iPhone XR Review: The Next Phone in Your Pocket – ihaveiPhone

Our Verdict

iPhone XR Review – The iPhone XR is a multicolor phone that delivers ever-fast performance with an excellent camera, longer battery life, and good quality audio an affordable price.

The Bottom Line

The iPhone XR is the best-ever made Phone with a larger screen, fantastic cameras, and long-lasting power — all at a price that’s considerably less than the iPhone XS and XS Max.

You want to buy Apple iPhone XR?

Then you’ll be surprised to know that the iPhone XR is the best-selling phone so far in the United States even absence of a perfect OLED display or dual rear cameras. But the iPhone XR provides almost all other features that the iPhone XS and XS Max have at a most accessible $749 price.

Now let’s take a deeper look into the Apple iPhone XR regarding its processor, elegant display, Color, Camera, Zoom, battery, and a lot of other specifications.

Let’s start the iPhone XR Review

iPhone XR Unboxing

You’ll have an iPhone, Earpods with Lightning Connector, Lightning to USB Cable, and a 5W USB Power Adapter

Available Colors

White

Black

Blue

Red

Yellow

Coral

iPhone XR Price, Storage Capacity, Availability, and Trade-in Deals

Price and Storage Capacity

Availability:

The Apple iPhone XR is available since October 26, 2019. You can directly buy it from Apple and various other U.S. carriers.

Where to Buy:

• Directly Buy an iPhone from Apple
• Buy iPhone XR through AT&T
• Buy iPhone XR through Verizon Wireless
• Buy iPhone XR through Sprint
• Buy iPhone XR through U.S. Cellular
• Buy the iPhone XR through Best Buy
• Buy iPhone XR through Sams Club

If you want to purchase iPhone XR on installment then monthly price varies from carrier to carrier so you must check as per your feasibility to payoff

iPhone XR Deals

Apple Deal: If you want to buy iPhone XR from Apple then for a limited time, Apple will double the value of your old iPhone against the purchase of new iPhone XR. The lowest price is $499.

• BOGO offer: from AT&T
• Family plan discount: at T-Mobile

Design: Color That Impressed me

The glass back are available in:

White, Black, Blue, Yellow, Coral and (PRODUCT)RED™.

Personally, I am impressed by Yellow.

All of these hues have color-matched aluminum bands which make the back seamlessly beautiful. I love lemony yellow as it’s my favorite while blue and the coral models are my second and third choice.

I think the bezels are a little bit thicker on the iPhone XR than the other pricier models iPhone XS and XS Max but the user won’t care

The TrueDepth camera is upfront with a notch that helps you to log in via Face ID and to capture portrait selfies as well.

We all know that OLED screens are much easier to manipulate than LCDs, however, it’s a pretty impressive feat that Apple has delivered an LCD-based almost full-screen design in iPhone XR that curves towards edges.

The iPhone XR Size and Weight

Display

• The iPhone XR weight is 6.84 ounces which is 194 grams
• The height is 5.94 inches (150.9 mm)
• The Width is 2.98 inches (75.7 mm)
• And the depth including bezels is 0.33 inch (8.33 mm)
  

The 6.1 inch iPhone XR screen size is a big enough for me and for all other smartphone buyers for Instagraming, Netflixing and gaming.

The new iPhone XR has come up with a “Liquid Retina Display” 6.1-inch screen size, multi-touch with IPS technology which gives 1792 X 828-pixel resolution at 326 PPI. All these specifications together produce a true-tone display and a bright screen.

The bad thing about the iPhone XR’s screen is that it doesn’t deliver the perfect black and ultra-wide viewing angles that OLED displays offer. When I put the iPhone XR and iPhone XS side by side with an aquarium screen saver, the OLED panel was more vibrant and the blacks looked grayer on an LCD.

Camera: That Makes iPhone XR Single Lens Top-Ranked Phone in the World

Key Camera Specifications:

• 12Mp 1/2.55″ sensor (1.4µm pixels)
• F/1.8-aperture lens
• 26 mm equivalent focal length
• Optical image stabilization
• Phase-detection autofocus (PDAF)
• Quad-LED dual-tone flash
• 4K video at 24/30/60 fps (1080p at 30 fps at default settings)

On the back of the iPhone XR, you’ll find the autofocus 12MP rear camera, f/1.8 aperture jutting out slightly from the glass with a six-element lens and Quad-LED true tone flash (slow sync) which together take amazing photos and videos. Unlike the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max iPhone XR is missing the extra sensor which means:

The iPhone XR can only produce 5x digital zoom. While the iPhone XS and XS Max deliver 2x optical zoom which means 10x digital zoom as compared to iPhone XR. So if you are not a professional photographer then iPhone XR is a cool choice.

