The main complaints concerning the iPhone XS accumulate

It would not be an iPhone launch without a small army of Apple enthusiasts complaining about their new expensive phones on the Internet. This year is no exception, and the forums are filled with reports of problems with the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. None of the problems is particularly catastrophic. At least not yet.

Before going into details, it should be noted that iPhone XS devices are brand new. They have been in the wild for less than two weeks. The public version of iOS 12 is also new, even though it has benefited from several months of beta testing. It is therefore not surprising that a new iPhone with new software suffers from some bugs. We have already seen it, especially in 2010, year of Antennagate, and we will see it again.

This does not mean that you should not be pissed off if your iPhone XS is all messed up. We compile a list of many complaints about new phones and encourage you to add your own complaints in the comments. You can also send me advice directly by e-mail.

Chargegate

Indeed, we have another door in our hands. While Antennagate was dealing with a problem that was causing the loss of receipt of the iPhone 4 if you held it in a certain way, what is called Chargegate involves iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max devices that will not recharge if they are connected to a Lightning cable. Several threads from Apple's support forums and MacRumors from Apple claim that some devices do not charge when you plug in a cable. Some of them will start charging if you wake up the device. Some do not charge at all by cable.

There is a consensus that this must be a software problem. Not all devices have the problem and not everyone who encounters it all the time. The problem also does not seem to be specific to the larger or smaller phone. Wireless charging also seems to work properly. If you want to see what Chargegate looks like in real time, let yourself be tempted by this scathing video of YouTuber Unbox Therapy.

Apple has not recognized this problem until now. Some people think that this might not be related at all to iOS 12 or the iPhone XS series, but rather to the security settings updated in iOS 11.4.1. This change means that an iPhone's Lightning port may not recognize a USB accessory, including a charging cable, if the locked phone has been idle for a while. This is how Apple explained this update when it was released in July:

If you do not unlock your password-protected iOS device for the first time, or if you have not unlocked and connected to a USB device in the last few hours, your iOS device will not communicate with your device. 39; accessory or the computer, and in some cases it might not charge. You may also see an alert asking you to unlock your device to use accessories.

If that's really what's causing the problem of the charges, we do not understand why people are now complaining about the change. One possible explanation is that people who have just spent more than $ 1,000 on a new iPhone pay special attention to how it works. We will not know for sure until Apple provides an explanation.

It is also possible that a nasty virus is the origin of Chargegate, and it sucks. Suck to a new, expensive phone, plug it in to recharge before going to bed, then wake up with a dead phone. It is also bad to go online and see an army of other Apple prepare to storm Cupertino Castle because of the same problem. Or maybe it is comforting, in a strange way.

Antennagate 2.0

Well, no one calls this Antennagate 2.0, but this series of complaints is similar to the one we saw so many years ago. This seems even more disconcerting, because it does not imply how a person holds an iPhone.

Many iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max users – many of them on the Verizon network – say the reception is worse than before. The signal also seems to cut intermittently. This is how someone described it in the MacRumors forums:

I am in South Carolina with VZW. My iPhone X systematically keeps 3 or 4 bars of LTE at home with a constant speed.

I've activated XS Max yesterday and during the first activation / LTE connection (reboot, airplane mode, etc.), I get almost identical performance. In a minute or two, the signal is degraded and the data stops working. Disabling LTE generates a complete 3G signal with 3G data – no problem, solid as a penny. Reactivation of LTE works for a minute or two. Repeat the rinsing with the foam.

One of the advanced theories is that Apple is moving from Qualcomm modems to those designed by Intel for traditional CDMA carrier customers such as Verizon and Sprint. Basically, these people who owned Qualcomm modems could see a worse LTE service in outlying areas, due to endless patent disputes. Others simply blame the problem of Apple's new antenna design and say it can not be fixed.

These connectivity issues also do not seem to be limited to LTE. A separate group of people are complaining about the slow Wi-Fi with the new iPhone XS. This problem, however, seems to be a bug related to how the device switches between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. It seems that these people had speed problems because their phones switched between the two networks and sometimes defaulted to the 2.4GHz slower network. Fortunately, Apple can probably fix this problem in an iOS update.

Camera stuff

I almost Called this one Cameragate, but it sounds overly dramatic compared to the other two lots of complaints. This is because it seems like a feature, not a bug.

The forum people also talk about excessive smoothness of the skin in the photos taken with the iPhone XS camera, especially with the selfie camera facing the front. Some have even called this filter of beauty, because it is particularly visible on the pictures of faces. If you zoom in close enough, you'll find that iPhone XS images have a softer quality. We noticed this in our tests, although it seems less related to an unwanted beauty effect than Apple has yet said, and more to the reduction of noise in poorly lit images. Unboxed Therapy has also made an annoying video on this problem.

But as this medium post explains, this does not happen because something is wrong with the iPhone XS camera. The smoother appearance of iPhone XS cameras is related to the new Smart HDR feature that combines multiple exposures to produce a better image with more realistic contrast. Because the iPhone software removes highlights and shadows that are too dark, more textured images, including skin photos, look smoother. This noise reduction is necessary because the iPhone takes several pictures at once, each with a shorter shutter speed and a higher ISO sensitivity. Smart HDR software combines these images and suppresses noise. Zooming in on rough textures may reveal a loss of local contrast and make these textures smoother.

You do not like that? Good news, evidence suggests that disabling Smart HDR in the camera settings could remove some of the smoothing. Another option? Do not zoom very close to someone's skin.

More problems?

Let us know in the comments. We will update this message if necessary.