iPhone XS Review: One Month In

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A little over a month ago, I got the iPhone XS delivered to my office. I wanted to be able to start using it as soon as possible, and just couldn’t wait until I got home. So, I got my iPhone, went through the usual setup process, waiting for everything to copy over, and then I started using it. Apple gave me a week with the iPhone XS before sending me a return box for my old iPhone, forcing me to decide whether or not I would keep the iPhone XS or return it and keep my iPhone X. I chose to keep the iPhone XS, obviously.

I’m on the iPhone upgrade program now. I get the new iPhone every year, as long as I turn in my old one. And, it’s not a bad deal. However, in cases like this, where the changes to the iPhone are so small they’re nearly imperceptible, it can be a little… boring. So, after a month with the iPhone XS, what are the parts that keep it from being boring?

The iPhone XS vs the iPhone X

The iPhone XS offers little improvement over the iPhone X. The areas it improves are not things you’ll think about much either. I think that’s why I wanted to bring up the changes Apple has made to the iPhone XS first.

• There’s a new and improved wide angle camera on the back. However, the telephoto lens remains unchanged.
• There’s a new processor with a significantly faster machine learning (ML) core.
• There’s a larger screen option as well as a new gold color option.
• The audio has been slightly improved and the camera now records videos in stereo.
• The ML core has enabled new photo editing options as well as faster Face ID.

So, do these upgrades add up to a worthwhile upgrade? The answer is a little bit more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no.”

Screen

The screen has been unchanged since the iPhone XS. It’s not a bad screen though. It’s Apple’s “Super Retina HD display.” On the iPhone XS, that means 2436×1125 pixel resolution with an HDR display, 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, P3 color gamut, and Apple’s True Tone feature, which makes the screen’s color temperature match the surroundings for a natural look.

The screen still has a notch in it. The screen is still a wider format than most media, so you won’t see it frequently while watching videos. Unless you’re watching a movie, which will likely take up the entire screen. Then you’ll notice the notch. I hate the notch. I never won’t hate the notch. But it’s something we’ve got to deal with now, because Apple decided Face ID was the future, and now we’re stuck with notches for the foreseeable future.

Face ID

Speaking of Face ID, it’s supposed to be improved in the iPhone XS, right? Well, for my first week of ownership, I had both an iPhone XS and an iPhone X. I could position them just right so I could look at them both at the same time. This allowed me to test the response time of Face ID on both devices simultaneously. In my tests, the iPhone XS usually unlocked at the same speed as the iPhone X. However, it was sometimes faster, and never slower. Apple’s ML Core will improve Face ID unlock speed with time, but it seems that, if there is a difference out of the box, it’s negligible. It does seem faster than I remember it being on the iPhone X now, a month later, but I can’t be sure.

Camera

I’m going to talk about the camera as a whole here, mostly focused on photos that use the wide angle lens as the primary lens for this section. Apple captures data from both sensors, which help with the automatic improvements Apple makes to your photos before displaying them to you, but, for this section, we’ll focus on the features that use the wide angle lens as the primary lens. You’ll understand why I’ve made this distinction when you get to the section below.

The Wide Angle Camera

The iPhone XS camera is fantastic. In fact, I used it for most of the photos on my Tada68 keyboard review. This was intentional. Could I, with suboptimal lighting in my home office, take decent photos of my keyboard? Spoiler: yes, yes I could.

Apple’s automatic settings use a ISO higher than I prefer. But that’s fine. Apple has opened the camera controls up to third party developers. I can independently control the ISO, shutter speed, focus, white balance, and more in a third party app. My favorite is Camera+ 2. Camera+ 2 feels most like shooting with a DSLR camera. I found that, if I have the time, photos I take like this, with a steady hand or tripod, look much better than those taken with Apple’s automatic settings. However, Apple boosts the ISO, introducing noise, because they want to use a short shutter speed and multiple combined images for an automatic HDR image. This introduces some noise and creates a slightly grainier texture, but, in a pinch, produces a better photo. When you want to reach into your pocket or bag and quickly take a photo, these automatic settings give you the best chance for a beautiful image. But, if you know what you’re doing, you can truly unlock the power of this camera, and when you do that, the iPhone XS will shock you.

I couldn’t believe how much more detail is revealed in the iPhone XS camera that is otherwise lost on the iPhone X camera. Extreme crops of photos reveal just how much that larger sensor helps. Of course, the photos aren’t comparable to those taken with a DSLR or mirrorless camera, however, the results are astounding for a smartphone. Truly, these are the best photos I’ve ever seen taken with a smartphone.

The Zoom Lens

I decided to discuss the zoom lens separately, because it’s terrible. On its own, it’s a camera that would be better suited on a mid-range device than something that costs over $1,000.

