Apple iPhone XS Review & Rating

Globe and glamor, Apple's iPhone XS ($ 999) aims to be the perfect place for iPhones this year. But if it's certainly an excellent phone, I find it's the least distinguished of the 2018 lineup of Apple. If the XS was alone, I would judge it more strongly. But this is not the case. I see where it goes: The XS has a 2X zoom camera and an OLED screen, and it's not as big as the XS Max. But the Max is a big step forward from the older iPhones of the Plus family and a more striking device all around. Finally, I think most people will want to pay $ 100 more for the iPhone XS Max, or save $ 250 on the iPhone XR.

There is no small iPhone

At 5.65 x 2.79 x 0.30 inches (HWD), the iPhone XS is almost the same size as the iPhone X. Like the X, the design is essentially a glass sandwich around the metal. It has an OLED screen of 19.5: 9 of 5.8 inches, edge to edge, with the famous notch at the top. I'm happy to see Apple finally get rid of its gigantic glasses, but at a width of 2.79 inches, the XS is 0.14 inches wider than the iPhone 6/7/8 and is at the limit of what most people consider an iPhone. one-handed phone. The XR is even wider. (For more information on the size of new iPhones, check out our story in which we do the math.)

The XS is not designed exactly like the X, however. In addition to silver and gray space, it is also in gold. The new MIMO 4×4 antennas have forced Apple to move the camera hump slightly, which means that many X cameras and accessories will not fit on the new XS. I've tried the Olloclip Mobile photography kit for the iPhone X, for example, and found that it did not align properly with the XS cameras. Speck's cases, on the other hand, work on both the X and the XS.

The phone is no longer provided with a Lightning-to-headphone dongle. This has made some of my tests more annoying, but I can not do too much because the dongle costs only $ 9.

The AMOLED display is the same size as that of the iPhone X, but it is both brighter and has better color accuracy. We are currently waiting for Dr. Ray Soneira's test results at DisplayMate Labs, and we will update this review as soon as we receive them. But the XS is in the foreground with the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 for the brightest, most accurate and least reflective screen available.

Apple claims that the new glass of the iPhone XS is stronger than the previous glass, which reduces the risk of cracking. The phone is also IP68 certified for water resistance up to 6 feet deep. We can confirm that the XS held up well after half an hour in the water. Testing this sparked a pleasant surprise: the screen works better than competing phones when it is wet. For most phones, if you try to tap on a wet screen, the keyboard will become a little bland. The XS worked very well with a wet screen, which Apple has confirmed is a new feature on this year's devices.

From left to right: iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS, iPhone X, iPhone 8

The phone's 2,659mAh battery is slightly smaller than the 2.716mAh cell of the iPhone X, but the XS far outweighs the gap with a more powerful processor and radio. Especially on LTE, the 4×4 MIMO actually reduces the amount of energy needed to emit a signal. Unfortunately, my battery tests are not over yet, but I've had 9 hours and 50 minutes of streaming video over Wi-Fi with the iPhone XS Max, and Apple said the XS had a battery life slightly lower. This puts it in a full day range, but runs out of the Galaxy Note 9. I will update this review when I have a battery result.

Apple includes the same 5W slow charge AC adapter that it always does with its phones, but says that it will be faster with iPad or MacBook adapters. We put this to the test last year and decided that the iPad adapter is a must buy to charge your phone.

There is a new twist, however–Literally. In terms of wireless charging, Apple claims to have tightened the coils of the phone to recharge wireless faster than previous models. This requires a 7.5W wireless charger, however. We only had 5W wireless chargers in outside test laboratory, and found that the phone charged wireless 18 percent in 30 minutes.

Computing power

The new A12 processor from Apple is, in terms of CPU, the fastest processor available on the market. It is about 15% higher than that of the A11 on Geekbench performance tests, which measure hard processor calculations. It just crushes the Snapdragon 845 on Geekbench, although on the more realistic Antutu benchmark, which also tests the elements of the UI, it is only 6% faster than the Galaxy Note 9.

You also see some major improvements on the graphical tests. We have an average of 43 frames per second in the off-screen GFXBench Car Crash benchmark, which has allowed the GPU to be generated regardless of the screen resolution. Compare that with 35fps on the Galaxy Note 9, 25fps on the iPhone 8 and 18fps on the iPhone 6s. Due to the much higher screen resolution than that of the iPhone 8 (2,436 x 1,125 vs. 1,334 by 750), you actually get higher apparent frame rates in on-screen tests. , but it pushes 2.7 times more pixels than on the screen of the iPhone 8.

