Don’t let Apple Intelligence ruin your iPhone plans this Black Friday

Black Friday is fast approaching, with many retailers already getting in on the deal fun ahead of the big shopping bonanza later this month, and that means that it’s the perfect time to pick yourself up that bit of tech you’ve been eyeing up. A new iPhone maybe?

If you do have a discounted iPhone on your wishlist for this Black Friday, there’s a lot to consider – especially if your reason for buying a new iPhone is to get access to Apple Intelligence and its GenAI-powered features. 

It’s not hard to see why it’s appealing; Apple’s marketing of Apple Intelligence showcases the iPhone 16’s ability to perform some pretty handy actions, whether that’s recording and transcribing phone calls, summarising your incoming notifications or even removing people from the background of your photos. 

And, with big-hitter features like ChatGPT integration, Genmoji and Image Playgrounds all still yet to be released, it’s an experience that’s set to improve over the next few months. 

If your aim is to get an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, you should be wary about buying an older iPhone at a discount. Why? Because Apple Intelligence is only available on a small number of iPhones – not even the entire iPhone 15 collection supports the tech. 

In fact, Apple Intelligence is only available on the iPhone 16 collection, along with the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The regular iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Plus run a slightly older chipset which means they’re not quite powerful enough to handle the AI processing power required, according to Apple. 

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be seeing any significant deals on Apple’s latest iPhone 16 collection, having only been on sale for a few months, limiting your options to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max for a Black Friday-themed bargain.

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are more likely to be discounted as retailers look to shift excess stock of the older-gen iPhone, though it’s likely that older models of iPhone – think iPhone 14 and iPhone 13 – will offer the best bang for your buck over the next few weeks. 

That means you’ve got a decision to make; do you go for the lesser deal on an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max, or get a truly impressive saving on a slightly older iPhone while sacrificing Apple Intelligence?

A sacrifice worth making?

That’ll likely depend on your personal preferences, but as somebody who has been using the initial set of Apple Intelligence features for the past couple of months, I will say that it’s not as revolutionary as one might think. 

I spoke about this at length in my reviews of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Max, but more often than not, the AI-powered features fall short of what I expected – especially from a company like Apple with a reputation for getting tech ‘right’. 

The Notification Summaries, for example, often misinterpret messages – especially in group chats – and generate inaccurate summaries as a result. I often had to double-check the messages because the summaries were incorrect, and that kind of defeats the purpose.

That’s also true of other AI features, like Apple’s Clean Up tool that lets you remove people and other distractions from your photos. While it does a good job on fairly simple shots, there’s noticeable artefacts in more complex images. Honestly, Google’s Magic Editor does a much better job, and it’s available on plenty of smartphones.

Even Apple’s transcription tech needs a bit of work; it often misinterprets what was said, and it lacks features like the ability to identify different speakers. That’s a stark change to what you’ll find from the past few generations of Google Pixel, with impressively accurate transcription, speaker identification and the ability to summarise recordings too. 

Don’t get me wrong; there are some genuinely useful features, like the ability to record and transcribe phone calls, included in the initial batch of Apple Intelligence features, but for the most part, these aren’t features that’ll completely change the way you interact with your iPhone. 

That could very well change with the release of subsequent versions of iOS with elements like AI-generated emoji and Siri integration with ChatGPT, but it’s hard to say without using them myself. 

So, if you come upon a choice between an average deal on the iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max or a truly stunning deal on a slightly older, but still capable, iPhone, I’d recommend going with the latter.