iPhone 15/Plus Impressions of moving from XR to 15

[OneSon]

My 6 year old XR finally smashed so I bought a new blue 15. Here are my thoughts:

- Build quality is impressive. The frosted back is lovely. The overall build quality feels slightly more premium. I think they really produced a nice phone in the 15.

- Overall usage feels remarkably similar to the XR but just a tad faster. It's really struck me how upgrading iPhones now really doesn't bring about a big jump in performance. My XR could do most of what this 15 can do.

- The Dynamic Island is neat in some apps but really not a big feature. It also seems to have removed one of the features I liked on the XR where a little airplay option would automatically appear at the top when I entered Podcasts or Music and allow me to select the nearest speaker. The 15 doesn't do this.

- The cameras are vastly improved. This is the main area where I see a difference. The X2 zoom option is nice. The stabilisation in the video is noticeably better. The ability to toggle portrait mode on/off after taking a photo is very useful.

Overall, it's a nice upgrade but I'm really glad I waited for my XR to smash. If I'd spent £590 just to upgrade I would feel a little disappointed.

 

[JohnMaldaner]

My 6 year old XR finally smashed so I bought a new blue 15. Here are my thoughts:

- Build quality is impressive. The frosted back is lovely. The overall build quality feels slightly more premium. I think they really produced a nice phone in the 15.

- Overall usage feels remarkably similar to the XR but just a tad faster. It's really struck me how upgrading iPhones now really doesn't bring about a big jump in performance. My XR could do most of what this 15 can do.

- The Dynamic Island is neat in some apps but really not a big feature. It also seems to have removed one of the features I liked on the XR where a little airplay option would automatically appear at the top when I entered Podcasts or Music and allow me to select the nearest speaker. The 15 doesn't do this.

- The cameras are vastly improved. This is the main area where I see a difference. The X2 zoom option is nice. The stabilisation in the video is noticeably better. The ability to toggle portrait mode on/off after taking a photo is very useful.

Overall, it's a nice upgrade but I'm really glad I waited for my XR to smash. If I'd spent £590 just to upgrade I would feel a little disappointed.

Thank you for this post! My wife and I still have the XR. Seems like every year we discuss upgrading, but just don't see anything that jumps out at us.

 

[sdfox7]

My 6 year old XR finally smashed so I bought a new blue 15. Here are my thoughts:

- Build quality is impressive. The frosted back is lovely. The overall build quality feels slightly more premium. I think they really produced a nice phone in the 15.

- Overall usage feels remarkably similar to the XR but just a tad faster. It's really struck me how upgrading iPhones now really doesn't bring about a big jump in performance. My XR could do most of what this 15 can do.

- The Dynamic Island is neat in some apps but really not a big feature. It also seems to have removed one of the features I liked on the XR where a little airplay option would automatically appear at the top when I entered Podcasts or Music and allow me to select the nearest speaker. The 15 doesn't do this.

- The cameras are vastly improved. This is the main area where I see a difference. The X2 zoom option is nice. The stabilisation in the video is noticeably better. The ability to toggle portrait mode on/off after taking a photo is very useful.

Overall, it's a nice upgrade but I'm really glad I waited for my XR to smash. If I'd spent £590 just to upgrade I would feel a little disappointed.

From my perception, there are most likely diminishing returns with increased CPU speed and RAM. An app is only going to consume so many resources depending on how scalable the operating system and app are. In the tech industry this is known by the professional term "overkill". 🤣

With Windows XP, I remember there was a huge jump in performance going from 256MB to 512MB, and again from 512MB to 1GB as programs became more advanced. Beyond that, I didn't notice much of a difference going from 1GB to 2GB, or 2GB to 4GB. You can try this yourself with a VM.

 

[FeliApple]

I upgraded from the Xʀ (running iOS 12 from day 1) to the 16 Plus and I absolutely agree.

-No performance improvements whatsoever because the Xʀ is working flawlessly on iOS 12.

-I haven’t discovered everything yet, but maps and timers seem the best feature with the Dynamic Island, up to now.

-Camera seems 8K, honestly, and even though some features had been there since the 11, I had never consistently used them myself. Night Mode, the 2X Zoom, full portrait, and other features are just so worth the hype. I was tired of the nice, but basic and feature-less camera of the Xʀ.

-I got 16-18 hours of light SOT and around 12 with Moderate outdoors LTE use with the Xʀ, and the 16 Plus still represented a massive improvement in terms of battery life.

-As I had been running iOS 12 as my main iPhone iOS version for almost six years, I find iOS 18 has a lot of new things which are cool.

 

[BigBlur]

It also seems to have removed one of the features I liked on the XR where a little airplay option would automatically appear at the top when I entered Podcasts or Music and allow me to select the nearest speaker. The 15 doesn't do this.

This isn't an iPhone-specific feature. It's an iOS feature, and your 15 will start doing this once it starts learning your habits again.

Also, go into Settings > General > AirPlay & Continuity > Automatically AirPlay, and make sure it's set to 'Ask' or 'Automatic'.