iPhone 16 vs. iPhone 15: Which iPhone Should You Buy?

New vs old, where to best spend your money

It’s finally time to upgrade your iPhone. Do you buy Apple’s latest iPhone 16 or save a bit of cash and pick up the iPhone 15 instead? The short answer is yes. The iPhone 16 offers huge upgrades over the 15 on almost all fronts, more than justifying the slight premium over the 15. That said, if you already own a 15 or 15 Pro, there’s very little reason to spend a tonne of money to upgrade to a 16. iPhone 15 pricing starts at Rs 69,900 while pricing for the 16 starts at Rs 79,900.

Performance

This is by far the biggest gen-on-gen increase in iPhone performance in years. The iPhone 16’s new A18 SoC is two generations ahead of the iPhone 15 and comes with 33 per cent more RAM. The bump in specs, particularly in the memory department, was likely triggered by the need for running AI, but whatever the case, the difference is quite large. In fact, the iPhone 16 beats the iPhone 15 Pro by a slim but significant margin.

Where the iPhone 15 still cannot run AAA games such as Death Stranding and Resident Evil, the iPhone 16 can.

Batery life

Apple claims that battery life on the iPhone 16 has improved by about 10 per cent over the 15 (22 hrs of video playback vs 20 hrs). To add to this, the 16 now also supports both faster wireless and wired charging thanks to support for 25W charging via MagSafe, and nearly 40W via USB-C. This is up from 15W and up to 30W on the iPhone 15.

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Cameras

We see another significant upgrade in the camera department. The primary camera is largely unchanged, with the 16 coming with a slightly improved 48MP sensor and processing, but the 12MP macro camera gets a new AF lens, which means you can finally focus on subjects and, the best part, use macro mode. The iPhone 16 cameras can also capture spatial photos and video. This last isn’t very relevant right now, but once Apple Vision Pro or its equivalent gets popular — in several years, we think — the feature will be useful.

AI  — Apple Intelligence

The biggest upgrade — but one we’re yet to experience — is the upcoming Apple Intelligence suite of features. Apple Intelligence, Apple’s take on AI, is a set of personalised AI tools that will leverage the powerful NPU (Neural Processing Unit) on the iPhone 16 to supercharge Siri and add smart features like writing suggestions, image generation, smarter email and calendar management, and more. The iPhone 15 will not support most of these features.

To put it simply, if you’re prepared to spend Rs 69,900 on an iPhone 15, spending Rs 10,000 more to get the iPhone 16 is a no-brainer. The 16 is much faster, has bigger batteries, newer cameras, a new interface, and is expected to get transformative AI-enabled features in the coming weeks. If you’re looking to save money, we’d recommend getting an older model such as the iPhone 13 or a refurbished iPhone 15.