Apple iPhone 16 vs iPhone 15: Is the new iPhone worth your money?

The iPhone 16 is available in five colourways. (Image Source: Apple)

Design

Compared to the iPhone 15, the iPhone 16 may look similar at first glance, but Apple has introduced some notable design changes to its newest smartphone. While the iPhone 15 has three physical buttons (power and volume), the iPhone 16 gets two new physical buttons that offer more functionality.

Apple has ported the Action button, which replaces the mute switch and lets you perform custom actions. It works similar to the Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro series. The Cupertino based tech giant also introduced a new ‘Camera control’ button, which, as the name suggests, lets you quickly access the camera with a single click.

The capacitive button can also act as a shutter and even supports gestures, meaning users can swipe on it to control various camera functions such as zoom level, volume, and adjust settings like exposure and effects.

Another visible change is that unlike the iPhone 15, which had a diagonal camera arrangement, the iPhone 16 has a dual camera setup with the sensors now arranged in a vertical manner. The reason behind this is, however, purely functional, as Apple wants its new phones to be able to record Spatial Videos.

 

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Software

While both the iPhone 15 and the iPhone 16 will get the much anticipated iOS 18 treatment, only the latter will support Apple Intelligence features. So if you were thinking of trying out Apple’s upcoming AI features, the iPhone 16 is the way to go.

Hardware

While the iPhone 16 has the same 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR screen as its predecessor, it is powered by Apple’s latest A18 Bionic chip.

The new chip comes with a hexa-core configuration with 2 performance cores and 4 power efficient cores and a new 5-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine to power AI tasks.

Compared to the iPhone 15’s A16 chipset, the newly unveiled A18 Bionic chipset offers up to 30 per cent and 40 per cent faster CPU and GPU performance respectively.

The new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 allows you to quickly take photos or shoot videos. (Image Source: Apple)

Camera

On paper, the iPhone 15 and the iPhone 16 boast the same camera setup, but Apple seems to be using a new sensor on the latter.

Just like its predecessor, the iPhone 16 has a 48MP primary shooter with the same f/1.6 aperture as last year. However, it can take photos in 2x zoom without losing out on image quality, thanks to the in-sensor zoom.

While the iPhone 16 has the same 12MP ultrawide shooter as the iPhone 15, the new camera sensor now brings support for autofocus and can even help take macro shots, something the previous models missed out on.

Battery and charging

Apple rarely reveals the battery capacity of the iPhones, but the tech giant did say that the iPhone 16 will last longer compared to last year’s model. The tech giant says the new model offers up to 22 hours of video playback compared to the iPhone 15’s 20 hour playback, which means there will only be a slight improvement in the battery department.

However, Apple has bumped up wireless charging from 15W to 25W, something which users would appreciate in the long run.

Apple iPhone 15 vs iPhone 16: Which one should you buy?

The iPhone 16 does bring some notable upgrades in the hardware, software and camera department. While the screen and battery may be the same as last year, the more powerful cameras in addition to Apple’s suite of AI features and new buttons make the iPhone 16 a worthy upgrade over the iPhone 15.

While the iPhone 15 is a great buy for Rs 69,900, if you can spend Rs 10,000 extra, we recommend going with the iPhone 16, which starts from Rs 79,900.