Why I bought an iPhone 15
I recently bought an iPhone 15. Let me walk you through my purchase process.
Did I need a new phone at all?
Before buying anything, we need to first ask ourselves if we need a new phone (or car or whatever), to get off the hedonistic treadmill, where you run but don’t move forward.
In this case, my iPhone 11 Pro was failing. When I’d swipe, nothing happened, so I thought I didn’t swipe properly, but then it reacted. On another occasion, I had to wait for the keyboard to appear. We need tools that can keep up with us1. So I needed a new phone.
Or a new battery, but investing in an old phone is money down the drain. In the past, I made the mistake of investing a lot of money repairing and upgrading an old PC only to realise that I had a second-rate computer after spending a good fraction of the cost of the PC.
Why not Android?
I’ve been using an iPhone since 2016, so I wanted to consider Android. A decision we’ve made at one point in the past may not be right for all time, so we need to periodically keep re-evaluating every decision. First-principles decision-making also keeps our mind flexible and young. So I tried to install Kotak on my old Pixel, only to get the same prompt I used to get years ago:
When I refuse permission, the app refuses to work:
I don’t know what information would be given to the app if I approve: Phone number? IMEI? Call log? Who I’m talking to while I’m using the app? My privacy is important, so I chose to continue with an iPhone.
Why not an older iPhone?
Instead of the iPhone 15, I could buy an older model like the 14 to save cost. But those come with the obsolete Lightning port. When you buy a device with a certain port, you also end up buying cables, and buying Lightning cables is a waste. It’s one thing to continue using a Lightning iPhone if you have one and it works great, but another to further invest in the Lightning ecosystem, which is money down the drain. So I chose a 15.
No Pro Max or Plus
Comparing the specs, I discovered that the Pro Max doesn’t have any benefits over the Pro, and neither does the Plus over the plain 15. I prefer smaller screens. This meant buying either the 15 or the 15 Pro.
Choosing between the 15 and the 15 Pro
Some people, at this point, would just buy the Pro because it’s “better”. But that’s just Apple’s opinion. Compare products to find out which is better for you based on your needs. When I compared, I found, to my surprise, that the 15 had some advantages over the Pro, too. The 15 was different, not worse, as it was in previous years. So don’t assume.
Benefits of the 15 over the Pro
The 15 has a 26mm focal length, rather than 24 mm for the Pro. The former is closer to the focal length of the eye and so produces photos that better correspond to how the scene looked. The former is also better for making Youtube videos, since the latter results in too much empty space around me.
Lighter
Marginally better battery life
Smaller camera bumps
Nicer colors like green2
The titanium outside band of the 15 tends to discolor when touched3, which phones always are.
The Pro has no benefits over the 15
… for my use cases. It has extra features, but features are not the same as benefits.
Let’s first discuss photography:
The Pro lets you define virtual lenses with a custom focal length, but you could instead pinch to zoom or crop on the 15, which produces equivalent results, according to The Verge and Max Tech’s comparisons.
The Pro has Lidar, which doesn’t help.
The Pro performs better at 3x or more zoom, that too only if you zoom in to the photo 300%. I’ll be taking a negligible number of zoom photos by the time the iPhone 16 is out, at which point I can upgrade to the Pro if 3x is important for me at that point. Don’t try to future-proof your purchases — you’ll waste a lot of money on things you’ll end up not using, as I’ve wasted in the past. Buy based on today’s needs. You don’t know tomorrow’s needs.
Both take equally good portraits. When I looked at comparison videos, I found that in daytime, 5 of the comparisons looked better on the Pro, 3 on the 15, and 5 were tied. At night, 4 were better on the 15 Pro, 2 better on the 15, and 3 equally good on both. In summary, the Pro offers no advantage for portrait photography.
The Pro supports macro photos, but I don’t do macro.
Let’s now see if the Pro is any better for videography:
The Pro comes with second-generation sensor shift optical stabilisation vs first-gen for the 15, but it’s no better.
