iPhone 15 Plus review: A big, beautiful compromise

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Of the quartet of new iPhones released this fall, the iPhone 15 is the cheapest, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the sexiest, and the iPhone 15 Pro–powerful and portable–is the connoisseur’s choice. But the iPhone 15 Plus might just be the most fascinating.

After all, this is a form factor that didn’t exist at Cupertino until last year. Apple’s philosophy until then was that small things should be cheap and large ones expensive… which admittedly has some logic to it. But phone buyers don’t like being put in neat boxes, and some of them would quite like to get a large screen without having to pay for the very latest features and processing power. That’s where the Plus line comes in.

We’re looking at a compromise phone, then. One that sacrifices in a bunch of areas in order to supercharge one specific feature: that whopping 6.7-inch screen. Not that the other specs are dismal by any means. They’re just not Pro-standard. Are the (mild) sacrifices worth it? I think so. But let’s take a look in more detail.

Design and build

• Classic minimalist design
• Feels great in the hand
• May be too big for some

In terms of design, the 15 Plus mostly sticks to the Plus formula established by Apple in 2022 (a formula which itself was largely based on the iPhone 12 from 2020). The edges are squared off; the corners of the screen are rounded; there are two camera lenses on the rear in a diagonal configuration. It’s essentially a standard-looking non-Pro iPhone with only tweaks from previous designs.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course. Apple is quite conservative in its phone designs, but the company’s aesthetic remains both appealing and instantly recognisable. The clean lines, the lack of extraneous detail, the pleasing contrast between flat matte and brushed-metal surfaces… it all adds up to a modern classic that has (by tech standards) stood the test of time.

In terms of size, this is as big as iPhones currently get, with a generous 6.7-inch screen housed in a 201-gram body that’s more than 16cm from nose to tail. That’s just over 7 ounces, if you prefer old money, and 6.33 inches. As someone who usually grabs the non-Max Pro version of each iPhone generation, I was concerned that this might be too big for me, but I’ve got used to it in no time. It fits in my jeans pocket, and I can use it reasonably comfortably with one hand, thanks in part to features like Reachability. Your mileage may vary, however. I have what I consider to be average-sized hands for a man (my limit on the piano is a ninth, if that helps at all) so those who are more petite should visit an Apple Store and check their compatibility with this form factor.

But back to those tweaks. The back glass, Apple trumpets, has been “infused” with color. While I’m not quite sure what that means, I can report that the pink model, which I reviewed, has a delicate pale rose color on the rear with a matte milky finish, contrasting nicely with the slightly darker translucent pink housing for the camera module. I like the way it feels in the hand, too: cool and smooth without being slippery. This impression is assisted by the more contoured edges on the aluminium enclosure, an improvement on the sharper edges of some previous models. (These considerations, mind you, will be moot if you use your iPhone 15 Plus with a case. But I know naked iPhone users exist, and I salute your courage.)

The biggest tweak is on the bottom edge: the Lightning port we’ve grown used to has been replaced in this year’s new iPhones with USB-C. This was a controversial decision at a corporate level–there’s been a lot of political wrangling–but should be mostly beneficial for users, who can now charge their iPhones with the same cables as their cameras, games consoles… and Macs and iPads. It may be frustrating that your Lightning accessories won’t be usable any more, unless you want to buy a dongle, but on the whole you’ll probably find that you gain more than you lose. Just bear in mind that the USB-C port in the 15 Plus is less advanced than the ones in the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max; it’s capped at 480Mbps data transfer, compared to their 10Gbps.

The other design changes in this year’s Pro models—namely the Action button and the titanium enclosure—are not present here, as is usual under Apple’s “please spend more money” strategy. But it does get one from last year’s Pro, and that’s the Dynamic Island.

Screen quality

• Brighter screen is brilliant for outdoors viewing
• Clever Dynamic Island feature

The 15 Plus has a 6.7-inch OLED screen, more than big enough for excellent gaming performance and immersive TV and movie watching. The size hasn’t changed from the previous generation, but Apple has squeezed in slightly more pixels–resolution has been bumped from 2778 x 1284 to 2796 x 1290–so in theory it ought to be fractionally sharper; in practice you’re unlikely to notice.

