iPhone 15/Plus iPhone 11 Pro vs 15 camera

[bigfatipod]

I have an iPhone 11 Pro that has been doing mostly well up until I recently upgraded to iOS 17. The device has become noticeably slower, so now I’m in a grey area between sticking with it and doing an upgrade.
The enhancements to the iPhone over the years have seemed interesting but not jaw dropping. With kids, I am mostly interested in camera performance. I’ve been happy with the 11 pro’s camera, so I am wondering if anyone can give feedback as to if an upgrade to a 15 would actually be noticeable or if I should attempt to squeeze out one more year from the 11.
I buy the device outright so no discounts, other than a trade in with apple for $250 for my current device.
Thanks for any feedback.

 

[adrianlondon]

What's "noticeably slower" exactly? I have the base 11, running iOS 17.1 beta, and it feels like it runs the same speed as it has been since I got it. In fact, I'm sure iOS 16 and 17 are faster than 15 was on my phone.

Or maybe it's getting slower little by little and I'm just not noticing. That's also possible.

 

[sack_peak]

It may be indexing after upgrading to iOS 17.x

I'd update all the apps, let it be for a few days and get back to us.

How's your iPhone's battery health?

 

[bigfatipod]

It may be indexing after upgrading to iOS 17.x

I'd update all the apps, let it be for a few days and get back to us.

How's your iPhone's battery health?

Battery health maximum capacity says 73%.


When I say slower, almost all the time (unless I am just toggling apps I recently used in the passed hour), things like opening the camera app, photos, google mail, or safari experience about a roughly 5 second delay to open/respond. Not the end of the world, but certainly not as snappy as it once was. All these 3rd party apps I use are updated and I’ve restarted a few times since the update. I also have about 20gb of space free, so I’m not tight on my gigabytes.

 

[winxmac]

I have iPhone 11 Pro Max and decided to go with iOS 16.7 (originally on iOS 16.4.1 when I got it)

It already feels slow to me when compared to iOS 16.7 on iPhone 14 Pro Max... If only Apple allows big jump downgrade, I will install iOS 13.7 or iOS 14.8

You said battery health is already 73%

Was it already 73% before upgrade or only went to 73% after the upgrade? Why did you not ask for a battery replacement?

Apple allows users to disable the performance throttling for devices with battery health lower than 80% so have you tried that?

My iPhone 11 Pro Max still has 100% battery health but going back to iOS 9 on iPhone 4s, the best version for your device is the major version designed for it...

 

[bigfatipod]

Pretty sure it was that low before iOS 17. Battery life was never an issue for me though. I expected to put the cost of a battery replacement towards a new phone eventually. The slugginess of my iOS upgrade caught me a bit off guard though.
Yes, in retrospect, I think going forward I’d keep to the OS of the phone or maybe just one beyond it.

 

[RickTaylor]

I also have an iPhone 11 pro. It's still on 16.6.1, and seems reasonably responsive to me. Seeing these posts, i might keep it there for a bit. Battery health is 81%, and I have no problem getting through the day with it. I often use the x2 zoom lens for taking portrait shots.

Still, I'm tempted by the iPhone 15 (the non-pro version). Even though it has no extra zoom lens, I understand it can take x2 zoom portrait pictures. I'm wondering if there would be a noticeable improvement from the 11 pro in this regard.

 

[JPack]

I also have an iPhone 11 pro. It's still on 16.6.1, and seems reasonably responsive to me. Seeing these posts, i might keep it there for a bit. Battery health is 81%, and I have no problem getting through the day with it. I often use the x2 zoom lens for taking portrait shots.

Still, I'm tempted by the iPhone 15 (the non-pro version). Even though it has no extra zoom lens, I understand it can take x2 zoom portrait pictures. I'm wondering if there would be a noticeable improvement from the 11 pro in this regard.

The 15 is a huge improvement in speed and camera quality. I pulled out my 11 to compare and it feels sluggish on iOS 17. In general, you’ll feel a difference with 3 gens or more.

