Apple iPhone XR review
Hey, this is the iPhone XR. It's Apple's new mainstreamiPhone which starts at $750. Excuse me, are you already typing? Are you already leaving a comment about display resolution and pricing and OLEDs versus LCD, can you just stop? We can do that later. We'll have a great time down there. For now, just hang out asecond and ask yourself, how much do you really, really care about the display on a phone? I know a lot of people havequestions about the 10 R size, this weird, not hugeand not small 6.1 inches and I'll get to that. But I'm telling you the deciding factor between the 10 S andthe 10 R is the screen. If you could put a dollar amount on how much you care about the screen, would that dollar amount be $250? Because that is exactlyhow much you need to care in order to buy an iPhone10 S instead of the 10 R. Let me explain and thenyou can all do your thing.
Okay, so last month I reviewed the iPhone 10 S and 10 S max, which are Apple's new flagship phones. They have new A-12 processors,edge to edge OLED displays, Apple's latest camerasystem that does smart HDR, it's essentially everythingApple can fit into a phone. And the iPhone 10 R isbasically the iPhone 10S with a slightly worse display. That's it, that's the whole thing. It's got the same A-12 bionic processor, the same main camera withsmart HDR, the same iOS 12, but instead of that edge to edge OLED, there's a 6.1 inch liquid retina LCD. And the display is fine. It's lower resolution andpixel density than OLEDs in new flagship phones likethe 10 S and the Galaxy S nine and Pixel three, but if you're upgrading from a previous LCD iPhone it's going to look really familiar. I do think it's a little worsethan previous LCD iPhones when you look at it off axis. It shifts a tiny bit pink andthe brightness drops quickly, which means it can sometimeslook a little shimmery, but honestly you have tobe a huge display nerd to really notice that. What you will definitelynotice is the larger bezel around the entire displayand Apple's notch. The notch is the same dealas the iPhone 10 and 10 S.
It houses a face ID systemin the front facing camera, but the thicker bezel is there because Apple had to fit the backlight for the LCD panel somewhere. Don't get me wrong, thatbezel looks gigantic and especially silly next to the 10 S but the backlight engineeringis actually really clever. You don't see a lot of LCD phones with perfectly roundedcorners and no chins out there and Apple did a bunch ofcrazy Apple stuff here. One of the major differencesbetween LCD and OLED screens is how they produce light. OLED pixels are their own light source and you can turn themon and off individually. You can't do that with an LCD because there's just onebacklight for the entire display. So you can round off LCD cornersby shutting off the pixels but it's super tough to get it perfect because the backlightwill still shine through. But check out the 10 R. We literally put it under amicroscope so you can see this. See how some of those pixels look smaller? That's because Applebuilt little apertures for the pixels around the corners to mask some of the light coming through on top of anti-aliasingthe curving software. It looks great.
Is any of this necessary? No, but it's super cooland it's super Apple. All of that screen re-engineering means that Apple had to take out 3D touch. Instead there's somethingcalled the haptic touch which is a fancy way of saying long press with haptic feedback. Now there's only twoplaces I ever used 3D touch on my other iPhones and Ididn't really miss it here. I used it to scroll around a text field which works with a longpress on the space bar and turning on the camera and flashlight from the lock screen, which you can do by just holding on those buttons. Apple has the best hapticfeedback in the industry and all of it sort offeels very convincing. I did miss previewing linksin Twitter and Safari, but Apple tells me haptic touch will come to more and more placesin the iOS over time. Hopefully that gets added back in. Overall, I've always beena fan of how accurate and balanced Apple's LCDs are compared to the OLEDsin most Android phones and the 10 R is definitelyanother Apple LCD. If you're coming from aniPhone six, seven, eight, it's going to look very familiar. But after spending ayear with the iPhone 10, I gotta tell you it's notas good as Apple's OLEDs. It doesn't have the deep black levels or infinite contrast to the iPhone 10 S. It doesn't support HDR orDolby Vision video playback. And in general that backlightmeans you can always see the border between the bezeland the edge of the display even when you have a dark background. The display does have true tone but it's always a littlewarmer than my 10 S.
