Apple’s iPhone 15 leads the pack in speed improvements in most global 5G markets tested
Do the latest iPhone and Samsung Galaxy ZFlip and ZFold models offer enough of a performance boost to be worth an upgrade?
It depends on your geographic market and its 5G coverage and spectrum support, but Ookla found some pretty significant boosts to the newest models in an analysis of device performance across 13 global markets.
Based on test data collected from late September to late October (just a few weeks ago), the testing and analysis company found that U.S. consumers will see some of the “highest improvements” if they upgrade to the latest iPhone models.
Making apples-to-apples comparisons across models, Ookla said that the iPhone 15 Plus had 54% faster median download speeds than the iPhone 14 Plus, and the iPhone 15 recorded a 45% improvement in download speed compared to the iPhone 14.
The differences were narrower between iPhone Pro Max models: the 15 had 27% better download speed than the previous model, and iPhone 15 Pro was 25% faster than the iPhone 14 Pro.
“Not only did all four iPhone 15 models in the United States show median 5G download speeds that were significantly faster than their iPhone 14 equivalents during the September 22-October 20, 2023 period, the improvements in performance were greater than we saw in most other countries,” Ookla said in a blog post.
Across the global markets that the company analyzed, it concluded that upgrading was worth it in most markets, but there were some exceptions. In Germany, for example, speed improvements on the latest iPhones were only in the single digits; and in places like the Philippines, consumers might still consider upgrading for phone features, but they wouldn’t see a jump in performance from the previous model. In some cases, the Samsung phones achieved greater performance gains between model-years than iPhones, and in other markets, the opposite was true.
In the U.S., Ookla found that Samsung users saw low-double-digit gains on the newest Z Flip and Z Fold. Based on median download speeds that were recorded between mid-August and late October 2023, the Galaxy Z Flip5 had 15% faster download speeds than the Z Flip4, and the Z Fold5 saw 10% better speed performance than the Z Fold4.
More details from Ookla in this blog post.
