competitors add crazy new camera features all the time, but more focal length or zoom level options will always be the most impactful in my book because they allow the cameras to be much more versatile. Alongside the Dynamic Island and the processor bump the iPhone 15 got, I feel that this is the most appealing year-over-year upgrade for the standard iPhone. Having the ability to take 2x-zoom photos is hugely useful in a whole range of situations—and it has been done without taking away the ultrawide 0.5x zoom option.

Below: Daytime shots at 0.5x and 1x zoom on the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 14 Pro Max, and iPhone 13 Pro.

As for photo quality, it's excellent, though I still feel Apple's computational processing can be a bit aggressive at times compared to the iPhones of yore. It's not too different from what you'd get from Google's Pixel 7 Pro or the Samsung Galaxy S23 line, though. Each of these phones takes largely similar photos, with slightly different strengths and weaknesses in edge cases. The differences are generally not big enough for most people to notice, really. All these flagship smartphones have largely arrived at more or less the same place in their years of iteration.

I'm not a big fan of Apple's "Portrait Mode," but it has gotten better over time, so if you're keen to use it, you'll be happy to know that you can now apply the effect after taking the photo rather than making the call before you snap—at least, most of the time.

There are some additional new perks for the Pro phones, of course. The 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max have a new lens coating that is meant to reduce one of my personal pet peeves—those light source reflections that look like floating light points in night-time photos with streetlights (or something similar) in view. On the video side, the Pro phones can also record in log format, which professional and enthusiast videographers sometimes like because it produces a nice, neutral image so they can make it pop to their own specifications when editing. As mentioned earlier, you can record 4K video at 60 fps directly to an external hard drive via the USB-C port. And Apple has done a lot to make the ProRAW format a key part of these phones—another feature for folks who aren't messing around.

Below: Shots taken in a very dark room with the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 14, and iPhone 13 Pro.

Performance

On to performance. We shared Apple's performance claims in the specifications section of the review; now, let's put them to the test. We ran synthetic benchmarks on all four phones, but we didn't find substantial differences in performance between the regular and Ultra/Max sizes. So to keep the charts readable, we've included the smaller versions of each: the iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pro.

Each of these tests is focused on burst performance, which is what you'll usually need, as opposed to sustained performance. That said, we ran the 3DMark test numerous times on each device and averaged the results to capture a picture of what performance looks like over time. (And yes, the scores gradually dropped with each successive test.)

Here's what we found.

There are a few interesting takeaways here. First, it has been unusual for Apple to present significant improvements in single-core performance year over year; we usually see the number move in multi-core the most. But in these Geekbench 5 tests, we see that the single-core scores have moved up nicely going from the A16 to the A17. It's not dramatic, but it's something.

Multi-core performance gains were more or less on target for Apple's claims with the Pro phones and the A17. The GPU performance gains are dramatic at first, but as these phones heat up, the gap closes a bit.

We tried a few 3D mobile games, but frankly, none of the ones available right now were demanding enough to lead to a difference you can feel as a player. They all already ran butter smooth on the iPhone 14 Pro and even the iPhone 14 or iPhone 13 Pro. I'm looking forward to testing those previously mentioned AAA console-style game releases like Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding, and Assassin's Creed Mirage in the coming months to see examples where the A17 can really potentially make a difference. It will be interesting to see how these things handle playing a game like Assassin's Creed for hours on end, as opposed to running just a short benchmark.

16 years of iteration

APPLE IPHONE 15

$799 iPhone 15 at Apple $899 iPhone 15 Plus at Apple $999 iPhone 15 Pro at Apple 199 iPhone 15 Pro Max at Apple

After 16 years of iteration and competition, we’ve gotten quite close to the ideal design and configuration for these phones, at least for daily life as we know it right now. Barring some major external shift that disrupts how and when we want to use these devices (which is admittedly sure to happen someday) or a much-needed breakthrough in, say, battery technology, there’s nothing major to improve anymore.

Over on the Android side, you see brands experimenting with things like foldable smartphones, but I don’t think most people feel those experiments offer anything more than the ability to claim you have something new for newness’s sake.

I think it’s also telling that over the years, iPhone and Android flagships have gotten a lot more alike. We’ve reached peak smartphone, or maybe the final form—most of the world has settled on what these things should look, feel, and act like. That has spoiled some of the excitement for gadget geeks, of course; there’s no longer much drive to be excited for each year’s new iteration. There’s also little reason to argue whether an iPhone or the latest Android flagship is better, unless you just enjoy the verbal fisticuffs.

Beyond a certain price point and sticking within the most refined brands, they’re all good, and each year, they improve ever so slightly—especially the cameras. Of course, those camera improvements are often made possible by software solutions like machine learning, not hardware, per se. But it's worth noting that the NPU (which Apple calls the Neural Engine) is hardware, and it plays a big part in that. Further, this year's models do have some substantive hardware improvements on that front—well, at least the base iPhone 15 and the Max do. So yes, there are much more exciting things happening on the software side occasionally, but hardware is moving more slowly.

These are excellent smartphones, but they already were. If you have an iPhone from at least three years ago, or maybe even longer, you might notice a difference, and it might be worth upgrading. If you have a more recent one, you’re probably good with what you’ve got unless you're committed to being on the bleeding edge of mobile photography.

The move to USB-C and some other changes make these handsets feel like a capstone on a years-long project to perfect the form. We made it! That’s a good thing. What’s next?

The good

Apple has included top-notch performance and screens, as always.
The Pro models are much lighter than their predecessors.
The 15 and 15 Plus get tons of features from last year's Pro phones, including the Dynamic Island and 2x zoom.
The Action button is a welcome replacement for the mute switch.
Welcome to the USB-C majority, Apple!

The bad

Apple axed the 128GB option for the Pro Max, raising the entry-level price for that handset.
These are expensive phones in general.
It seems arbitrary to me to keep the Action button away from the non-Pro phones.
The switch to USB-C may cause you some chaos for a bit if you still have other Apple devices that use Lightning.

The ugly

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max both get uncomfortably hot to the touch under load.

Listing image: Samuel Axon

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Samuel Axon Senior Editor

Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica. He covers Apple, software development, gaming, AI, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.

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