[OC] iPhone 15 Pro Max is the worst iPhone for value according to 30k+ valid reviews I analyzed (and iPhone SE 2022 is #1
September 15, 2024
[OC] iPhone 15 Pro Max is the worst iPhone for value according to 30k+ valid reviews I analyzed (and iPhone SE 2022 is #1
Posted by eneskaraboga
23 comments
Sorry: The worst is iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max is second worst.
The full table contains other brands, categories (performance, camera, battery life, operating system, and display) and other filters. It is in my site: [https://sentimentarena.com/best-smart-phones/](https://sentimentarena.com/best-smart-phones/)
This is one of my other posts explaining how this works.
Long version:
Hey guys, I always wanted to have a real comparison between products. The information we usually get is from expert opinions or star ratings from users. Analyzing over a million reviews myself, it was not hard to notice that about 40% of the reviews are absolute garbage, because people are not talking about the product, but about their experience with the seller, the condition in which the product appears (like broken screen), service provider problems, or other irrelevant things. Most of the 1 star reviews, especially for phones, were related to used condition or price expectations.
I wanted something different. After collecting all the reviews, mostly from Google Reviews that they collect from e-commerce sites, I cleaned everything under 20 words, reviews that talk about irrelevant things like I mentioned above and mention at least one of the categories value for money, camera, battery life, screen, design, performance and operating system. So if someone says they loved or hated the service at Walmart, that is an invalid review.
After I had clean reviews for all phones sold online, I analyzed phones with at least 500 valid reviews. In those reviews, I counted the positive and negative mentions of the categories and calculated a sentiment score. For example, if there are 500 positive mentions of the camera and 500 negative mentions, it would have a score of 50%. After each category is calculated, I go with the overall sentiment score and sort my table with that.
The table (sorry I can’t post it here due to Reddit’s limitations) allows you to sort by any of the categories, so you can sort by phones with the best camera or value for money.
I believe it is an apples to apples comparison since we are only considering people who actually used the product and mention specific features.
This is the first time I am publishing this work. I spent about 200 hours coding to collect, clean, analyze and visualize the information. I look forward to your feedback and questions!
Where is this data from and how was it analyzed, and how is value calculated, and is inflation taken into account?
Here is what I know having owned a lot of iPhones. The 14 pro max battery health plummets in one years time.
I’ve only bought the iPhone SE models lol
Too cheap to buy the other ones
“We analyzed 1.1 million smartphone reviews” from where? Why is this info not on the site? How do we know you just aren’t making up numbers? You said in your comment it’s “mostly” from Google reviews, but there’s no links/sources to back up this claim.
This will change when Apple Intelligence comes out next year as the 15pro can run it while the 15 and 14 pro can’t
iPhone 14 Pro isn’t even on this list?
Reviews are highly endogenous – those who buy SE models know what they are getting and therefore have low expectations to begin with. Needless to say, good effort but this is pretty meaningless.
as someone who owns the SE you probably need to take into account the cost of the inevitable spare battery pack you’ll need to carry too
I bought an iPhone 11 the day the Pandemic was announced. (Just happened to be the day I was looking for an upgrade).
I’ve had this same 11 ever since, and I presume it’s probably about time for Apple to start bricking my device with incompatible software.
This list makes me wonder if I should purchase the SE. 🤔
I still use an iPhone 8 so I agree with this analysis.
And the iPhone 15 plus is the third best iPhone?
This means absolutely nothing
My 15 pro’s battery is great
Having used and loved the tetraprism 5x zoom extensively over the last year – which was a 15 Pro Max only feature – I’m highly suspicious of these findings. While anecdotes don’t make data, intuition can at least lead to questions that uncover bias. I don’t trust this data without further evidence.
Scam. Where’s iPhone SE 1st gen? That thing was awesome. I still have it in a drawer.
I have the 15 pro max, and the battery has been the best I’ve ever had. I can use my phone all day and a 10 minute charge gives it 40%. It works well, it’s fast, no slowdown issues.
I disagree with this metric entirely.
How is value defined here? I use the 15 for all kinds of video projects and it works great.
How is SE leading? I have that as a work phone and it’s so bad to use.
Your own graph refutes your post title.
My 5 cents as I’m seeing a lot of negative feedback in the comments. I think what you’re lacking here is the most important part of any analysis: a compelling story. You’ve clearly done a lot of work with the data, but its unclear what people should make of this other than literally looking at a table and going “mmh… ok”.
So… what’s the story here? Isn’t it kind of expected that premium phones (pro/pro max) would skew more negative on value/money? I imagine disappointed users who bought an expensive phone will center their negative sentiment on price. People that bought cheaper models will probably focus on specific features rather than spontaneously bringing up how much they spent. In fact, a negative value/price mention on a cheaper model feels -to me- much more worrying that on a premium option.
You could look at the correlations between price and negative/positive mentions of value/money. Maybe there’s a clever way to adjust those scores by price (i.e., negative value/price on cheaper models weights more). How about the other measures in the dataset? Can you cluster phone models into using multiple measures? Is there an effective way to represent the data that can better represent your story?
