Apple has just announced the iPhone 16, but how does it compare to last year’s popular iPhone 15?
While there might not be that many changes at first glance, delve a little deeper and you’ll see a handful of meaningful changes that might sway your buying decision, from the addition of new physical buttons to a more powerful processor and support for the highly-anticipated Apple Intelligence.
While we’ve yet to go hands-on with the iPhone 16, we’ve spent a lot of time with the iPhone 15, and here’s how the two compare on paper ahead of our full, in-depth comparison coming very soon.
If you want to see how the iPhone 16 compares to other Apple handsets then be sure to check out our iPhone 16 vs iPhone 14 and iPhone 16 vs iPhone 13 round-ups.
Pricing & availability
Apple confirmed at the iPhone 16 launch that the iPhone range will match their predecessors in terms of pricing.
That means that the iPhone 16 starts at £799/$799 with 128GB of storage, and it’s up for pre-order now ahead of release on 20 September.
The iPhone 15, on the other hand, should soon see a healthy price drop to reflect the fact the newer model is now on sale, meaning you could potentially grab a bargain by going for the year-old model.
The iPhone 16 has new buttons
The iPhone 15 Pro models were treated to the all-new Action button in 2023, but it’s no longer a Pro exclusive with the iPhone 16 collection. This year, the entire range sports the Action button, allowing regular iPhone users to program the side button to run shortcuts for the first time.
It’s not the only new button to appear on the iPhone 16 either; the Capture Control button is new to the entire range, providing new physical controls for the Camera app.
You can lightly press the button to focus your shot, while a full press captures the photo or video. But, as the button is touch capacitive, you can also swipe left and right on the button to zoom in and out, without having to touch the display.
The iPhone 15 has neither of these new physical buttons, making it a key reason to opt for the newer model.
The iPhone 15 has a silent mode switch
While the iPhone 16 boasts not one but two new buttons on its chassis, there is something that the iPhone 15 has that the newer model doesn’t; a silent switch.
The staple of the iPhone was ditched in favour of the Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 ranges. While you can still program the Action button to function as a silent switch, it’s not quite the same as being able to reach into your pocket and feel whether your phone is on silent without having to get it out of your pocket or interact with it at all.
It’s a small feature, admittedly, but a handy one nonetheless that isn’t present on the iPhone 16.
The iPhone 16 has a much more powerful processor
For the past couple of years, Apple has split its processor offering between its regular and Pro models – likely as another excuse to tempt you to upgrade to the more premium powerful version of the iPhone.
That means that, when the iPhone 15 was released, it actually got the iPhone 14 Pro’s A16 Bionic chipset, while the iPhone 15 Pro range offered the faster, more powerful (and actually new) A17 Pro chipset.
That’s not the case with the iPhone 16 however; Apple has reverted to offering the A18 chipset across the entire iPhone range, though the Pro models do get a slightly more powerful A18 Pro chipset.
That also means there’s a whopping two-year gap in performance between the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16, despite only being a year between their respective releases, suggesting that the iPhone 16 will be much more powerful than the iPhone 15 – Apple claims a 30% boost to CPU speeds and 40% boost to GPU performance compared to the A16 Bionic – though we’ll have to wait until we run benchmarks on the newer iPhone before we can say for sure.
The iPhone 16 supports Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence was revealed back at WWDC, representing Apple’s long-awaited entry into the world of on-device generative AI – a trend that has been growing on the Android side of things for at least a year, if not longer.
Apple Intelligence brings quite a bit of new functionality to the iPhone experience too; not only is Siri smarter, but it’s much faster, now running entirely on-device. It also powers a range of new experiences, like smarter photo editing capabilities, custom emoji dubbed Genmoji and even integration with other AI systems, starting with OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.
There’s a catch, however; Apple Intelligence isn’t available on the regular iPhone 15, instead available on the Pro models and their boosted chipsets.
That’s not the same with the iPhone 16 collection, however, with the entire range able to run Apple Intelligence on-device – likely a driver behind a unified chip offering across the range. It’s worth noting that it’ll be US-only at launch, however, so if you’re in the UK, EU or other regions around the world, there won’t be much difference compared to the iPhone 15 – at first, anyway.
The iPhone 16 has a new camera layout
While there might not be much in the way of hardware changes for the iPhone 16’s camera offering, matching the primary 48MP and 12MP ultrawide sensors of its predecessor, the iPhone 16 does sport a new vertical camera layout reminiscent of the iPhone X.
The reason behind the change in layout, aside from offering a refreshed look compared to the iPhone 15, is to more easily capture spatial video, using information from both cameras to create a 3D-like effect that’s perfect for viewing on VR headsets like, say, Apple’s own high-end Apple Vision headset.
Early verdict
The iPhone 16 looks to offer handy upgrades in the form of the new Action button and Capture Control, and it’ll also benefit from Apple Intelligence smarts too.
However, if you’re willing to forego those new features, the iPhone 15 still offers a strong experience, and one that’ll likely come at a discount now too – though we’ll save our final thoughts for our full, in-depth comparison coming very soon.