What you probably will notice is the far more significant increase in maximum brightness, which now goes all the way up to 2,000 nits outdoors. That matches the bar set by last year’s Pro models, and far surpasses the 1,200 nits which Apple says is the limit of the iPhone 14 Plus. I spent time in a sunny park watching the gloomiest Netflix shows I could find, and was thoroughly impressed. Of course you’re still dealing with some reflections in the screen, the experience isn’t ideal out of doors, but the brightness of the picture makes it easy to make out what’s going on.

And how can we forget the Dynamic Island! Introduced to the Pro line in 2022, this “floating” aperture for the front-facing camera and sensors replaces the notch and offers far more. The island expands and animates as it takes on different roles, showing information about connected accessories, running timers, and even current scores in sports games you’re following. (You can read all the things the Dynamic Island could do from launch in this explainer, but note that a bunch more were added in iOS 17.)

Now, this is still ultimately a compromise: a small area of unusable screen that is necessary because under-screen sensors are not yet a viable or cost-effective for Apple to include in its smartphones. But by cleverly blending that area in with the space immediately around it and using the whole thing as a multipurpose notification zone, Apple has made a decent fist of convincing us that it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Cameras

• Takes vivid, high-quality images
• 2x optical zoom for first time in non-Pro iPhone
• Smart HDR 5 delivers excellent shots in difficult lighting

Here we come to one of the biggest improvements on the previous generation. The 15 Plus is still limited to two camera lenses on the rear (whereas the Pro line has boasted triple cameras since the 11 Pro in 2019), but this year one of these has gotten a lot more powerful: the main lens has jumped from 12MP to 48MP, following a similar bump in the Pro models in 2022.

Ordinarily we’d warn readers not to obsess too much about megapixels, but this is a little different because, first, it’s a really big increase, and second, because it makes a functional difference with the addition of optical-quality zoom. That third lens on the Pro handsets is telephoto, and the lack of this has always limited the zoom capabilities of non-Pro models. (They have had two zoom options since the iPhone 11—0.5x and 1x—but zooming out doesn’t really count in my view.) Because the 15 Plus’s main lens is operating at such a high resolution, it can effectively crop into the image without any noticeable loss of quality, which means you actually get 0.5x, 1x, and 2x zoom.

Now, this obviously doesn’t compare to the 3x optical zoom offered on the iPhone 15 Pro, let alone the superb 5x on the 15 Pro Max, but it’s still worth having. I used the 2x zoom a lot in testing, and was impressed with its quality and convenience. It just feels like a natural option when taking photos of anything smaller than a building: for shooting people, animals, and flowers, the 2x zoom works best, saving you cropping in later and losing some quality.

Another new feature Apple calls next-generation portraits, which is an extension of the portrait mode offered on iPhones for years, whereby depth information is used to blur the background and artistically draw attention to the subject of a portrait photo. Specifically, the updated system automatically detects people, dogs, and cats, and records depth information on any photos with such subjects in case the phone owner later wants to turn the shot into a bokeh-blurred portrait. I tried this out on people, which worked perfectly, and on a neighbor’s dog, which was more hit and miss: when the dog was in a three-quarter profile (no doubt distracted by a bird) the feature didn’t trigger, but when it looked straight at me the phone knew to record the depth data.

Dogs are far more varied in appearance than humans, and cats for that matter, so I imagine they are more of a challenge for the AI. But the odd thing is that iOS knew there was a dog in the three-quarter photo, and even told me the breed when I tapped on the info button in Photos. Two parts of the system are failing to talk to each other, unfortunately.

If you’re taking a photo of another subject–a lovely horse, perhaps, or a bollard as in the image below–then you can manually trigger the next-gen portrait function by tap-focusing on the subject. When you later open that image in Photos, even though you weren’t using portrait mode in the Camera app, you’ll see a portrait dropdown at the top left which gives you the option to turn bokeh blurring on or off.

