Image: Apple

The iPhone XR was released back in September 12, 2018 as the cheaper alternative to the iPhone XS and XS Max coming in at only a $750 starting price compared to its counterparts which start at $999 for the iPhone XS and $1,099 for the XS Max. As the cheaper phone in the lineup, it had specs that were a little worst than its more expensive counterparts, but does it still live up to its price nearly a year later?

Specs

Capacity: 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB

Screen: 6.1 Inch, Liquid Retina Display, 1792 by 828 pixel resolution at 326 pp, True Tone and 625 cd/m2 brightness

Chip: A12 Bionic Chip

Camera: 12MP Wide Angle Camera, F/1.8, Digital Zoom up to x5, Portrait Mode, Records up to 4k Video at 24fps, 30fps, and 60fps

Battery: 2,942 mAh, Qi-Wireless Charging

Ram: 3GB

Thoughts on the Specs

For an iPhone at this price range, the specs are pretty decent. The battery life on this phone is much higher than the other iPhone due to its lower pixel density screen. The screen has an edge to edge display and a notch like the iPhone XS, XS Max, and the previous generation iPhone XR. It has the A12 Bionic chip which is a very powerful chip. The most powerful one at the time it was released which is overkill for a phone. The phone has only one 12MP back camera which isn’t bad, but isn’t the best either. The Google Pixel has a much better Single Camera for taking photos compared to this. The camera is able to take Portrait Photos which used to be a luxury that only the dual lense iPhones had. The zoom isn’t very good, but it is still something. If you do choose to zoom into something very far away and take a photo it will be very pixelated and kind of unreconizable. The bezels are also noticably bigger on this than the iPhone XS and XS Max which is probably due to its much cheaper price.

Actually Using It

That was all specs and thoughts on the specs, but how does it actually fare in real life? Lets first start on the most contreversial topic when it was first released, the screen. Everyone was very mad about how the screen wasn’t even full HD when it was released, but when actually using it, you get used to it very quick and honestly I never even noticed a difference. Its all just specs on a sheet actually using it in real life is very different. I have got to say I thought the Liquid Retina Display was a going to be pretty niche as just a way to renaming an LED screen but when using it, it is very nice. The screen also get very bright, but when using it in the sunlight it isn’t bright enough to stand out, so it makes whatever you are doing on your phone much harder to do since it is hard to see anything on the screen. Also, when using this phone I noticed there was no 3D touch as to probably keep the price lower which I found pretty disappointing, but it didn’t really affect me in the end that much. Switching from an iPhone 5s to this phone which as a notch and no home button was pretty weird as first, but after a week or so of using it the notch just kind of “disappears”. I find it without the home button the phone is much quicker and easier to maneuver as opposed to having a button that can break down. It is also much easier to swipe up from the bottom and to the side as opposed to Double tapping and then swiping up to clear your recently opened. The battery life is also amazing on this phone and can actually get me through the whole day of almost constant usage pretty easily which a lot of battery left to spare. The A12 Chip is pretty powerful and pretty much crushes anything thrown at it. The phone is very snappy when I first got it. The single lense camera is actually suprisingly good. The photo I take on it are very nice. It doesn’t do too well on low light though. The portrait mode was kind of disappointing as it can only take portrait mode photos of people and not objects and even then you have to be really close to them as it doesn’t have a second lense to zoom it with. Recording on this phone was very nice. I recorded in 4k 30 fps. I think its interesting how you can record at such a high quality but you are not able to even view a video in full HD on the phone’s screen. Charging on this phone is pretty fast as it doesn’t have that big of a battery even though it lasts much longer than the iPhones with OLED screens. Coming from an iPhone 5s which was really small in size, getting used to the weird size of this phone wasn’t really that hard since it wasn’t as big a “Plus” sized phone which seems pretty hard to hold in your hand unless you have big hands and it wasn’t too small that it would look funny in your hands. I think they found a perfect found size for a phone as it isn’t hard to reach to top of your screen with you thumbs if you are were using it with one hand. Face ID on a phone at this price for Apple is very a very good feature to have as it is a very secure way of unlocking you phone as the there are many cameras used to verify it if your face and it is quick and getting much quicker with software updates. It was not be as quick as some android phones, but this is much more secure as you can’t fool it with a print out photo.

10 Months Later

When I first got this phone it was amazing and I felt like I had gotten a steal for the price it came at and all the specs it had. Many months later I have noticed some problems it has had. Some were major and some were minor problems, but there are still many amazing things about this phone. Some good things I’ve noticed about this phone 10 months later is that the A12 Bionic Chip is still snappy and there is little to no lag as far as I can tell. The camera is still good even though the portrait mode is still annoying as it can only take portrait mode photos of people, but I found the Halide camera app which lets you take portrait photos of anything and not just people. The app is amazing and has never let me down once, it is much better than the stock Apple camera app. It may be hard to get used to it first because it has so many control options. One downside of the app is that it costs $5.99 in the App store though. Now for some small changes that have happened over the time that aren’t particularly great. The battery life has decreased just a little bit even though when I check the battery health in settings it still says 100% and at the same time it has taken a longer time to fully charge the phone. I have combated this by using power brick that the iPad comes with instead since it has a higher energy output which charges the phone much faster. Sometimes the phone has crashed when opening certain apps like Instagram and Youtube which I find pretty annoying, but it isn’t a major problem. Now for some big problems that kind of get in the way of usage is that when I put it at max brightness and use for a little while the brightness would drop a noticable amount while in the settings it would still say it is at max brightness. One final problem is that sometimes a red line would go from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen for a quick second when i’m scrolling on instgram or story apps like Hoopla. This only happens on the left side of the screen about an inch in.

Is it Still Worth it?

As of right now 10 Months later the phone is still very good, but if you are thinking of buying this phone I would say wait until this year’s iPhones come out because they will probably be better than last year’s model and this year’s cheaper model will probably be around the same price of the XR when it was first released so it’s better specs but still the same price. If you for some reason perfer this phone still i’d wait because then when the next gen phones come out the price for the XR will drop and be even more affordable. Right now if you trade in an iPhone 7 plus and up you can get it for $479.

Buy it here

Thank you for reading! I hope this has helped!

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