See how we test phones

The most impressive part of the new processor is the most difficult to test. Apple has massively improved the neural engine, part of the chip dedicated to AI and machine learning tasks (basically, matrix computing), from two to eight cores. Standard tests do not tend to test NPUs. So we turned to AIMark, a benchmark dedicated to the identification of objects in scenes. The results were staggering: the XS got 3,320, tripled the score of 1,206 of the Galaxy Note 9. If anyone can find what to use the neural engine, it will really separate the XS.

You also can not ignore the effect of hardware and software integration of Apple hardware on performance. In the browser-based Web benchmark, iPhones tend to completely smoke Android phones–The XS got the rating of 532 for the iPhone 8,385, the Galaxy Note 9,265 and the OnePlus 6,295. These latest Android phones had a better performance than the iPhone 6s, with a score of 244 is against Chrome on Android.

The A12 also increases available storage. The iPhone XS is available in 64GB, 256GB and in a new 512GB model, with built-in software taking about 8GB. There is no removable storage, but it's a lot d & # 39; space.

Why do you need so much storage? Well, if you record 4K video at 60 frames per second, you use 400 MB per minute or 24 GB per hour. Honestly, I can not understand the calculations to justify having 512 GB in a phone. But if you insist, knock yourself out.

Radio Gaga

For the first time in years, there is an iPhone model for North America. This means that any purchased iPhone will work on any American or Canadian carrier, unlike previous models, where AT & T and T-Mobile phones often have problems with Sprint and Verizon. It is worth mentioning that this is the first iPhone to support the new T-Mobile Band 71, for rural coverage, and the first iPhone to support LAA, for increased speed in urban environments dense on AT & T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

Overall, there are four different regional versions of the XS, with slightly different LTE bands. They will all move around the world, but they are best for primary use in the countries where they are sold. (We have a complete overview of the differences here.)

The iPhone XS is a big step forward compared to the capabilities of the iPhone 8 and X in LTE. The key is 4×4 MIMO, which uses four antennas rather than two to improve the power and speed of the signal. We will test this further in the coming weeks, but in our experience with other devices, the SUV has had dramatic effects on LTE performance. Take a look at the charts of our history on the fastest mobile networks comparing iPhones to Galaxy phones and note that even the Galaxy S8 was, on average, faster than the iPhone X: c & # 39, is the 4×4 MIMO.

The really radical innovation here is not active on our test phone since this writing. This is the new eSIM, dual-SIM capability of the iPhone. Less than 5% of Americans have dual SIM phones, because the carriers have not sold them until now. When the dual SIM card is active, you can add a second temporary or permanent subscription to a supported operator. Why do this? You may want separate home and work numbers, or add a temporary number when traveling abroad.

For now, all iPhones will come with a physical SIM card from their associated operator. If your phone is not locked (only AT & T still locks phones nowadays), you will be able to add a secondary subscription using the settings menu in the future.

You will also be able to make eSIM your main SIM card, which means that you can change the main provider for your phone much more easily than if you were to go to a store and get a new SIM card. This could be very exciting if you are looking to switch providers to take advantage of cheaper rates.

With two active subscriptions, you can use both phone calls and SMS. You must choose one for the data and another for iMessage.

The quality of the voice calls is excellent and the two loudspeakers up and down (for calls and other types of audio) are very noisy. The iPhone XS, XS Max and Samsung Galaxy Note 9 all delivered about 82 dB at a distance of 6 inches when we called a recorded conversation line. The two speakers of the iPhones offer an extended sound field, but the audio seems to come from the other side of the phone. It's pretty cool, especially if you play a lot of music on the phone's speaker.

Like the iPhone 8 and X, but unlike previous iPhones, the XS supports the EVS voice coding system for higher quality calls. (For more information on this, check out our feature here.) If you are upgrading from an iPhone 7 or lower and you mainly call other EVS-enabled phones on the same carrier, you will get a much better sound quality than before.

For Wi-Fi, the XS has proven to be on par with the Galaxy Note 9 and other smartphones being tested.

