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 on affordable price.

YEA

Fast Processor Performance
Awesome and Excellent Camera Results
Longer Battery life
Bright and Colorful LCD
Superb Audio Quality

NAY

Single Rear Camera that doesn’t Provide 2X Optical Zoom
Portrait Mode limitations
Dual Sim Support is Limited
Fast Charger is Not Bundled

The Bottom Line

The iPhone XR is the best ever made Phone with a larger screen, fantastic cameras, and long lasting power — all at 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 iPhone XR is the best-selling phone so far in the United States even absence of perfect OLED display or dual rear cameras. But iPhone XR provides almost all other features like the iPhone XS and XS Max have at a most accessible $749 price.

Now let’s take a deeper look into Apple iPhone XR regarding 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

iphone-xr-white-color

White

iPhone XR Black Color

Black

iPhone XR BlueColor

Blue

iPhone XR Red Color

Red

iPhone XR Yellow Color

Yellow

iPhone XR Coral Color

Coral

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

Price and Storage Capacity

iPhone XR 64GB

$749

iPhone XR 128GB

$799

iPhone XR 256GB

$899

512GB Not Available

Unlike iPhone XS and XSMax iPhone XR doesn’t have 512GB option. If you want to compare iPhone XR with these piercer models then check out our iPhone XR vs iPhone XS and XS Max faceoff.

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 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 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

Design: Color That Impressed me

iPhone XR Design and colors

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.

iPhone XR Water Proof and Dust Resistant

The phone is dust resistant. The front of the iPhone XR has the same glass as the iPhone XR has but the back is not so rugged. The best thing is that iPhone XR uses IP67 Water-proof which mean it can stand up in the water for up to 1 meter for 30 minutes as compared ti iPhone XS which can stand up to 2 meters in water for 30 minutes. Not so bad.

As I said that iPhone XR back is not so tough so it can crack if not handled carefully.

How much does it cost to repair an iPhone screen?

If you need to repair a cracked screen on iPhone XR then you have to bear $199 if you don’t have AppleCare+. Which costs you $29 if you have subscribed AppleCare+ service for iPhone XR in just $149.

The iPhone XR Size and Weight

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)

Display

iPhone-XR-Screen-Size-Display 6.1 inch screen size - ihaveiPhone

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 “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 brighten screen.

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

Advance Portrait Mode Lighting with Natural, Studio, Contour

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

Apple has 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 the Google has 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 iPhone XS (which relies on the secondary telephoto lens for portrait effects) the iPhone XR’s camera is designed to use AI totally 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”. The apple doesn’t have provided 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

 portrait mode Comparison between iPhone XR and XS
portrait mode Comparison between iPhone XR and XS

Here are some photos were taken by the Austin with the iPhone XR who is a really 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 iPhone XR’s portrait mode takes shots equivalently 24mm camera lens (wider) while iPhone XS uses 50mm camera lens (closer). But no so poor result as I was expecting. The portrait photos quality depends on the various lighting effect. Shooting outdoor can deliver the best portrait results as compared to indoor. The only thing you have to do is just tap on the person’s face to focus as foreground and then blur the background.

iPhone XR Battery Life

When we make a comparison between the latest iPhone X series models then 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, iPhone XS Max has 3,174 mAh but I think 2,942 mAh is the longest-lasting battery the Apple has ever released. While iPhone XR battery is 1.5 hours longer than iPhone 8

Once I charge 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 talk time
Up to 15 hours of internet usage
16 hours of wireless video playback
And up to 65 hours wirelessly audio playback

However, Apple says that iPhone XR supports the 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 have talked about it earlier at the time of unboxing.

These are the stats which 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.