After five fun years as an Android user, curiosity got the better of me. I’ve been using my iPhone 15 for the past week or so to re-immerse myself in iOS and contribute more to my iPhone coverage.
Overall, I was impressed with last year’s base model iPhone. A lot has certainly changed since I got rid of my iPhone 5S in 2019. In the decade between the launch of the iPhone 5S and iPhone 15, Apple improved the iPhone in just about every way, right down to screen size (from 4 inches to 6.1 inches). inches), battery life (from a few hours to almost a day), and connectivity (USB-C!).
Unfortunately, there’s one thing Apple hasn’t fixed in the 10 years between my previous iPhone and my current one, and it hasn’t been fixed with the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus.
In the Android world, 120Hz is the new standard for flagship and high-end phone displays, while lower-priced options typically have 120Hz or 90Hz displays. These days, 60Hz displays are the privilege of tablets and even the cheapest mobile phones. The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are total oddities by modern standards.
The 60Hz debacle has been the focus of discussion here at TechRadar for years. “Apple, please don’t do this to the iPhone 15,” Mobile Computing managing editor Roland Moore-Collier wrote in the lead-up to the 2023 iPhone launch, with phone editor Axel Metz writing. He found that 120Hz changed his entire outlook. For iPhone when switching to iPhone 15 Pro.
As the ProMotion displays on the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max demonstrate, Apple is more than capable of creating high refresh rate phone displays. In my experience, the smaller the screen, the more the benefits of a high refresh rate are felt because your eyes have less space to work with to accommodate jagged motion.
To me, this is simply the most egregious example of Apple’s famously straightforward product tiering strategy.
There is absolutely no user benefit in having a 60Hz display on the iPhone. The Samsung Galaxy S24 shows that companies can offer a flagship phone with a 120Hz display for $799, the same price as the iPhone 16. This partially refutes component-centered arguments. price and manufacturing costs.
So why does Apple continue to sell iPhones with panels with slower refresh rates? To me, this is simply the most egregious example of Apple’s famously blunt product tiering strategy, with more expensive A considered choice to drive customers to iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.
That’s also a shame. While I was otherwise impressed with the iPhone 15, my review of the iPhone 16 found that Apple’s latest flagship brings the base model closer to the Pro model than ever before. . Naturally, the standard and Pro iPhones need to be separated somehow, but here Apple continues to enforce distance by restricting lower-end models rather than beefing up its premium products.
Unfortunately, this is a common tactic from Apple. The exact same problem applies to the iPad Air and iPad Pro, with the cheapest MacBook Pro still being sold with a paltry 8GB of RAM, a decision that steers people towards more expensive options.
I’m by no means an Apple hater – I’ve been a long-time iPad user and switched from Windows to Mac last year – but this kind of behavior is my pick for Apple’s worst bad habit. Apple has made a name for itself by thinking differently, but when it comes to refresh rates, unfortunately, I think everyone else is right.