The final camera upgrade I’d like to talk about is Smart HDR 5, the latest iteration of a technology Apple uses to stitch together elements of multiple exposures in order to handle complex lighting conditions. This is most effective when dealing with that old bugbear, the backlit subject; older digital cameras would either overexpose the bright background, or underexpose the subject and leave them in indistinct shadow. But with Smart HDR it’s possible to capture detail on the low-light areas without blowing out the brighter ones.

I’m a big fan of Smart HDR, then, and again enjoyed its effects on the iPhone 15 Plus. I did my usual ill-advised selfie test (with a bright sun peeping over my shoulder) and the phone coped happily with the challenge, capturing detail on my face and realistic skin tones without turning the sky into a featureless white expanse. I hid under trees and shot directly at the sun through their branches, and both the sky and the bark were captured in realistic detail despite the huge disparity in brightness.

In short, this is a good technology. What is debatable, however, is how much difference there really is between its iterations. Admittedly I’m coming to the 15 Plus from the 14 Pro, which in terms of processing power is the equivalent of this year’s Plus model, not last year’s. But in photographic terms I should be seeing the upgrade from Smart HDR 4 to Smart HDR 5–and I didn’t notice any particular improvement on the (already excellent) treatment of multiple lighting conditions. The problem Apple faces when trying to sell improvements in its iPhone cameras is that years ago they reached a level of excellence that will easily be good enough for most people in almost all normal circumstances. And reviewers like me have to find increasingly convoluted and unrealistic ways to find the edge cases where this year’s iPhone takes better photos than last year’s.

Nevertheless, I’m happy to report that the iPhone 15 Plus takes brilliant photos in a wide range of conditions. Its color reproduction is exemplary, and shots were richly detailed.

Battery life & charging

• Even better battery life than the 14 Plus
• Lasts a full day with ease
• Can charge a connected Apple Watch or AirPods case

One of the advantages of going for a big phone is you get a big battery inside. The 15 Plus has a 4,383 mAh battery, compared to 3,349 mAh for the standard iPhone 15. (It’s also slightly larger than the battery in last year’s iPhone 14 Plus, which had a capacity of 4,325 mAh.)

Apple expects the 15 Plus to last considerably longer than the 15 in standard use, predicting a battery life of 26 hours of video playback, dwarfing the 20 hours predicted for the 15 and 23 for the 15 Pro. So much for Apple’s estimates; how did the 15 Plus do in the real world?

Well, the key criterion for success in terms of battery performance is whether a phone can comfortably and reliably get through a full day away from mains power, and the 15 Plus had absolutely no worries in that department. In typical use it would generally finish the day with more than 40 percent battery remaining; even on a day when I listened to a huge amount of music and podcasts it made it to bedtime at 35 percent. Heavy gaming use may reduce longevity still further, but I can’t imagine you’ll need to begin worrying about mid-day charging until the battery has aged several years.

That’s my subjective experience, but for a strict scientific comparison we use the battery test in Geekbench 4. Here the iPhone 15 managed 12 hrs 21 mins. That sounds bad but really isn’t; in fact it’s a solid improvement on last year’s (already excellent) 14 Plus, which lasted 11 hrs 36 mins, and a long way ahead of this year’s iPhone 15 Pro (10 hrs 43 mins).

Geekbench 4 battery test

It’s important to bear in mind that this is a very demanding benchmark designed to stretch a phone’s capabilities; it doesn’t give you a realistic estimate of how long a device will last in normal use. It’s purely useful for comparing how good a device’s battery performance is in comparison to another.

On a related note, the iPhone 15 Plus is officially capable of fast charging, but that’s a vague term that’s more about marketing than a scientific assessment of the device’s capabilities. Apple says that, provided you’re using a 20W or faster adapter, 35 minutes of charging will get the 15 Plus from 0 percent to 50 percent power, and based on testing this is a slight undersell. After 35 minutes with a 67W MacBook adapter my sample had reached 64 percent. It took 1 hr 32 mins to charge from completely empty to completely full.

