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Phones · Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone 15

80owners with an opinion
47%of verdicts positive
26/31positive/negative since 2024
2 yrslongest happy owner
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and display; criticized for software and ease of use.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 2 years
I want an Android phone that doesn't break. My iPhone is a beast, but I hate using it, I'm too used to the Android interface (especially the keyboard, I can't believe how bad the keyboard is on iOS). But every Android phone I've ever had gets dinged up very easily and eventually falls apart. I bought an iPhone 15 and a Pixel 7 at the same time when I started a new job 2 years ago. I keep my work stuff on the iPhone. For the first year, I kept them in the same pocket and had them both everywhere with me. The Pixel within a few weeks was starting to look beat up. The iPhone still looks practically brand new. Just last night, I got home, pulled my Pixel out of my pocket, and found a crack near the corner of the screen. Now the screen is glitching out on the bottom 15% of the screen. I didn't drop it, I didn't bump into anything. Regular pocket pressure while sitting in my car must have bent it and it buckled. My wife has had similar experiences with Samsung phones. If it weren't for the lack of good browsers on iOS, I'd put up with the shitty keyboard.
Recommends itOwned 1 year
You're describing an iPhone. I've switched from Android to SE2 in 2020, and bought 15 last year on release day to get the type-c charging. I feel it ticks most of your boxes: * excellent battery life - can't complain about it. I'm not streaming YouTube on 5G on the phone, and I've found out that it can last about two days per charge with light use - messenger apps, phone calls, emails. YMMV of course. * a great OLED screen - it's bright & crisp. I haven't seen a better screen in person yet. * a great camera - it's a very good camera IMO. Takes good shots of people and nature and shoots impressive videos of music shows in dark basements. * durable/rugged - not sure about 15, but my SE2 was abused and dropped. The metal sides were dinged, the screen had a few nasty scratches, but the phone held up together very well. * fast enough to feel snappy and not laggy - iOS is much nicer and snappier that any of the Android phones (HTC Desire S, Galaxy Note II, Xperia Z3, Xiaomi Mi6) I've had. * don't want to buy a brand-new $1000 phone every year or two - I think iPhones do last a few years, given the fact that my wife uses 13 and has zero desire (or reasons, really) to upgrade. The only requirement the iPhone doesn't fit is the storage - Apple charges an absurd price for storage upgrades on all of their devices. I went with the cheapest option and pay for a large iCloud subscription, and it seems to work well - the photo and file sync between the phone, Macbook & even my Windows machi…
Likes it
I can, easily, wouldn’t feel the cost in any way. The question you I think should ask is who finds this value reasonable? . To which, I can only answer my myself who can’t see any reason to upgrade from my iPhone 15.
Doesn’t like it
My iPhone 15 has a weird one. I beta tested the glass updates. Part way through the beta it broke, and my phone will only show glass visuals during movement. Once it stops it turns opaque. This happens across the entire phone. Resetting the phone from a backup doesn’t fix the issue. My only fix is to wipe my data and start over. Hardly a solution. I’m no longer on the beta, even a few major versions updated now. Issue remains.
Doesn’t like it
I encounter the same problem of unclickable buttons on my iPhone 15 fairly often. Sometimes I can make them reachable by switching to landscape mode, but not always. I’m 69 and do prefer larger fonts, though I don’t think my font size settings are causing the problem.
Doesn’t like it
Apple saves itself a lot of the trouble with superior build quality. With Samsung devices (so no cheap crap), USB ports last me about three years of heavy use. With my old iPhone 12, 2019 16-inch MBP or my 2022 MBA? Not a single issue. The housing is simply constructed so tight and, being made of solid metal, rigid that the housing bears the torsion load and not the tiny PCB solder pads. The only problem I have with my new USB-C iPhone 15 is that it is hard to clean pocket lint out of the socket, compared to the old Lightning connector.
Doesn’t like it
On an x86 laptop you run linux. Too easy. xfce if it's 4G ram. Can you do that with an M{1..4} ? You sure can't do it with an iphone. I own one an iphone 15. Was beautiful when new. Even now it has started on the path of suck. Apple have "upgraded" it to have a more frustrating touchscreen because they clearly think I should give them more money to keep the experience I bought. They are not cheap. Apple are the absolute kings of planned obsolescence. Zealots going for silent downvotws because there is no case they can make to the contrary. Not what downvotes are for, says HN but we're all used to HN being used like this by now.
Neutral
I use an Otter case with my iPhone because I’m team lanyard. My iPhone is like a pet. It never goes out of the house without a leash. Haha. So that adds a little bit of width. I have the iPhone 15 now, and I use my old iPhone SE for music and podcasts around the house. So I handle both phones daily. For comfort in my hand, the SE is the perfect size in an Otter case. If Apple would integrate a lanyard mount, then I’d consider going naked. But never without one.
Doesn’t like it
Im hoping Apple gets the new Siri working better on older phones. I was excited to use it but the latest beta / Siri runs too slow on my iPhone Pro Max 15. Im looking for the same experience I have when talking to chatGPT. As for past two years or more talking to GPT within it's app and on my iPhone Pro Max 15 it runs smooth as butter :-). This is the experience I was and still am hoping with Apple, but Im thinking all the extra layers of privacy and security might be slowing them down? Overall, Apple who is suing Open AI should just buy them and let me have the best conversational AI out there baked into my old ass iPhone. Because as so far the new Siri on my old phone (tho again GPT works great talking to it and for years) doesnt come close. It's the same old "Could you try that again," Siri. BOO!!!
