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Tech · Apple · 2023

Apple iPhone 15

The newest iPhone resale has made sensible, and the first to show its battery cycle count.

Used iPhones on eBay: six worth buying, oldest last — #1

Overall

8.4

out of 10

Axis scores

Strongest on Ease of use (8.8), weakest on Value (7.6), a 1.2-point spread. The 8.4 overall is the plain average of all 5 Tech axes, with no weighting.

Apple iPhone 15 — axis scores out of 10Horizontal bar chart of editorial scores out of 10 across 5 axes. Bars run from a shared zero baseline; longer is better. Apple iPhone 15: Performance 8.6, Value 7.6, Durability 8.6, Ease of use 8.8, Design 8.6.PerformanceApple iPhone 15 — Performance 8.6 out of 108.6ValueApple iPhone 15 — Value 7.6 out of 107.6DurabilityApple iPhone 15 — Durability 8.6 out of 108.6Ease of useApple iPhone 15 — Ease of use 8.8 out of 108.8DesignApple iPhone 15 — Design 8.6 out of 108.6Editorial score out of 10 — higher is better
  • Performance — How well it does the core job
  • Value — What the same money buys elsewhere
  • Durability — Failure and fade reports past the one-year mark
  • Ease of use — Setup, daily operation, cleaning, maintenance
  • Design — Build quality and how it sits in a room

Specs

Display
6.1-inch Super Retina XDR (OLED)
Chip
A16 Bionic
Main camera
48MP
Port
USB-C (USB 2 speed)
Battery
Up to 20 hrs video playback
Storage
128GB, 256GB, 512GB
Water resistance
IP68

As published by the manufacturer. We didn't measure these ourselves.

Is it for you

Buy it if

  • You want the longest runway of iOS updates you can get without paying new-phone money
  • Everything else you charge is already USB-C
  • You want to verify a seller's battery claim yourself in Settings

Skip it if

  • Apple Intelligence is on your list, since it needs an iPhone 15 Pro or later
  • You move a SIM card between phones; US models are eSIM only

The detail that matters most on the used market is buried in Settings, under General and then About: the iPhone 15 shows its battery cycle count, manufacture date, and first-use date. Every older iPhone gives you a single health percentage and nothing else. Ask the seller for a screenshot of that screen and you know roughly how hard the phone has been used before it ships.

Apple’s support page also rates this generation’s battery to keep 80 percent of its capacity at 1,000 full cycles, double the figure it gives for the iPhone 14 and earlier. Two years of daily charging is roughly 700 cycles, so a clean secondhand 15 has most of its battery life left.

The USB-C port runs at USB 2 speed. That is fine for charging and irrelevant to most owners, but it makes copying hours of 4K video to a computer slow. The 48MP main sensor is the real camera step over the 14, mostly in daylight detail and a cleaner 2x crop.

Last updated . The scoring method is on how we rank.