Geek Review: Apple iPhone 15

When it comes to a small, affordable powerful smartphone, the Apple iPhone 15 stands in a class of its own. Compared to the iPhone 5.4-inch 13 mini, which was probably the last of its petite kind and released back in 2021, the 6.1-inch iPhone 15 is currently the smallest and most affordable iPhone available for this generation and anyone looking for a much needed upgrade, but still prefers a smaller device footprint, can easily embrace this powerhouse.

The iPhone 15 comes in at 147.6mm x 71.6mm, and 171g, making it just 20mm larger than the iPhone 13 mini, which has served as my primary phone of choice. Thanks in part to the slimmer edge to edge display to bezel profile, this has allowed for a larger display on a smaller frame, providing much more screen real estate to use, with more space for reading notes and documents, as well as gaming.

Apple’s line of devices is known to be popular for its minimalist and sleek design, and the iPhone 15 is decked out in a matte glass backing accompanied by aerospace-grade aluminium. This creates a smooth, but not slippery, grip to the phone that feels comfortable to hold without a case. Speaking of cases, Apple fans who would like to upgrade to the iPhone 15 should consider a clear case to display the vibrant colour of their new iPhone 15 as it now comes in pastel blue, pink, yellow, green and a classic matte black.

Powered by last year’s A16 Bionic chip that made its debut on the iPhone 14 Pro series, the iPhone 15 ships with Apple’s Super Retina XDR Display, offering 2556 x 1179 pixel resolution, and at 460 ppi (pixels per inch), which is similar to that on the iPhone 15 Plus. Performance on the device is smooth, especially with the screen’s stunning colours and brilliance on games and images, whether it’s taken natively or sourced elsewhere.

And the Super in the name should stand for super bright! Living in a hot and sunny country, light is always reflecting off the phone screen when used outdoors, which makes the content on display almost invisible. Yet, the iPhone 15 tackles this pain point head on, with a peak outdoor brightness of up to 2,000 nits, which is over three times brighter than iPhone 12, and more than enough under the sun. 

And yet, the biggest performance boost here isn’t even on the phone, but the fact that it now uses a standard USB-C cable and connector for charging, transferring data, and connecting to a wide range of accessories! Having to bring last year’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro to class is never an issue, but the need to bring around two cables – the Lightning cable for the iPhone 13 mini, and USB-C for the iPad, just always meant having something extra to bring around in school and class but now, one charger and cable is all every student needs. How convenient!

As an avid mobile gamer, the iPhone 15 continues to shine with games and while the use of the A16 Bionic chip means it won’t be able to play AAA titles such as Resident Evil Village, which is only for the A17 Pro-powered iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max phones, the current chip is more than capable of handling titles including Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. It’s either that the 6‑core CPU (2 performance and 4 efficiency cores) and 5‑core GPU are more than capable of running those games, or that those games aren’t that intensive to begin with. 

That said though, with streaming services and game companies releasing bigger, more high quality content, you can never be sure if using an older chip puts budget-conscious users behind the curve, especially as content visuals and experiences evolve.

Still, the iPhone 15 is currently more than capable of throwing users into an immersive experience, not just with games and videos, but also with everyday routines that are going to be so much more comfortable to perform, without having to constantly squint and hunch over the phone to cast a measly shadow to look at things.

And good news for photography buffs, or as friends like to refer to themselves as, micro-influencers. Or so they think. Instead of a lower grade camera, the dual camera lenses on the iPhone 15 now pack a 48MP main camera, at 26mm and with ƒ/1.6 aperture, alongside sensor‑shift optical image stabilisation, and support for super-high-resolution photos of 24MP and 48MP. There is the 12MP ultra-wide, at 13mm and with ƒ/2.4 aperture and a 120-degree field of view.

The 48MP camera is packed with a quad-pixel sensor that captures photographs with better-than-life details at a high resolution, and this hardware also comes with new features for the standard Apple Portrait photography mode, including the ability to swap to the mode directly from the camera mode, simply by pressing the ƒ button on the screen.

The new image processing engine significantly enhances the quality of photos taken in less-than-ideal lighting conditions, such as indoors or during sunset, resulting in up to a 2x improvement in low-light performance. Additionally, there’s improved accuracy in distinguishing and capturing hair details, and it now supports Live Photos for the first time. When you use the main camera, it automatically provides the option for 24MP images.

For friends who’ve played with the phone’s camera, their favourite to use is the 2X Telephoto that allows for fast aperture, image stabilisation, and sharp focus, and the best part is that users can capitalise on this feature not only with photos, but in videos, Portrait mode, Cinematic mode, Time-lapse, and Panorama.

Still, the TrueDepth Camera is the feature that social media users are really going to rave about. One of the key qualities is that it adds a beautiful and subtle blur to backgrounds after detecting a person or subject in the photo, efficiently creating Instagram-ready photos. This enhanced depth-of-field effect is joined by an improved Night Mode and noise reduction as upgrades, along with the updated Smart HDR mode that enhances photos, making them appear more true to life by improving their dynamic range. 

Furthermore, when shooting videos in low-light conditions, the A16 Bionic chip helps reduce noise in darker areas, resulting in better-quality footage for the timeline!

Anyone would be pretty ecstatic about the camera upgrade from the iPhone 13 mini. In this age of the internet, we take so many photos all the time of friends and family, but have no time to edit them at all. The iPhone 15 helps to expedite annoying edits like background blurring and grain, so more focus can be put on picking out the photos that really look good.

One feature that did take some getting used to, is the highly lauded Dynamic Island that offers app updates, including messages, missed calls and music track listing, among many others, in the form of a pill-shape bubble on the main screen. As many others have mentioned before, Dynamic Island just takes up unnecessary space and interrupts viewing experiences. On the iPhone 15, it also tucks away at the icon that shows what network you’re using, which is a nightmare for those on a limited data plan.

For the gamers, the appearance of the Dynamic Island shifts the experience of gameplay slightly but just enough to feel different, from the sudden loss of visuals in the space. However, as most FPS or RPG mobile games are oriented for experiencing in landscape mode, you’ll find that your hands will block most of the Dynamic Island, allowing you to forget that it is even there at all.

During daily use or scrolling on social media, compared to the iPhone models without it, the Dynamic Island seems extremely out of place as it blocks a noticeably large amount of space on a generic scrolling interface like Instagram. However, this is a minor irritation compared to the benefits of an upgrade to the iPhone 15. 

Speaking of daily use, the iPhone 15 can last an upwards of 11 to 12 hours of use, covering the average person’s work day out and about. While Apple does have an amazing MagSafe charger, iPhone 15 users might not need it at all with the long-lasting battery life. Now, Apple fans can juggle streaming, on-the-go gameplay and endless scrolling without worrying if their phone will die on them on the way home from a long of work or school. This is especially important with new trends of working remotely and always needing to be connected during the day to stay on top of news and notifications from colleagues at work.