• After 15 mins: 26%
• After 30 mins: 55%
• After 35 mins: 64%
• After 60 mins: 86%
• After 1 hr 32 mins: 100%

Before we leave this topic behind, it’s worth mentioning that (as I outline in my USB-C port explainer) the 15 Plus is also capable of reverse charging. Connect the iPhone’s USB-C port to an Apple Watch or AirPods case and power will flow in the opposite direction, a handy option if you get caught short. I tried this for 15 minutes with an Apple Watch Series 8; the watch rose from 53 percent to 68 percent, while the iPhone 15 Plus dropped from 100 percent to 97 percent.

Performance

• Year-old A16 Bionic processor
• But performance was excellent

The iPhone 15 Plus (like the standard iPhone 15) is equipped with the A16 Bionic chip. Again, that’s inferior to what’s on offer at the Pro end of the line-up; the 15 Pro comes with the A17 Pro chip. But the A16 is still an extremely fast and future-proofed piece of silicon.

Subjectively, it performed at top level throughout testing. Every app I tried was a doddle, and no processing task seemed to give it a headache. Applying retrospective bokeh blurring to a photograph, for example, was achieved in seconds. With the A17 Pro now on the market developers will begin to release more demanding software, but I will be surprised if anything capable of giving the 15 Plus a real problem appears on the App Store within the next two years. Including a year-old processor in a phone that starts at $899 / £899 might seem cheeky–and indeed is–and you can expect around a year less of top-level performance than if you bought the iPhone 15 Pro. But this device still has a long and active life ahead of it.

In the Geekbench 6.2 benchmarking software the 15 Plus recorded a single-core score of 2641, narrowly beating the iPhone 14 Pro from last year and 13 percent up on the 14 Plus. In multi-core, it scored an excellent 6685, an improvement of 17 percent on the 14 Plus. This is a good performance.

Geekbench 6.2 benchmarks

Price & availability

The iPhone 15 Plus was launched in September 2023, and starts at $899 / £899.

• 128GB: $899 / £899 / AU$1,649
• 256GB: $999 / £999 / AU$1,849
• 512GB: $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,199

You can buy direct from Apple, or browse our roundup of the best iPhone 15-series deals.

Verdict: Should you buy the iPhone 15 Plus?

It was a pleasure testing this phone, and I’m happy that it will be my main handset for the coming year. The screen is big, bright, and brilliant. The camera setup is better than ever, with the 2x optical zoom a particular highlight, and battery life is very impressive. I was also pleased to see the inclusion of the Dynamic Island feature just one year after it first appeared on the Pro series; like most of Apple’s odd little control systems–such as the Action button and the Touch Bar–I’m not convinced it will ever catch on among third-party software makers, but it definitely achieves the more conservative aim of replacing the notch with something better.

It would be easy to get hung up on Apple’s obvious recent strategy of denigrating the non-Pro handsets in order to encourage upsell, and the inclusion of a year-old processor at this price is undoubtedly irritating. But as compromises go this one is relatively easy to swallow, since Apple’s silicon has always been faster than it needs to be, and losing one year of future-proofing is no great hardship. And as I may have hinted in the previous paragraph, I don’t think the Action button is a huge loss either.

If you want the best, you need to go shopping in the Pro aisle. But this remains an excellent phone that makes some slight concessions in order to cram in a large, superb-quality screen at a reasonable (albeit not exactly bargain) price.

Find out all about the new features in the iPhone 15 series in our guide: Best new iPhone 15 Plus features.

Tech specs

• A16 Bionic processor (6-core CPU, 5-core GPU)
• 6.7-inch 2796×1290 460ppi Super Retina XDR display
• Dual-lens rear camera: 48MP f/1.6 Main, 12MP f/2.4 Ultra Wide; up to 2x optical zoom
• 12MP f/1.9 front camera
• Smart HDR 5
• 128/256/512GB storage
• Estimated battery life: Up to 26 hours video playback
• Fast charge: Up to 50% charge in 35 minutes with 20W adapter
• Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, 5G
• USB-C charging/data connection
• IP68 dust and water resistance (maximum depth 6m up to 30 minutes)
• 6.33 x 3.06 x 0.31 inches (160.9 x 77.8 x 7.8mm)
• 7.09 ounces (201 grams)

Best Prices Today: Apple iPhone 15 Plus