It’s a secondary lens, the primary lens is still wonderful. Apple mostly uses the secondary lens to capture more depth data. In fact, because this lens is so terrible, even when you tell your iPhone to zoom in 2x, it will sometimes prefer the wide angle zoom with a digital 2x zoom over the optical zoom of the 2x telephoto lens. That’s because the sensor for the telephoto lens is much smaller than the wide angle sensor, and the lens array captures far less light. The main camera has sensor pixels that are 1.4µm across. However, the telephoto lens has a 1.0µm pixel size. This is below the standards for high-end devices. The telephoto lens therefore requires longer shutter speeds or higher ISO. Noise or blur, those are your only two options.

As anyone who knows a few things about photography can tell you, with more zoom, you risk blurring your photo with movement and longer exposure times. The tiny movements of your hands are magnified by the same amount you’re zooming in. The absolute worst thing for a thing for a zoom lens to require would be longer exposures, even with optical image stabilization. That’s why Apple opts for a higher ISO, but that has its own problems.

Apple crippled this camera. The telephoto lens is simply awful. On top of that, portraits require perfect lighting, because they use the telephoto lens to take the shot. This means, unless your subject is lit perfectly, Apple has to increase the ISO to make up for the fact that the shutter can’t be open as long. This introduces noise. On the iPhone XS, it’s a lot of noise. Apple compensates for this noise with a filter to remove it, which makes everything appear softer and blurrier. You lose details in your subject.

The telephoto lens is so bad that portrait photos taken with the iPhone XR, with its single wide angle lens, actually look better than those taken with the far more expensive iPhone XS. You’re dropping an extra $250 to get worse photos.

Apple crippled the telephoto lens on the iPhone X. They didn’t improve the telephoto sensor like they did the wide angle sensor for the iPhone XS. As a result, the camera array will always be half of what it could have been. Honestly, for a $1,000 phone, the terribly small pixel size on the sensor for the telephoto lens is absolutely unacceptable.

 

Appearance and Hardware

The iPhone XS looks almost identical to the iPhone X, unless you get the gold iPhone XS or the iPhone XS Max. However, there are tiny differences. The breaks in the antenna bands around the edges of the case are different. Most notably though, your old iPhone X cases won’t work with the iPhone XS. The iPhone XS camera is slightly out of place on the iPhone XS. If your old iPhone X cases were flush with the camera, it won’t work on the iPhone XS. That means even Apple’s cases won’t work, unless you’re willing to cut the camera opening slightly. This was likely done for Apple’s larger camera sensor, but it’s still extremely disappointing. I always have and still do hate the camera bump. I’d rather a thicker iPhone with better durability and battery life. But here we are, money thrown down the drain because a camera bump shifted slightly.

I got the gold color, and, when I take it out of its protective and necessary case, I do like the gold. I’ll admit, I’d prefer a gold band with a black glass back panel, but I can’t get this. Apple just won’t sell a device like that. Perhaps they think it’s too much of a contrast. Perhaps they just know the color scheme would be polarizing. Still, I’d love it. The gold on gold isn’t bad though, and it’s definitely better than pairing the gold with white glass, as Apple has done in the past.

 

Performance

The A12 processor in the iPhone XS is definitely faster than the A11 in the iPhone X. Comparing Geekbench scores, the iPhone X scores 4,211 in single core and 10,133 in multicore performance. The iPhone XS, however, scores 4,795 in single core, and 11,222 in multicore. That’s not a huge difference in performance, but the graphics based Metal score is where we can observe the real difference. The iPhone X scored 15,232 on Geekbench’s “Compute” benchmark. Meanwhile, the iPhone XS scores a 21,191. That’s a graphics improvement of nearly 30%.

However, except in games, video, and high resolution photo editing, you won’t notice that improvement much. Instead, you’ll notice that the iPhone XS is just a little bit faster than the iPhone X. It’s barely a difference. But that’s not a bad thing. The iPhone X was no slouch. In fact, the iPhone X was an incredibly fast phone. Being only slightly faster than the iPhone X still makes the iPhone XS the fastest phone available.

Apple also improved the memory on the iPhone. The iPhone XS has 4GB of memory, in comparison to the iPhone X’s 3GB. That’s a 33% increase in memory, year over year. This isn’t something you notice as much as something you don’t notice. You don’t notice your phone re-loading apps as frequently. You don’t notice Safari re-loading webpages you were just looking at. The improvement of memory on this device makes using an iPhone XS a far more seamless and less frustrating experience over the iPhone X. While you could be forgiven for missing the slight CPU performance increases, you’ll definitely appreciate the extra 1GB of memory.