The most popular camera

Previously, I was reviewing iPhones in collaboration with Tim Gideon, our audio analyst. The iPhone was a phone, plus a handheld, plus an iPod, after all. I do not think it's really the case anymore. The iPhone is now a handheld, plus a camera, so I entrusted it to our senior analyst, Jim Fisher, to test it.

The iPhone XS and XS Max use the same dual lens rear camera system. Last year, when the 8 Plus and X were announced, Apple made a big deal on a larger image sensor. Our tests, as well as iFixit x-rays, showed that if the sensor was actually larger, it was only very little.

Apple made a small agreement on a larger sensor this time around, but sneaked one there. The XS main camera now has a 4.25mm f / 1.8 lens, a slightly higher focal length than the previous generation of 3.99mm f / 1 iPhone, 8. If the sensor size was the same, it would mean that the iPhone XS captures a slightly narrower angle of view. This is not the case – its lens is a bit wider. The angle of view of the iPhone X is quite close to a 28mm full-screen lens and the XS looks more like a 25mm lens. The new sensor is probably a 1 / 2.3-inch design, the same as that obtained with the Samsung Galaxy S9, the Google Pixel 2 XL and compact cameras at low cost.

The question in all minds is the same as for each phone: Is the iPhone XS better in low light? The sensor is, without question. It manages to capture images with crisp detail and little noise through ISO 100. This is not a high figure if you are talking about a full-screen camera, but for a phone? It is there that are the best we have tested, thus canceling the unique advantage that the Galaxy S9 + has shown compared to last year 's iPhones in our tests.

The secondary 2x sensor works a little better than that of the iPhone X. It is about half a net stop to my lower eye ISO, but with settings above 400 ISO. The lens is slightly wider – it is now a design of 6 mm instead of 6.6 mm – which makes sense because the main lens also has an angle of wider coverage. It's always a f / 2.4although it's stabilized, unlike the 2x lens of the iPhone 8 Plus and 7 Plus.

You should not worry too much about its high ISO performance, because the iPhone automatically switches to the lighter and wider lens and applies the digital zoom in low light. If you are using a third-party camera application, you can force the phone to use the 2x lens in any type of light. We used the Moment app for testing as it supports Raw capture and manual ISO control, both of which are missing from the built-in camera app at Apple.

The improvements made to the image sensor are good news for iPhone owners, but they do not tell the entire story of the camera. Many new things are happening behind the scenes of the software. The A12 Bionic processor (explained in more detail in the next section) allows the camera to perform many computational photography tricks.

There is better HDR with faster multi-plane capture and processing. An example is the above comparison, where you can see that the XS has a color more faithful to the gray day and does a better job by preventing clipping of highlights than the 8 Plus.

Portrait mode is included, of course, and you can now adjust the level of blur. Oddly enough, Apple has used an f-stop scale to show you the effect in the interface. It's something that is intuitive for photographers, but can be a bit confusing for people who just want to take a nice picture. Older phones can do the same thing, but require a third-party application, focos, do this. I would like the Apple Camera application to resume Focos & # 39; s Another tip, the ability to change the focus point with a tap – it is not included in the iPhone app yet.

HDR now works in portrait mode, so buildings behind the statue of Buckingham Palace Guard are not destroyed as on the iPhone 8 Plus. It's a subtle difference, but one that can make the images more enjoyable to watch.

I've also noticed an improvement when using Portrait mode in low light conditions. I was able to take a picture of my lunch with the iPhone XS Max, while I just could not get it with the iPhone 8 Plus. The old handset kept telling me that I was too close and when I pulled back a bit, the phone said I had to keep my subject within 8 feet of the lens.

This has been a point of frustration over time, I have used the iPhone 8 Plus as a daily driver. I'm glad to see that it works a little better in the dim light, but I think that Apple could go further. The next iPhone XR is able to take pictures with a blur of background thanks to its unique wide-angle lens, just like the Google Pixel 2. I'd love to see this option added to the XS family, in assuming that Apple is able to bypass the frustration distance by avoiding the dual camera mechanism. We must wait and see. In the meantime, if you want wide portraits with fuzzy backgrounds, you'll have to find a pixel 2 or take a full-screen camera and a 28mm f / 1.4 lens.

On the front, the XS is equipped with a sharp 7-megapixel camera that also allows you to adjust the bokeh afterwards, thanks to the infrared depth sensors used for face identification. .