I can usually get 2-3 releases out of my iPhone. Had 11 and now 14 plus. Had 1, 3g, 6,, XR, 11, 14. I know people who get the newest at every release. Such a waste of money.
23 comments
Sorry: The worst is iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max is second worst.
The full table contains other brands, categories (performance, camera, battery life, operating system, and display) and other filters. It is in my site: [https://sentimentarena.com/best-smart-phones/](https://sentimentarena.com/best-smart-phones/)
This is one of my other posts explaining how this works.
Long version:
Hey guys, I always wanted to have a real comparison between products. The information we usually get is from expert opinions or star ratings from users. Analyzing over a million reviews myself, it was not hard to notice that about 40% of the reviews are absolute garbage, because people are not talking about the product, but about their experience with the seller, the condition in which the product appears (like broken screen), service provider problems, or other irrelevant things. Most of the 1 star reviews, especially for phones, were related to used condition or price expectations.
I wanted something different. After collecting all the reviews, mostly from Google Reviews that they collect from e-commerce sites, I cleaned everything under 20 words, reviews that talk about irrelevant things like I mentioned above and mention at least one of the categories value for money, camera, battery life, screen, design, performance and operating system. So if someone says they loved or hated the service at Walmart, that is an invalid review.
After I had clean reviews for all phones sold online, I analyzed phones with at least 500 valid reviews. In those reviews, I counted the positive and negative mentions of the categories and calculated a sentiment score. For example, if there are 500 positive mentions of the camera and 500 negative mentions, it would have a score of 50%. After each category is calculated, I go with the overall sentiment score and sort my table with that.
The table (sorry I can’t post it here due to Reddit’s limitations) allows you to sort by any of the categories, so you can sort by phones with the best camera or value for money.
I believe it is an apples to apples comparison since we are only considering people who actually used the product and mention specific features.
This is the first time I am publishing this work. I spent about 200 hours coding to collect, clean, analyze and visualize the information. I look forward to your feedback and questions!
Where is this data from and how was it analyzed, and how is value calculated, and is inflation taken into account?
Here is what I know having owned a lot of iPhones. The 14 pro max battery health plummets in one years time.
I’ve only bought the iPhone SE models lol
Too cheap to buy the other ones
“We analyzed 1.1 million smartphone reviews” from where? Why is this info not on the site? How do we know you just aren’t making up numbers? You said in your comment it’s “mostly” from Google reviews, but there’s no links/sources to back up this claim.
This will change when Apple Intelligence comes out next year as the 15pro can run it while the 15 and 14 pro can’t
iPhone 14 Pro isn’t even on this list?
Reviews are highly endogenous – those who buy SE models know what they are getting and therefore have low expectations to begin with. Needless to say, good effort but this is pretty meaningless.
as someone who owns the SE you probably need to take into account the cost of the inevitable spare battery pack you’ll need to carry too
I bought an iPhone 11 the day the Pandemic was announced. (Just happened to be the day I was looking for an upgrade).
I’ve had this same 11 ever since, and I presume it’s probably about time for Apple to start bricking my device with incompatible software.
This list makes me wonder if I should purchase the SE.
🤔
I still use an iPhone 8 so I agree with this analysis.
And the iPhone 15 plus is the third best iPhone?
This means absolutely nothing
My 15 pro’s battery is great
Having used and loved the tetraprism 5x zoom extensively over the last year – which was a 15 Pro Max only feature – I’m highly suspicious of these findings. While anecdotes don’t make data, intuition can at least lead to questions that uncover bias. I don’t trust this data without further evidence.
Scam. Where’s iPhone SE 1st gen? That thing was awesome. I still have it in a drawer.
I have the 15 pro max, and the battery has been the best I’ve ever had. I can use my phone all day and a 10 minute charge gives it 40%. It works well, it’s fast, no slowdown issues.
I disagree with this metric entirely.
How is value defined here? I use the 15 for all kinds of video projects and it works great.
How is SE leading? I have that as a work phone and it’s so bad to use.
Your own graph refutes your post title.
My 5 cents as I’m seeing a lot of negative feedback in the comments. I think what you’re lacking here is the most important part of any analysis: a compelling story. You’ve clearly done a lot of work with the data, but its unclear what people should make of this other than literally looking at a table and going “mmh… ok”.
So… what’s the story here? Isn’t it kind of expected that premium phones (pro/pro max) would skew more negative on value/money? I imagine disappointed users who bought an expensive phone will center their negative sentiment on price. People that bought cheaper models will probably focus on specific features rather than spontaneously bringing up how much they spent. In fact, a negative value/price mention on a cheaper model feels -to me- much more worrying that on a premium option.
You could look at the correlations between price and negative/positive mentions of value/money. Maybe there’s a clever way to adjust those scores by price (i.e., negative value/price on cheaper models weights more). How about the other measures in the dataset? Can you cluster phone models into using multiple measures? Is there an effective way to represent the data that can better represent your story?
I can usually get 2-3 releases out of my iPhone. Had 11 and now 14 plus. Had 1, 3g, 6,, XR, 11, 14. I know people who get the newest at every release. Such a waste of money.
I would say that you are Apple biased.
Get your data straight before posting it…