 

[RickTaylor]

Perhaps it would be worth it to wait for the upgrade to 17.1, in case some of the bugs that were affecting the iPhone 15 pro models were affecting older models as well?

 

[MacDevil7334]

I’m someone who finds the jump in quality from 12 MP images to 24 MP on the 15 Pro to be worth the upgrade all by itself, so take my thoughts with that context. But I think you will see a noticeable jump going from the 11 Pro to a 15 or 15 Pro.

This article includes a nice summary of what you’ll get. Note that anything related to the zoom camera and macro mode does not apply to the regular 15.

 

[Rainshadow]

I switched from the 11Pro. The camera is significantly better. Thats really why I upgraded. My parents have a 13pro and even the differences there were noticeable to me.

The battery life is significantly better - for me. And I never thought my 11 was slow. In fact I was still impressed with how responsive it was, but after getting the 15… I held onto the 11 for a minute (week) before trading it in and I could barely stand getting through the reset operations. The lag was real and I had to recalibrate my app and keyboard presses.

My wife - who doesn’t usually note this stuff - even made a comment on how laggy it was after she used her 15.

Totally worth it. Can you wait? Sure. That is certainly a good option too. Next year will be better. Should you? That’s a financial decision.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I have an iPhone 11 Pro that has been doing mostly well up until I recently upgraded to iOS 17. The device has become noticeably slower, so now I’m in a grey area between sticking with it and doing an upgrade.
The enhancements to the iPhone over the years have seemed interesting but not jaw dropping. With kids, I am mostly interested in camera performance. I’ve been happy with the 11 pro’s camera, so I am wondering if anyone can give feedback as to if an upgrade to a 15 would actually be noticeable or if I should attempt to squeeze out one more year from the 11.
I buy the device outright so no discounts, other than a trade in with apple for $250 for my current device.
Thanks for any feedback.

My feedback is that the 15 Pro Max rocks. The sensationalist clickbait headlines here and elsewhere are pure BS. Go for whichever 15 Pro you like and enjoy.

Apps will tend to slow on older devices (Macs, iPhones, etc.) because newer versions of apps take advantage of the more modern tech of newer devices/OS versions.

 

[Nozuka]

I’m someone who finds the jump in quality from 12 MP images to 24 MP on the 15 Pro to be worth the upgrade all by itself, so take my thoughts with that context.

It's a bit sad that the 14 Pros didn't get the 24 MP mode. They are a great compromise between filesize and image quality. 12 MP is holding the camera back and a lot of details get lost. And according to Apple the pictures will also look better than 48MP, because of some processing it can't do (fast enough) on the 48MP pics.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

It's a bit sad that the 14 Pros didn't get the 24 MP mode. They are a great compromise between filesize and image quality. 12 MP is holding the camera back and a lot of details get lost. And according to Apple the pictures will also look better than 48MP, because of some processing it can't do (fast enough) on the 48MP pics.


View attachment 2291370

View attachment 2291371

Although MP count is a relevant parameter, and vendors treat increased MP as a measure of camera competence for buyer communications purposes, MP count is really just one parameter of many interacting to produce competent capture.

Once digital capture exceeds ~10 MP, processing power and the optical quality of lenses are just two of the parameters that are far more relevant than MP count, as alluded to in the above commentary "because of some processing it can't do (fast enough)."

Although buyers cannot easily see them as cutesy metrics, each year's underlying chip improvements and tens of thousands of additional engineering hours have huge impact on the overall competence of iPhone cameras.

Edit: another critical parameter is how well shot the image is or is not; meaning the photog's skill. In the early days of pro DSLR I found this out very dramatically with 12 MP Nikon D2x captures; a pic not properly shot would fall apart when trying to push it into glossy four-color ads, but really well shot pix would punch above their 12-MP-capture weight and perform equivalent to most 35mm film scans.