Review of the iPhone XR: Minimize the compromises

Steve Jobs was convinced that his company's devices would bring technology to the masses, but he was seldom willing to make the trade-offs needed to make this vision a reality. Apple has only released products at affordable prices for everyone.

This trend continued at the end of September with the release of the flagship product, the iPhone XS, a compelling product that pushes envelopes and whose price is nevertheless out of reach for many consumers. Enter the iPhone XR, a close XS exchange its expensive OLED screen against an LCD and a dual camera system against a single camera, among others, all to bring down the price just to allow more of people to buy it.

The iPhone XR is not yet cheap: it costs about the same price as Apple's flagship products when it was launched a few years ago. But the iPhone XR is a great handset that offers more from the iPhone XS experience at a price that customers were used to before things got a little more expensive. (And of course, the iPhone XR offers customers a larger screen than the one they had previously for that price.)

We had previously examined the iPhone XS and the XS Max with lots of details and details. Thus, for some topics where there are no substantive differences between the XR and the XS, we will return from this review to this one to offer more detail or context.

And as the XR looks more like the XS than otherwise, we've tested it with two questions in mind: how is it different from the flagship product and what is it about? 39, a more attractive value with its lower price?

Contents

Characteristics

Starting at $ 749, the iPhone XR is designed as a flagship product. It incorporates the latest Apple SoC, the A12, with two cores of performance and four cores of efficiency. Apple claims that both performance cores are up to 15% faster than those of last year and that the cores of efficiency consume up to 50% less energy. .

A GPU manufactured by Apple is also included. According to the company, it is 50% faster than the GPU in 2017, thanks to the lossless memory compression. (Do not worry, we checked these claims with future benchmarks.) There is also an Internet service provider manufactured by Apple.

The real focus of Apple's efforts on the A12 is what he calls the Neural engine: a machine learning silicon that is experiencing the biggest performance improvements claimed over last year's phones. The A11's neural engine could do 600 billion operations per second, says Apple, but the A12 could produce 5,000 billion.

The Neural Engine Engine is used to power face IDs, augmented reality applications, some camera features and many auto-learning features such as Photos searches, various Siri features, etc. The goal was also to free the graphics processor from automatic learning task management so that it could focus on graphics, a key for augmented reality applications.

The iPhone XR has 3GB of RAM, identical to the iPhone X from last year. It is available in three storage configurations: 64 GB, 128 GB (which is best for most users, but is not offered by XS phones), and 256 GB.

Like the iPhone XS, the XR sports stereo speakers offer a wider sound than previous iPhones. They sounded good for us.

The claimed battery life is 24 hours for wireless communications, 15 hours for internet use and 65 minutes for wireless audio playback – this is the longest battery life declared by all. the iPhone offered by Apple. The phone supports Qi wireless charging and fast charging when connected to a computer system or a more powerful AC adapter than the included 5W adapter.

I / O

In terms of ports, there is only one: the Apple Lightning connection. As we said in the iPhone XS review, this choice is frustrating for users. The USB-C, offered in the latest iPad Pro models of the company, has many advantages.

Yes, if Apple changed systems, existing customers would have to buy new dongles and accessories in some cases. However, we've been using Lightning since 2012, so it's not as if Apple was pushing users to switch apps if the change was made today.

The Lightning port is used for charging as well as for data connections. It can also be used for wired headsets, although Apple clearly designs its phones with wireless headsets despite the addition of poor Lightning headphones in the box. With a clean chip to Apple-approved products, such as AirPods or some Beats headphones, wireless headphones work great on the iPhone; it is obvious that they are the way to go. But if you're married to using your own wired headphones, you're exposing yourself to some frustration.

Display

The XR has what Apple calls a "Liquid Retina" screen. It's a nonsense nickname: most of Apple's products have a retina LCD. Basically, this is the term used by Apple for an LCD display that uses the company's anti-aliasing method to allow rounded angles.

Like last year's iPhone 8 screen or iPad Pro, the 6.1-inch LCD is about as good as LCD screens on mobile devices, at least in terms of Precision colors. With a resolution of 1792 × 828, it is not the cleanest. The pixel density is 326ppi. There are diminishing returns in sharpness, and this display is just beyond the threshold at which it seems well. But that does not seem awesome, and the difference is very visible next to the XS or the XS Max.

Other display features include a 1,400: 1 contrast ratio, a wide P3 color, a maximum brightness of 625 nits, and True Tone support, which adjusts the white balance of the screen accordingly. ambient lighting.

Cameras

Cameras have become important to the iPhone over the years, and it's still an important goal, but it's also the other big compromise, aside from the display, over the flagship product.

The rear camera has a 12MP wide-angle lens (ƒ / 1.8 aperture), a quad-LED flash with the same tonal improvements introduced in the XS, optical image stabilization and digital zoom up to 5x .

Most of the new photography features of the new Apple phones have more to do with SoC A12 and Apple algorithms than with the current optics. Thus, even if it is a step forward compared to the XS (the flagship system is equipped with a two-camera system), these new features appear here as well in the rear cameras as before. This includes portrait mode, portrait lighting, and the not-too-fragmented faux bokeh effect that Apple demonstrated on stage when unveiling its new phones in September.

Smart HDR, which takes multiple frames and inter frames and analyzes them in real time to produce what Apple's chip and algorithms consider the best result in terms of highlighting, contrast, etc., is also supported at back and front. cameras.

Regarding video, 4K recording at 24, 30 or 60 frames per second is supported, plus 1080p at 30 or 60 frames per second and 720p at 30 frames per second. Like the XS, the XR offers an extended dynamic range for video as long as you record at 30 frames per second. It records stereo sound for your videos. Slow and fast modes are still supported, and the digital zoom is up to 3x. You can also take pictures (8MP) while recording a video in 4K.

The front camera, which is part of the TrueDepth matrix and which also includes infrared detection components allowing face recognition, remains unchanged: 7MP video, ƒ / 2.2 and 1080p at 30 or 60 frames per second with the range extended dynamic. For a flash, the screen will simply flash in bright white to illuminate the subject.

Wireless

The wireless plan is pretty standard: support for 802.11ac (2×2 MIMO) Wi-Fi protocols, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS and NFC, which now supports a new feature that allows you to use the phone with certain wireless systems. transit, etc., even if the battery level is too low to turn on the device.

And of course, there is LTE. Here are the cell tapes that Apple says the XR is compatible with:

FDD-LTE (bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 66, 71)

TD – LTE (bands 34, 38, 39, 40 and 41)

CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1900 MHz)

UMTS / HSPA + / DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz)

GSM / EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

If you have multiple phone numbers or carriers, or if you regularly travel abroad, the new eSIM support may save you time, allowing you to store multiple functional phone numbers on the same phone. phone. Only one can be used for your data plan, but you can make and receive calls with one or the other. A recent operating system update, iOS 12.1, enabled this feature and included various features to make it easier to use. For example, you can now specify the number to which the call is made when it arrives.

We found no higher or lower call quality than other recent iPhone.

Samuel Axon's inscription image