A single OS

The iPhone XS, of course, runs iOS 12. We have a full review of iOS 12 that is long and thorough. In short, some of the big advances on iOS 11 are useful content controls and screen time monitoring for parents and to prevent overuse of devices; in general, faster performance in almost everything; and (perpetually) enhanced augmented reality capabilities. The biggest disappointment is Siri, who really loses in ability and understanding compared to Google Assistant.

Animoji and memoji are exclusive to X Series phones. Animoji are Cartoon animals that match your facial expressions, which you can send to people. There was a big problem on them around the launch of the iPhone X. Memoji are as animojiexcept that they are custom cartoon characters that are supposed to look like you. Unfortunately, they do not configure themselves automatically–you have to design your memoji choosing different options, which seems to be a missed opportunity for the facial scanning camera.

Otherwise, there are very few things in iOS 12, other than those covered elsewhere in this review, that require an iPhone XS / XR. There is an occasional third-party application that uses the depth-detecting front camera, but there is not much of it. iOS is a reason to get an iPhone, absolutely, but it's not necessarily a reason to specifically get this iPhone.

This sofa is not really in the room – it's augmented reality

As the year progresses, there is a good chance that we will start seeing augmented reality and smart camera applications using Apple. CoreML machine learning platform in a way that differentiates generation XS / XS Max / XR (all three phones use the same A12 processor). Apple has said that the A12 improves augmented reality surface detection, which will allow applications to more quickly configure virtual surfaces on floors and walls. I've had a really great experience with an Alice in Wonderland adventure game in my office.

The most spectacular application of Apple's launch event, HomeCourt, which analyzes basketball shots, is a territory of choice for the acceleration of the A12 . Multiplayer augmented reality games that use an iOS 12 feature linking multiple iPhones will also likely work better on new phones.

Should you switch to the iPhone XS?

The iPhones of Apple 2018 have a lot in common, and a lot impress about them. They all have better cameras than last year's models, a faster processor, better audio quality, better LTE network management and a dual SIM card. None of them has a real deal circuit breakers, unless you consider the lack of headphone jack a problem. The trick then becomes to choose between them.

Apple does not intend to get you a new iPhone every year. This is not how iPhones have been designed since the transition from iPhone 6 to 6s. If you have an iPhone X, the iPhone XS has some advantages over the X. But unless you really need the dual SIM card, which is really destabilizing, we can not justify spending $ 1,000 .

From left to right: iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS

The iPhone XS falls in the middle of a crowded iPhone range. He's supposed to be the mid-range music lovers, but I think this year he's suffering from average child syndrome. The XS Max is so striking, and such a leap compared to previous larger phones, that it's a clear choice of publishers. People who want small phones still have the iPhone 8, and I think the iPhone XR will attract the attention of more people who do not want to spend $ 1,000 or want a "modern" look (the XR is very cool, bright colors). This means that I think the XS will be the least chosen phone.

If you come from an iPhone 7 or earlier, there is a great power here. The XS has a faster processor, a nicer screen, better cameras, clearer call quality, faster LTE, dual SIM cards … that's a lot. This is a big step forward, but you will also get a lot of these benefits (with the exception of the second main camera and OLED screen) of the iPhone XR for 250 $ less. I can not recommend it yet, because I have not tested it, but I would say we should wait until the comments begin to appear.

If you want a smaller iPhone, Apple keeps the iPhone 7 and 8 on the market. The 8, in particular, is a good phone with a lot of life and $ 599 is a good price. Last year, we recommended the iPhone 7 to many people because it was powerful and cheaper than the new iPhones. We are happy to do the same with the 8th this year.

We have a separate review of the iPhone XS Max, but owners of iPhone Plus who wish to upgrade should absolutely use this phone. The form factor of the iPhone Plus is wasting a lot of real estate on giant glasses. The iPhone XS Max recovers all this space for real use, offering you massively more real estate in the same format–and the massive real estate is probably why you bought the most, right?

The iPhone XS is a good phone, but I do not give it our choice of publishers. As I said at the beginning of this review, I think that with the 8, the XR and the XS Max in the Apple lineup, the XS is less appealing than some of the others. This means that the XS Max is the choice of our editors, and I look forward to testing the XR when it comes out in October.