The Pro can record log video, but that looks worse unless you grade it, which I’ve never done. Buy costly tools only after you’ve exhausted the potential of cheaper ones. Many people never max out what cheaper tools can do, and so have no reason to invest in costlier ones.
The Pro supports ProRes, which doesn’t make a difference because HEVC at high bitrates like 60 mbps is indistinguishable from 1 gbps: I compared on a 5K iMac at maximum brightness, with the curtains drawn, switching back and forth between different bitrates. Quality kept improving with bitrate, but not after 60 mbps. Another aspect to consider is generation loss. HEVC fares worse than ProRes, but generation loss won’t manifest for one or two generations, say if you edit your video in one app, export it, then import it to another app, edit it more and do your final export there. Besides, ProRes at UHD at 60 FPS requires an external SSD, and that’s the last thing I want dangling from my iPhone when I’m out and about. In any case, I haven’t done advanced video editing like this, or even basic video editing.
The Pro can record videos in Academy Colour Encoding System, but I won’t be submitting my movie for an Oscar this year.
The 15 can record videos in HEIC at 24, 48 and 12 megapixels, and RAW photos. The Pro also supports a third option, ProRAW, but ProRAW isn’t always better. In some cases, HEIC may be better, and in others, plain RAW may be better. I don’t know whether ProRAW makes an actual difference: if you equip two skilled photographers with an iPhone 15 and Pro each and send them out to capture a variety of photos, how often will the photog equipped with the Pro be able to produce a photo noticeably better than his competitor by using ProRAW? I don’t know, so I won’t waste money on ProRAW. It may just be technology for technology’s sake. Or technology for marketing’s sake, to help Apple sell more Pros. Technology that you don’t know how to use should have zero weightage in your decision-making.
Moving on to other aspects:
The Pro has a 120Hz screen, but video on Youtube is not 120 Hz, let alone video chat. The only remaining benefit is better UI animations, but even that is not really a benefit: I use a 120Hz Mac and iPad, and I don’t miss 120 Hz when it’s not there, such as when plugged in to my external monitor. I don’t even notice it. When I used two iPads side and side and compared, I could notice it, but it was a 1% improvement. It was like buying a scooter that can reach 101 kph instead of 100 — it makes zero difference in day to day usage. If a device can maintain 60 FPS consistently, it’s super smooth already.
The Pro has an “Action button”, but that seems like a gimmick. You can perform actions on the touchscreen equally well.
The Pro has an always-on screen, but I prefer screens to be off more often, not less.
The Pro supports USB 3 data transfers, but I’m rarely going to transfer a 20 GB file.
The Pro supports a faster CPU and GPU, but iPhones already have more performance than I use.
The Pro supports Thread networking technology, which has hardly any use.
The Pro supports Wifi 6E, but I don’t have a 6E router, and even my 500 mbps connection doesn’t max out what my Wifi 6 router supports, and I don’t see any benefit in paying for gigabit internet.
Buy on benefits first, cost second
My algorithm for purchases is to first identify the best product for me without taking cost into consideration. This step resulted in two options: the 15 and the Pro. Each has some benefits over the others. I couldn’t unambiguously say one is better for me. In such situations, I bring in cost as a factor to break the tie.
I do this two-step process because considering cost from the outset will muddy the comparison: Determining whether a product X is better than Y for you is hard enough without bringing a third factor “… for a price difference of Z”. Our minds are limited, and considering too many factors at once leads to wrong conclusions or being stuck. A lot of good decision-making is just knowing what factors not to consider, or not yet.
In this case, since the 15 and the Pro tied in benefits, I brought in the cost as a tie-breaker, choosing the 15 at ₹80K over the Pro at ₹1.4 lakh.
In different areas for different people. A chef might be appalled by the knives I use, but they work just fine for me. So maybe you don’t need to upgrade your iPhone 11 Pro, but may benefit by upgrading something else in your life like your tennis racquet.
The yellow is also good, but I like cool colors.
Apple says that wiping the iPhone with a damp cloth will remove the discoloration, but what will happen after that? You’ll touch the iPhone again, which brings you back to square one.