The iPhone 15 is just around the corner. If the rumour mill is anything to be believed, the biggest change this year will be how you charge the handset, with Apple shifting its phones to be USB-C friendly – well, EU friendly, more so.
Apple sure knows how to drum up hype for a phone, even though it hasn’t actually said a thing about the iPhone 15. There are reports and opinions galore, this one included, which all definitely help to build up excitement for the next-generation of iPhone. It’s hard to not be excited, though, especially with gadgets like the iPhone 15 being the bread and butter of a platform like Gizmodo. But it’s bigger than that. Apple is an innovation powerhouse. Apple is the poster child for How To Hype. But Apple is also notorious for making a song and dance about the smallest of things. Take for example the yellow versions of the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus.
The iPhone 14 and 14 Plus in yellow saw Apple in March relaunch the same phone as it did six months prior, just in a different colour. Although there was no global event, there was hype, and reviewing the device made us think differently about the iPhone 14 Plus. Apple did it before, no doubt it’ll do it again.
But would you really buy a new iPhone six months out from the release of a new one? And six months since it launched? You must, because Apple keeps doing it, and that company doesn’t do anything without a reason.
And, who can forget the Dynamic Island from the iPhone 14 launch. This thing was treated like the wheel had been redefined. It’s merely a pill-shaped bar atop the Pro and Pro Max phones that show things. Genuinely, that’s all it does, and it’s cool, yeah, but… aside from a slight increase in specs and year-on-year improvements to the camera system, the iPhone 14 range was mostly the same as the iPhone 13. I even went as far as saying the iPhone 14 and its seemingly pointless 14 Plus sibling were merely the Pro iPhone 13 models with a different name. It’s likely the base model iPhone 15 will be much the same as the iPhone 14 Pro, save perhaps for some camera features.
So, if that’s the case this year, why would you buy a new iPhone instead of opting for last year’s at a cheaper price or just holding out another year? I asked others in the office their thoughts. And the overwhelming response was “battery life sucks on my current one”, with one out of the 29 people that answered saying something along the lines of they just always get a new iPhone. This wasn’t just Gizmodo staff, so take a tech obsession out of the equation completely here.
The phone I currently use full time is the iPhone 14 Pro Max, one Apple provided to Gizmodo (pretty standard practice with phone/laptop/gadget makers, by the way) at launch. The battery life has always been fabulous, with me often able to go an entire day without charging it – and I use it a lot. But now, I have to charge it every night. I do throttle the thing, and I’m not going to reopen the debate about planned obsolescence, but, batteries drain over time, etc, etc. I could, however, go another year with this phone if it were mine and not a loan device.
Should you get a new iPhone?
It’s unlikely that if your current iPhone is a 14 (maybe even a 13) you’d be looking to upgrade. It’s also unlikely that you’ll see any large improvements over the phone you currently have, save for better battery life and an improved camera. It’s the iPhone 12 and below users that would notice a massive difference in every way possible.
Last year, the cheapest iPhone was the 14 128GB at $1,399; the most expensive was the 14 Pro Max 1TB at $2,769. That’s a lot of money.
No doubt the iPhone 15 will be the best phone Apple has ever made and it will be shiny and new and have you wanting it. Whether you need it is a whole other thing. Moving from Android to iOS is another conversation for another time, but, either way, Apple will have the tech curious, and the general public, tbh, in a stranglehold Wednesday morning from 3 am. It’s a lesson in hype no other company even comes close to replicating.
Image: Apple/Gizmodo Australia
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