Apple iPhone Xs, Xs Max, & Xr: Out with the old, in with the new

The launch of the new iPhones marks a new age for Apple’s smartphone. Apple seems to be leaving a lot of things behind. It has in the past few iterations waged wars against everything from bezels, home buttons, to headphone jacks. And now with the new iPhone Xs, Xs Max, and Xr, Apple seems to be putting the final nail into the coffin of these technologies.
The three new iPhones now all sport the look of the iPhone X: nearly bezel-less displays without the home button and headphone jack. The naming convention might also change moving forward. Do we get XI or 11 next year, who knows? For now, what the new devices deliver include more screen real estate and as expected better performing internals, cameras, and battery. Let’s do a quick rundown of the key specs.

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Apple iPhone Xr
We’re going to need to make a special section for this “entry-level” iPhone. It’s a contentious term to use for a device with a starting price of US$749 (around P40,400) but we could say it’s the cheapest out of the three devices. You get some pretty good specs here. It has a large 6.1-inch display packed into the form factor of the iPhone 8 Plus. It uses the same 7-nanometer A12 Bionic chip as the iPhone Xs and Xs Max and is said to have over an hour and half more battery life than the iPhone 8 Plus. It will also support a dual SIM setup through nano and eSIM combo and run on iOS 12.Unlike the flagship Xs and Xs Max, this phone carries an IP67 rating for water and dust protection and features an LCD display, which in fancy Apple speak is being called a Liquid Retina display. The company is claiming it’s the most advanced LCD in a smartphone ever. The Xr switches out the stainless steel frames of the Xs and Xs Max for an aluminum one and it gets a single 12-megapixel wide-angle rear camera. Also, 3D Touch is missing from this model.

What Apple does give those considering the Xr is a wider selection of color options including White, Black, Blue, Yellow, Coral, and a (PRODUCT)RED version. Storage capacity ranges from 64GB, to 128GB, to 256GB. We don’t have local availability just yet but we’d expect these to arrive before the holiday season starts.
Apple iPhone Xs and Xs Max
We touched on a bit of the features of these high-end iPhones when we went through the features of the Xr. As mentioned, it’s powered by Apple’s new A12 Bionic chip. It’s the company’s first 7-nanometer chip, and the first 7nm chip to make it to market as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and Huawei’s Kirin 7nm chips aren’t available just yet. Apple claims it can handle a whopping five trillion operations per second. It comes with a 6-core CPU, 4-core GPU, and 8-core dedicated machine learning engine. It’s going to be faster and more energy efficient than its predecessors.

The Xs is going to feature a 5.8-inch OLED edge-to-edge screen, while the Xs Max will have a gigantic 6.5-inch display. Both sport Super Retina displays we’ve seen in the iPhone X last year. But thanks to these nearly bezel-less, notched displays, the latter is going to be roughly the same size as the iPhone 8 Plus. Both now also will be available in a new gold finish and feature strengthened glass and a stainless steel frame. (You can also get the phones in space gray or silver.) Instead of an IP67 rating, this one gets a bit of an upgrade with an IP68 rating, which allows for two-meter depth for up to 30 minutes. Both devices support Apple’s True Tone display, Dolby Vision, and HDR10.

While the Xr only has a single rear camera, the Xs and Xs Max have dual 12-megapixel rear cameras (one a telephoto sensor and the other a wide-angle one). With the dedicated image signal processor and neural engine, these cameras are said to perform a trillion operations on each photo you’ve taken and come with zero shutter lag and a new Smart HDR that takes a series of photos in succession to help get you the best possible image. Depth of field in Portrait mode can now be adjusted after the fact. And stereo audio recording is now possible. All three models though get the same 7-megapixel front-facing shooter and promises faster unlocking with Face ID.

Storage options for the Xs and Xs Max are more sizeable. You get 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB options. These phones offer stereo sound with a wider stereo field of range than its predecessor. Dual SIM also comes with these high-end phones. And, of course, these will run on iOS 12.
Battery life is slightly different for these two. You get up to 30 minutes more from the iPhone Xs, while you get an hour and a half from the Xs Max, when you compare it to previous generation.
Pricing for the iPhone Xs starts at US$999 (around P54,000), while the Xs Max starts at US$1,099 (around P59,000). It’s going to cost you a lot when these land here.