iPhone 15 Plus Review after 1.5 Years of Use

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kyle Crane
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iPhone 15 Plus 128GB bought from Amazon.in for 72,000₹ in February 2025

Upgrading from a iPhone 11 which was a 5 year old phone by then. 4G modem was a issue since I completely missed the 5G bus when it launched in late 2022

Pros
1. 6.7 Inch 15 Pro Max size display​
2. 4300mah (approx.) battery with 1000 charge cycle rating and a single cell design. (Single cell degrades slower than dual cell)​
3. 48mp Main camera with really good low light photos due to large sensor than before (iPhone 14 series)​
4. 12mp UW camera with Action Mode support​
5. X70 Network Modem same as iPhone 15 Pro​

Cons
1. 6GB RAM and it got outdated the day Apple Intelligence was launched and Apple decided a minimum 8GB Ram requirement, 6GB RAM is so less that you can’t multitask well and Apps will reload. I’m not someone who games on the phone and yet i saw many App reloads in day to day tasks​
2. 60hz display​
3. USB 2.0 480Mbps speeds​
4. iOS 18 and 26 both suck.​
5. Random slowdowns, Especially after clicking 48mp photos or just swiping apps (something to do with bugs on iOS these days)​
6. Safari bugs, Photos App crashing, Slow iCloud Photo upload even with high speed stable broadband etc (significantly deteriorating user experience)​
7. significant heating when charging especially when using the phone while charging. I use a PD2.0 charger with a good quality cable (one of those which has a small display to show wattage) and if i use the phone on charging like, lets say I’m on 20% and plug the charger and its charging at full speed of 26W and i decide to keep using the phone, suddenly phone starts to warm up and get so hot that it would start thermal throttling the chip resulting in a very laggy UI and btw My unit isn't defective​
8. Apple just didn’t fucking care to design a good keyboard for large phones its so bad. And I’m not using third party keyboards.​
9. Network issues even with a high end Flagship modem (I’m not sure who takes the blame here but the user clearly shouldn't have to deal with this especially at a premium price)​
For example my friend has a Jio sim on some nothing 3A phone and he's getting a much better speed and signal than my phone on the same jio network​
On a personal rant​
I feel like Apple didn't make there phones for slow internet. It just expects 50mbps or above to be available everywhere. 5G is great and all but we are far from 50mbps stable all the time, why I’m ranting is because the bug situation apparently worsens with slow internet.​
Safari glitching because internet speed is not upto Apple standards, iCloud photos would take forever to download etc​
10. No Split tunnelling option on VPNs because Apple doesnt allow it​


I could go on and on but overall I’m having mixed experience with this phone

Somedays i get 9-10 hours of screen on time going from 100-0% (full battery cycle i don’t actually use the phone when its below 20%). And somedays it only does 6.5 - 7 hours before using the whole cycle

Apple Intelligence features being completely absent from a 1 year old phone (at launch of Apple Intelligence June 2024) is shit 💩
I’m hoping iOS 27 fixes the bug situation.
 
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Another Rant i have is

Scumbag YouTubers would tell people to disable background App refresh and disable this and that to get bettery battery life

I just don’t understand why a device over 700$ would require so much micro managing

The software should do these tweaks in the back without the consumer needing to change settings


I have personally never seen a high end OnePlus or samsung user do so much micro managing (maybe they have something similar as well but I’ve always seen them use the phone as it is)
 
The "Disable Background" thing only works on mobile data and does not scale well if you tend to keep apps running in the background.
IOS by default does a lot of tweaks; that is why it generally has better battery life for the "same mAh" compared to Android.

"outdated the day Apple Intelligence," trust me, you didn't miss anything.
I wonder if I should post a review as well... :cautious:
 
trust me, you didn't miss anything.
I kinda wanted that cleanup tool. as i wouldnt need to sit on photoshop or lightroom to do a quick fix thats why lol.

I wonder if I should post a review as well... :cautious:
why not, would be nice to read a genuine review here.
 
I agree with the poor cellular reception part. Upgraded from iPhone 12 to 17 and the network reception is pretty bad. My dad has a nothing phone 3a which has way better network.
The only reason I am sticking with iPhone is because it has very less glitches compared to android and carplay works flawlessly. Android Auto is the worst.
Couldn't care less about Apple intelligence or any of those gimmicy AI features, have kept it disabled on my Macbook and iPhone.
What shocks me is that they didn't bother to fix the network reception problem. Never liked it on my iPhone 12 but still the same issue on 17 as well. Otherwise it's a great phone. Battery life is pretty okay for me.
Always thought of getting a secondary android phone but don't want to deal with 2 devices, already screen time is a lot.
Used to face random slowdowns on 12, like you mentioned but didn't notice it on 17, i guess they fixed it.
8GB of ram seems sufficient for my use case but apps seems to be offloaded quite a few times which is annoying. Android has better memory management for sure.
 
@_rajat ikr i always felt that iPhones had poor network reception than Android phones of similar price segment

And yeah the extra ram and 120hz is probably why iPhone 17 feels smoother to you

About RAM management
I hate how the iphone removes the app when you need it the most

For example
I’m travelling in mumbai metro and book tickets using VI app. I book the ticket scan it once and then i swipe up (app goes in background) 7-10mins later my stop arrives and i want to fetch my QR ticket again and well iPhone restarts the app.

Then i have to stand on the side

Let it connect to VI app servers

Fetch booked tickets again

Ugh you get the point.
 
Happened with me a couple of times while travelling in Delhi and Bangalore metro, Paytm would load out of memory and I am stuck without any network if getting down at a underground station.
Since then I just take a screenshot of the QR after booking ticket via Paytm.
Idk how Apple just ignores basic stuff like memory management. Even a 20k android phone does it better.
 
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