Doesn’t like it
I purchased an iPhone 15 a few months ago and ended up making this discovery myself. CarPlay would refuse to launch unless I enabled Siri. I didn't do any of the Siri setup, or anything but the app would hard refuse to launch unless I went and toggled on Siri. Maybe that's different depending on your make/model, or the specific infotainment system in your car, but in my '21 Kia Forte, Siri is a very hard requirement.
Neutral
Running Gemma-4-E2B-it on an iPhone 15 (can't go higher than that due to RAM limitations) versus a Pixel 9 Pro, I don't really notice much of a difference between the two. The Pixel is a bit faster, but also a year more recent. The model itself works absolutely fine, though the iPhone thermal throttles at some point which really reduces the token generation speed. When I asked it to write me a business plan for a fish farm in the Nevada desert, it slowed down after a couple thousand tokens, whereas the Pixel seems to just keep going.
Doesn’t like it
I actually logged in just to upvote it. Just hoping to boost the signal enough that Apple will actually do something. I have a similar countdown of my own but is less specific. I’m on iPhone 15 (coming from android) and I know for certain that the next time I’m on the market for a new phone it won’t be an iPhone. I also don’t need a new phone, but the intrusive thoughts to buy a new one are always caused by the faulty keyboard
Neutral
> Because th green light isn’t controlled by software. The LED is directly wired to the camera power. You got a source for that? Or a clarification about which iphone version you are talking about? Because on my iphone 15 the green indicator light next to the camera is not an LED but a UI element on the screen. Source: I put my phone under a microscope just now and can see the individual pixels in this supposed "LED". Happy to provide the image if interested.
Doesn’t like it
If it is for those people who barely grasp the slightest thing about what’s going on on-screen, I could grant them that, if they’d let me turn it off. In the days before jailbreak became basically impossible, setting the animation duration to zero was a blessed, incredibly satisfying thing. It’s exactly what I want. Just do the transition in zero seconds. My iPhone 15 can’t even catch my first 1-2 keystrokes on the keyboard, multiple times a day, but boy howdy does it have the time and the cycles to animate that f*%ker into view. The disrespect for my time and my needs is so obvious.
Likes it
Hey, just spotted your comment. Yes, everything is done locally, stick your phone in airplane mode if you want to be sure! I'm not an Apple fan, but I have to say I've been testing it on an iPhone 15 and my god, the performance is insanely good, I was seriously blown away. I haven't dug into how much it impacts battery, but the transcription literally takes seconds for a minute of audio so it's not holding up your device. The iOS version is built, ready to go, there's just some bug with my Apple account and it won't let me pay the £80 fee to signup (support ticket raised and waiting). As soon as that's sorted it'll be out on App Store for free as well. Very surprised to hear the built in transcription is not great, anything specifically bad about it? The hardware is there. You can download the desktop version from here ( https://blazingbanana.com/apps/whistle/ ) if you want, still very much a WIP.
Doesn’t like it
I'm with you. I got an iPhone 15 a couple of years ago after only ever using Android. I was expecting great things and it's just.. confused! I never have any confidence it will notify me of things. Often I just miss stuff. I actually have no idea how all the different "Focus" modes work. Notifications pile up and then seem to disappear without any action, and then reappear a week later. The keyboard is really awful. I recently pulled an ancient Galaxy phone out of a drawer to test something and was reminded of just how much better the Android keyboard is. It just always guesses the wrong things! And the settings are equally jumbled. Sometimes they're in the Settings app, sometimes they're in the app I'm using. It's just confusing. It was honestly eye opening because I'd spent so many years assuming iPhones were better. I moved across because my Android phones kept having hardware issues. I think I'll probably go back to Android after this experiment.
Likes it
I find this thread amusing. My M3 MacBook Pro just works. My family's iPhone 15s just work. My iPad Mini 6 just works. My wife's 3 year old iPad just works. Her 3 year old MacBook Air just works. My kids 3 year old M1 MacBook just works. I am an old man. My MCSE was on NT 3.51. I wrote my first code in 6502 ML. The first production network I handled used SNA. The level of Apple kit just working is a so far beyond anything I have experienced in 30+ years of being in tech.
Neutral
Yeah, it's a pitty but platform support differences between iOS and Android are still alive and well. Funnily enough, the 15 has been my first iPhone ever, mainly because Android device hardware has less and less differentiators (no jack, no expandable storage, no true camera hardware innovations as seen in the Huawei pre ban, ...). iOS is far from perfect, have experienced some insane bugs despite Apple fanatics being adamant that there are none, but considering Google is now killing side loading, I see no reason to switch. A few small experimental manufacturers (Ikko, ...) not withstanding, hardware is closer to Apples product line than ever and software now offers neither flexibility, nor added stability, so what's the point, especially as even Google makes more from iOS [0], so why keep setting money on fire running that platform... Regardless of that, Codex needs to both come to Android for parity and the app features need to be expanded towards parity with the web page. [0] https://searchengineland.com/report-75-percent-of-googles-mo...