Again, I think you haveto go really looking for some of this stuffand if it bothers you you can just spend moremoney on a better screen, which I am definitely going to do. Okay, so that's the display,what about the rest? (upbeat music) Size-wise, the 10 R sits right between the old iPhone six,seven, eight size phones and the bigger plus models. Now, I have pretty big hands so this feels like a nice size compromise but if you've been usingone of the smaller phones, the 10 R is definitelygoing to feel bigger. And it's a taller screenand a narrower body than the old Plus phones. I would definitelyrecommend going to the store and holding this thing before you buy it because it's a totally new size of iPhone and it's different from anythingyou might be familiar with. If you're a small phone person you're basically going to be stuck with last year's iPhone eight orpaying more for an iPhone 10 S. I kind of hope Apple fixes that next year and does small and largein both models of phone. There's a glass back and aluminum border that comes in a bunch of colors. I love how mean ourblack review unit looks, but I got to see the othercolors and they're really nice.
I like the blue and the coral the best but the project red is striking and I know people areexcited about the yellow. Just keep in mind thatwhile the screen on the 10 R is made of the same glass on the 10 S that Apple says is the most durable ever, the 10 R's back is not the same glass. It's the glass used onlast year's iPhone 10, and the back of my iPhone 10 shattered even though I keep it inthe case all the time. So, you know, be careful out there. The phone supports wireless charging with the same redesignedcoil for faster charging as the 10 S, and it hasIP67 water resistance, which is a little worsethan the IP68 of the 10 S, but it's fine for the occasional splash. We've also got Apple'snew wide stereo speakers which are much louder than before but not quite as loud as the 10 S Max. Around the back there's thesingle wide angle camera, which is bascially the sameas the iPhone 10 S wide angle. This is our third shot at reviewing Apple's new smart HDR camera system after the iPhone 10 S reviewand the Pixel three review and we wanted to do somethinga little bit different. So Verge video producerMaria Abdulkof and I ran around Brooklyn andtook a bunch of photos that look a lot like what you'dsee every day on Instagram using the Pixel three and the iPhone 10 R.
And while I think Apple's smart HDR still isn't quite asgood as the Pixel three, I think I finally understandwhat Apple's trying to do. It flattens highlights and lifts shadows so aggressively thateverything looks evenly lit, and that can sometimes reduce detail and make photos look alittle bit artificial. Here's a good example of the iPhone doing better than the Pixel shooting out over the waterfront. These photos both look really good and even quite similar at a glance, but the iPhone is a little bit warmer and all the shadows by the fountain and in the skyline have been lifted, resulting in a less contrastyimage with more detail. The Pixel three is more dramatic, but the iPhone 10 R is more even. But Apple's smart HDRdoesn't always get it right. This photo of Mariaagainst a bright backlight would be challenging for any camera and you can see how the iPhone 10 R brought down the highlightsin the background, lifted the shadows on Maria's face and warmed everything up while the Pixel exposed Maria correctly andlet the background highlights blow out way more naturally. The Pixel also capturedmore detail on Maria's face. I much prefer the Pixel here. It's the same thing with selfies. The iPhone brought up the shadows so much that it made the black jacket turn gray. It almost looks like we shotthis photo with a film flash and there's far lessdetail in Maria's face.
Again, I really prefer the contrasty look of the Pixel three photo. There was a bunch of controversyaround the front camera on the iPhone 10 S which people claim was smoothing out and beautifying skin, but Apple tells me that was all a bug and that iOS 12.1 will improve selfies on the 10 R and 10 S bypicking a sharper base frame instead of a blurrier long exposure. I don't have iOS 12.1 yet so we'll just have tosee how it works out. Okay, here's a really hard one. Low light with a weird lighting in a bar. I think most people wouldprefer the iPhone here, but it also doesn'tactually look like reality. The iPhone found Maria's face, exposed it correctlywith the right skin tone and then flattened all the highlights and lifted all the shadows to make the scene look even. Again, it almost looks likewe brought lights to the bar and lit the photo. The Pixel three on the other hand does a much better job of capturing the strange red light in this room even if the photo is alot darker and weirder. Now, do you want a photothat's more accurate to reality or more pleasant to look at? I cannot tell you, it's areally subjective decision. The 10 R only has asingle lens in the back and I'm just going to come out and say that I don't miss having the second lens from the 10 S at all. I never really took zoomed photos in 10 S and the 10 R's single lens portrait mode is actually really good.
