Apple iPhone 16 Plus vs. iPhone 15 Plus
The iPhone Plus has a large screen, a thin and lightweight design, and amazing battery life, so it makes sense to many buyers. However, the iPhone 15 Plus possesses many of the same qualities, so let's see how the Apple iPhone 16 Plus compares to the previous iPhone 15 Plus and which one is worth getting.
Table of Contents:
For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor's assessment in the following video or in the text further down below.
To sum things up, the iPhone 16 Plus arrives with a new chip with the promise of AI capabilities down the line, an improved screen glass, expanded camera capabilities, and faster wireless charging. There is also the added Action key and the new Camera control. But all this fits on a specs page - let's see how different the two devices really are in real-world use.
Size comparison
The iPhone 16 Plus has an identical footprint to the iPhone 15 Plus, which is hardly surprising. Both phones measure 160.9 x 77.8 x 7.8 mm. The iPhone 16 Plus is 2g lighter than the iPhone 15 Plus at 199g.
One difference is that the new iPhone 16 Plus should have improved durability, according to Apple. It features a new generation of Ceramic Shield front, which is supposed to be 50% tougher than the previous one on the iPhone 15 Plus.
There are also two new buttons on the iPhone 16 Plus that are missing on the iPhone 15 - the Action key used to be exclusive to iPhone Pro's and there is also the new Camera Control here.
Display comparison
The iPhone 16 Plus has the same display as the iPhone 15 Plus â a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED with excellent HDR capabilities and high resolution but a standard refresh rate of 60Hz. Both panels are advertised as capable of 1,000 nits of typical and up to 2,000 nits of maximum brightness.
Well, as per our display measurements, the iPhone 16 Plus screen is brighter than the iPhone 15 Plus â it offers 180nits more in Auto Brightness (1823 vs 1642), and 70nits more in manual mode (891 vs 820). Not that big of a difference, but still.
Battery life
The iPhone 16 Plus boasts a bigger battery than its predecessor - 4,674 mAh from 4.383 mAh. This is a rather modest increase of around 7%, but we'll take it.
The more significant change, however, comes from the improved efficiency of the new Apple A18 chipset and probably some under-the-hood improvements in iOS 18.
As a result, the new iPhone 16 Plus achieved a record-breaking Active Use Score of 18:49h. It's a chart-topping battery endurance and it shows the new Plus model offers 10 more hours of voice calls, 2.5h more web time, and 1 more hour of video streaming when compared to the iPhone 15 Plus. It's probably safe to say that it's the iPhone with the best battery life to date.