 

Battery Life

Battery life isn’t significantly greater than what I was seeing with the iPhone X. I didn’t do any long tests, driving the battery down to 0% and measuring how long it took. Instead, I just used it like I normally would, watching the battery life change as it dropped, depending on what I was doing.

Because I have a wireless charger by my desk at work and at home, I don’t frequently drain the battery very much. Still, I’ve watched an episode of a TV show on my iPhone XS while getting ready, and just in that episode, watched the battery life drop to below 90%. I noticed the battery life is between 8 and 15 hours, depending on what you’re doing. Just enough to carry you through a normal day, but not much more.

Apple reports that the iPhone XS can last “up to 30 minutes longer” than the iPhone X. I think that would be in perfect conditions. The iPhone XS has a more efficient processor, but otherwise, the memory uses more electricity than the iPhone X, and the battery is smaller than it was in the iPhone X. I don’t think you’ll notice an improvement in battery performance. Once again, Apple has dropped the ball on battery life. If you truly care about your phone lasting all day, you should either use a battery case, an external battery pack (what I do), get the iPhone XR, which has the best battery life of this generation, or just get an Android device, which frequently come with much larger batteries than anything Apple will give us.

Still, I haven’t had my battery die on me yet. This is largely because I charge my iPhone any time I put it down somewhere while I’m working. Spoiler alert: I work a lot. Therefore, my iPhone is frequently fully charged.

 

Value

The iPhone XS will likely cost you more than $1,000. When the iPhone X was introduced, it was easy to look at it and say “Yeah, that’s worth it, because this is where phones are going. I’m investing in the phone of the future.” However, it’s 2018. Most Android manufacturers are also releasing phones with OLED screens that take up the full face of the phone. They’re cramming 8GB of memory in there and the latest Snapdragon processors. They have larger batteries, and can be unlocked in a variety of ways, from in-screen fingerprint readers to rudimentary facial recognition.

Yes, the iPhone does all of these things better, but it also costs as much as $400 more than the Android phones that come very close. We shouldn’t spend more than $1,000 for a phone that we’ll replace every year or every other year. Apple claims their devices should last longer, but, frankly, people won’t want to use this phone for 4 years. They’ll get tired of Face ID, and new versions of iOS will likely run slowly on it. This isn’t a 4 year phone, it’s a 2-3 year phone, at best.

Let’s face it: the iPhone XS is a terrible value and its high price taints the experience. The iPhone XR is a much better value, and if you’re going to buy a new iPhone this year, that’s probably the one you should go for.

Should You Upgrade?

I’d say it depends on what you’re upgrading from. If you’re on the iPhone every year program, there’s little reason not to upgrade. However, if you’re not, you’ll have to consider where you’re coming from and going to. Is a >$1,000 phone worth purchasing if you’ll only get a surprisingly noticeably improved camera? Because that’s the only part of the upgrade you’ll really notice unless you’re moving to a larger display. However, if you’re coming from an iPhone 7 or below, definitely upgrade. As for iPhone 8 users, you’ll have to decide if you’re ready to give up your Touch ID and home button for a new screen format. If you are, you might even be willing to consider the iPhone XR instead of the iPhone XS. In fact, if what reviewers have been saying is true, it truly is comparable to the $250 more expensive iPhone XS.

Summary

The iPhone XS is a fantastic phone. Likely the best phone I’ve ever owned. Sure, I miss my Touch ID. I’ll miss that until Face ID is as easy to use as Touch ID, and that’ll likely take some considerable time. But the iPhone XS is fast, has an incredible camera, has just barely decent enough battery life, and is a great looking device. If you’re upgrading, I’d suggest the iPhone XS over the iPhone XR for only a few reasons:

1. You consider screen quality vitally important
2. Having a zoom lens is more important than having a good zoom lens
3. You like the idea of portraits of humans, and never take photos with rich depth of field that include animals or objects
4. You love 3D Touch and don’t want to give it up.

I selected the iPhone XS for reasons 1 and 4. I like having the portrait blur on photos, but the telephoto sensor and lens is just awful. The sensor is too small, the lens array isn’t fast enough. If those reasons are enough to spend $250 more, then go for the $1,000+ iPhone XS. But remember, you’re paying a small fortune for a device that will be dropped, will sit in your pocket, and will be traded in eventually. The iPhone XS is a wonderful phone, the best iPhone yet, and the best smartphone on the market. But Apple could have made it so much better with just a little effort on the telephoto lens. Furthermore, that price tag is a bitter pill to swallow, and taints the entire experience of the device. I don’t feel proud that I paid $1,149 for this phone, I feel like a damn fool.

It’s a very good phone, but Apple shouldn’t have skimped on the telephoto sensor and charged more than $1,000 for it.