In fact, I prefer the 10 R'sportrait mode to the 10 S because shooting using the brighter wide angle lens means itworks better in low light and takes more interesting photos. Check out this photo wetook on the riverfront where I was able to capturethe sign in the background. It just wasn't possible to get this shot in portrait mode on the10 S or the Pixel three which crops in for portrait mode. In a low light, the 10 R isobviously better than the 10 S. This photo in a bar lookslike a grainy, dark mess using the 10 S' telephotocompared to the 10 R, which did a halfway reasonable job. The 10 R's portrait mode alsohas Apple's nice falloff blur, which looks more like a real boca than sort of the bad cut out bluryou see from the Pixel three. Now I don't really use portrait mode on any of these cameras. I don't think any of it looks terrific or perfectly cut out, butthe 10 R's portrait mode is kind of the most flexibleand useful of the bunch. After three rounds oftesting Apple's smart HDR, I'm beginning to understandwhat it can and can't do. I'm starting to getbetter photos out of it. It can definitely take photos no camera has ever really taken before.
But it still crushes detail and produces artificial looking images way more often than I would like. While the Pixel three justproduces winners consistently. As always, I can't possiblytell you what to like better. But I know that I prefer the consistency and naturalness of thePixel three over the 10 R. And this is all just the first stages of computational photography. I would expect the competitionbetween Apple and Google to be fierce over time. But right now, I wouldpick the Pixel three. The iPhone 10 R has the same video capture as the iPhone 10 S. It can shoot 4K 60. When you shoot in 24 it adds frames to create greater dynamic range, and it records stereo audio. If you want to recordvideo on your smartphone, you should get an iPhone. (upbeat music) In terms of performance, the 10 R was essentiallyidentical to the 10 S as I used it day to day and it even had basicallythe same benchmark number in some quick tests. It has slightly less RAM than the 10 S, it's three gigs instead of four, but it's pushing half as many pixels and honestly I think the RAM spec matters way less on iOS thanit does on Android phones. Apple's chips are so farahead of the industry that it's clear the A-12 bionic has tons of headroom to spare. The 10 R's gonna feel fastfor at least a few years.
The 10 R also has a larger battery than the 10 and the 10 S and it ran for about 13hours with my everyday use of browsing and email and Slack and apps. There's about six hours of screen on time. That's slightly more than the 10 S and even more than the eightplus from last year. The only major performance difference between the 10 R and 10 S is LTE. The 10 S supports thefaster gigabit LTE speeds and the 10 R does not. I don't live in a city with gigabit LTE, but maybe you do and it'ssomething to be aware of. So there's a lot of iPhone6 S's out in the world, more than you think, and I think a lot of people are going to upgrade tothe 10 R from the 6 S. So I have to mention thereis no headphone jack, which I think will promptanother round of annoyance, and there are alsobasically no accessories for the 10 R yet. Apple doesn't even haveits own 10 R cases ready, which is a little strange. And there have never beenofficial battery cases for any iPhone 10, which is a shame. There's also no thirdparty headphone adapters. There's just a bunch of stuff missing. So if you're upgrading right away, it's worth noting thatthe accessory ecosystem is a little thin right now, but I would expect thatto get a lot bigger fast. (upbeat music) And one thing is clearabout the iPhone 10 R, it's that Apple is goingto sell tons of these.
They are huge upgrades from the iPhone six,seven, eight generation with Apple's latestprocessors and cameras, a big screen and a updated design and a competitive opening price of $750. And honestly when we firststarted making this video, it felt like the big question would be what is the 10 R missingcompared to the 10 S. But now that I've usedthis thing for a while, it's flipped in my mind. The real question for iPhone buyers is whether spending $250 more on the 10 S, is it really worth it over the 10 R, because the 10 R offers almosteverything you would want in a 2018 phone minus an OLED display. I would pay that extramoney in a heartbeat because I am really,really picky about screens. But I think most people aren't. I think most people canfind way better ways to spend $250 than infinite black levels and 60% wider dynamic range in photos. For all of those people, theiPhone 10 R is a no brainer. The real question iswhether you, yeah you, think the better screenon the 10 S is worth $250. Now you can leave a comment. Hey everybody, thank youso much for watching. We talked a lot about the iPhone 10 S and the Pixel three in this review. Those reviews in fullare up on the channel, go check them out,subscribe if you haven't. If you like the wallpaper we use as much as I do, check outthe link in the description. It's right there, allour wallpapers are there, they're great, thanks so much.
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