Advanced Portrait Mode Lighting with Natural, Studio, Contour

The advanced portrait mode can produce pictures with bokeh effect (natural, studio and contour) and depth control.

Apple introduced the portrait mode in iPhone 7 and didn’t improve it until the iPhone X then iPhone XS and XS Max. Actually, before the iPhone XR release, the portrait mode from the rear camera required a secondary lens to create an in-depth map that tells the phone what’s in the foreground and what’s in the background before blurring out the images.

But soon Google introduced the “Google Pixel 2” which doesn’t require a secondary camera for taking portrait-style images. It was all about artificial intelligence (AI) with machine learning to analyze which part of the shot should be blurred and which should left.

So, unlike the iPhone XS (which relies on the secondary telephoto lens for portrait effects) the iPhone XR’s camera is designed to use AI depending on the A12 Bionic machine to perform the same trick.

Apple says it trained the Neural Engine in the phone’s A12 Bionic chip to identify faces specifically for portrait mode. As a result, it can blur out the background, but only when a person is detected in the frame. If the camera doesn’t see a person, it’ll display “No person detected.”

So the Neural Engine in the A12 Bionic chip identifies the faces and objects for portrait mode to blur the background. If the camera doesn’t find any object or a person it displays “No Person Detected”. Apple doesn’t provide any guarantee to identify the pets and other objects for blur shots.

Here is a Camera comparison: portrait mode between iPhone XR and XS by MacRumors

Here are some photos taken by the Austin with the iPhone XR who is a great and professional photographer, a traveler, and an iPhone lover. You can find tips and tricks regarding iPhone photography on his website austinmann.com

So, how good are the portrait shots with the iPhone XR’s single camera vs the iPhone XS and XS Max?

Personally, not so bad at all

You can see the portrait images taken by the iPhone XR. The camera has greatly isolated the background. The important thing is that the iPhone XR’s portrait mode takes shots equivalently 24mm camera lens (wider) while the iPhone XS uses a 50mm camera lens (closer). But not as poor a result as I was expecting. The portrait photo quality depends on the various lighting effects. Shooting outdoors can deliver the best portrait results as compared to indoors. The only thing you have to do is just tap on the person’s face to focus on the foreground and then blur the background.

iPhone XR Battery Life

When we make a comparison between the latest iPhone X series models the iPhone XR battery has a clear competitive advantage:

• iPhone XS: 2,658 mAh
• iPhone XS Max: 3,174 mAh
• iPhone XR: 2,942 mAh

Although, the iPhone XS Max has 3,174 mAh I think 2,942 mAh is the longest-lasting battery the Apple has ever released. While the iPhone XR battery is 1.5 hours longer than the iPhone 8

Once I charge the iPhone XR battery 100% in the morning, my phone can easily see me through midnight without requiring low-power mode and even 20% or 40% remaining as per usage. That’s with the whole day browsing, taking pictures, editing photos, gaming, messaging, calls and emails, etc.

The battery has also a great standby time and even with 20% left at night, it drops a couple of percentage points.

Because Apple claims that:

iPhone XR has a lithium-ion battery with Qi wireless charging, power adapter or charging with a USB to PC system can give you:

• Up to 25 hours of talk time
• Up to 15 hours of internet usage
• 16 hours of wireless video playback
• And up to 65 hours of wirelessly audio playback

However, Apple says that the iPhone XR supports fast charging 50% in just 30 minutes with 18 watts or higher capacity charger which can be purchased separately. While iPhone XR has a 5Watt built-in charger and we talked about it earlier at the time of unboxing.

These are the stats that put XR above all XS and XS Max regarding battery longevity.

Dual SIM Supported

The new iPhone XR is a dual SIM (Nano-SIM and eSIM) supported phone but it is not compatible with the existing micro-SIM cards.

Connectors and Headphones

When unboxing you will find the EarPods with Lightning connectors to listen to high quality music and other audio beats with richer bass

Bottom Line

The iPhone XR has shockingly sold off as compared to iPhone XS and XS Max because it costs ($250 to $350 (£250 – £350) less with the best features. While you have multiple color option with longer battery life, retina display and single-lens portrait mode camera. That’s why many people prefer to buy this iOS device as compare to other phones.