Apple iOS 27 Release Creates A Price Problem For iPhone 15 Owners

Apple confirmed at WWDC this week that iOS 27 will support every iPhone from the iPhone 11 onwards. That’s good news for millions of older iPhone users. However, for iPhone 15 owners and below, no iOS 27 AI tools could make your iPhone less valuable according to new data.

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The iOS 27 Siri AI Premium Problem

This is where it gets more complicated. "There is currently no historical benchmark for AI-related depreciation," McConomy told me, "but if consumers begin placing a premium on AI-capable devices, the divide between supported iPhones and fully AI-enabled iPhones could become a more important factor than software support alone."

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That divide runs directly through the iPhone 15 lineup. The base iPhone 15 gets iOS 27, but it doesn't get Siri AI. The iPhone 15 Pro gets both. If Apple Intelligence becomes a genuine purchasing factor this fall, and Apple's entire WWDC narrative was built around making that case, the iPhone 15 ends up in an awkward middle position. Updated, but not intelligent.

But that is a big "if". A CNET survey from September showed that just 11% of U.S. smartphone owners chose to upgrade because of AI features, which was a 7% drop from a similar survey the year before.

With that said, mobile AI have moved on and the new Siri AI is Apple’s first proper foray into serious AI tools with a touch of agentic abilities, such as automatically changing weak passwords for users. Those types of features could be a genuine draw because they’re actually useful, rather than just being a demo of what AI can do.