Apple iPhone XR

Design and build

I was quite excited when I saw this phone. Why is because I expected it to look everything like the iPhone X. But no. that is not the case here. It does boast independent looks on this phone. The front and back glass build may be the same and that notch on the front as well, but very easily one can tell the XR from the X.

See the back of this phone is the differentiating factor really with a single rounded primary camera on the top left corner. And there is that flash right below it. This alone makes the difference really as you will learn. So there is no vertical dual camera placement on the back this time. That Apple logo is still as shinny as you would expect on the middle back. Button placement hasn’t changed at all so do expect that familiar line-up here.

Also to note is that this phone is IP67 dust/water resistant (up to 1m for 30 mins) and has Apple Pay (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX certified) for shopping convenience. This beauty of a phone stands at 150.9 x 75.7 x 8.3 mm tall, wide and thick respectively weighing about 194 grams. I call it a beauty because it is. Maybe after we learn of its performance we might just brand it a beast as well.

Display and camera

Aren’t we used to OLED display on high-end iPhones by now? Well, this time we get an IPS LCD capacitive touch screen with 16M colors and multi-touch support. It is a 6.1 inches display panel that covers 90.3 cm² of the face of this phone. That is quite some estate considering its ~79.0% screen-to-body ratio.

Pixel count is at 828 x 1792 pixels and you can count on a more bright display here really all because of its rather low PPI which is at 36. This for me is a thumbs down, to be honest, Apple could have done better. But generally, it is an okay display that you will most enjoy interacting with because of its size. Video watching and game playing for example will be entertaining.

I love that regardless of this all, it still is Scratch-resistant glass with an oleophobic coating to ensure its durability. Other features to note include a True-tone display, Wide color gamut display, and 120 Hz touch-sensing.

Camera

Unlike more recent Apple smartphones, we only get two cameras here, which is okay by the way just in case it sounds like I am about to complain. The main/primary camera is a 12 MP, f/1.8, 28mm, 1/2.55″, 1.4µm, OIS, PDAF lens while the front-facing lens is a 7 MP, f/2.2, 32mm shooter. They are both very impressive at their function best believe that.

This is one (of many) department iPhones will always nail. Video recording is 2160p@24/30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/120/240fps, HDR, stereo sound recording for the main camera, and 1080p@60fps for that video call lens, selfie camera if you wish. You will get impressive performance here really. And to think I haven’t even mentioned Quad-LED dual-tone flash, HDR (photo/panorama) are also on board.

Performance and memory

What should we expect here? Let us see. It runs iOS 12 of course. What’s the point of buying a new iPhone not running Apple’s latest software? With the Apple A12 Bionic chipset, a Hexa-core (2x Vortex + 4x Tempest) CPU, and Apple GPU (4-core graphics) you get top draw performance. A smooth and seamless phone that works as fast as you would expect it to. I will tell you what not to expect here, lag, stutter, or any random performance glitch. Even multi-tasking here is a breeze.

All versions with respect to internal storage run on 3GB of RAM with 128 GB of storage. There is no support for SD cards here, and this doesn’t come as a surprise, we are used to this already.

Battery

Is the Non-removable Li-Ion 2942 mAh battery good enough? Yes, it is as you will learn. Fast battery charging: 50% in 30 min and Qi wireless charging is on board here in case you run out of juice.