The Great iPhone 11 Review: One Month In

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When it comes to reviews, I always like to wait at least a week before I review something. Why? Opinions change over time. Something that may seem silly at first comes in handy. A feature that you loved disappearing isn’t such a big deal. And new processors stop impressing after long. But the actual feeling of using a device? The question of whether or not your life is better with that device in it? Finding out that the phone camera works when you’re taking shots during everyday life? That takes time.

So, I spent the past month using the iPhone 11 every day. I’m upgrading from an iPhone XS, and I chose not to get the iPhone 11 Pro because I just didn’t think it would be worth the $180 I could save per year by going with the iPhone 11. One month in with an LCD screen, lack of a 2x telephoto lens, and slightly larger screen, and I can confidently say that I was right. The iPhone 11 is a large enough improvement over the iPhone XS that I could feel like I upgraded without feeling like I was missing out. In fact, the iPhone 11 might be Apple’s best iPhone yet, iPhone 11 Pro be damned.

So, let’s take an in-depth look at the iPhone 11, its camera, battery life, power, form factor, screen, appearance, and much, much, more.

Appearance

The iPhone 11 and its more professional sibling have what some might call a “polarizing” look. When the first designs of the new iPhone leaked, I thought it looked ugly. However, then I started seeing the designs that made the camera bump a color matching part of the back of the phone. This, I think, looks better than a large black plate. The new Google Pixel 4 went with the assumed design of the iPhone, and it just doesn’t look as good.

However, it’s still ridiculous. The iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro have the first camera bump, then another camera bump for each lens. Why didn’t they just make the initial camera bump flush, better protecting the lenses? Why do we have a bump on a bump? Will we ever have an iPhone that can lay flat on a surface again? Probably not.

There’s another thing the iPhone 11 has over the iPhone 11 Pro: a wide variety of colors! Apple treats individualistic flair like it’s a flaw. As though beautiful colors make things cheap. It’s a masculine vs feminine design philosophy, and it’s tiring while subtly sexist. Yes, women are more likely to pick bright colors. Women are more likely to be expressive because, frankly, men have been told they’re not allowed to. Meanwhile, women have been told that—while we should be emotive—we’ll be seen as lesser than men no matter what anyway, so why not feel our emotions? So Apple treats more female-friendly design as “cheap,” because, at least subconsciously, that’s how they see women. The end result? The cheaper iPhone is far more beautiful than the Pro model.

Plus, it’s less likely to trigger anyone’s trypophobia.

I do like the frosted glass around the camera bump, and I wish it covered the entire back of the phone. The iPhone 11 Pro has this frosted glass, and I think that it looks great. However, you’re likely going to put a case on this, and, even if it’s a clear case, it’s going to look glossy through that case. Furthermore, the matte texture is less easy to grip. You’ll spend more on a phone you’re more likely to drop! Because of the colors and practicality of the iPhone 11 vs the iPhone 11 Pro, I actually think it’s a far better looking phone.

Physical Design: Using The Device

Just go back to my iPhone 6 review to understand how I feel about the hardware design of the iPhone 11. It’s a five-year-old design pretending to be something new and unique. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t such a mediocre, lousy design. But it’s hard to grip, it exposes the screen to fall damage, and it’s a tired, old design. You could point to the full screen design, the notch, or the camera bump as design changes, but those were all utilitarian. The same general shape is there. Curved, hard to grip edges, curved glass that makes damage to the screen and back more likely, and a hard to hold design. The matte iPhone 11 Pro is supposedly even more difficult to grip than the iPhone 11! It’s gotten worse!

Listen, if someone must put your iPhone design in a case just to hold it, you screwed up. I need a case and a phone loop just to comfortably hold this thing, and that’s utterly ridiculous. Furthermore, Apple has exclusive access to Liquid Metal, and they’re still not using it. At least use it for the corners to increase durability!

Let’s not get started about the camera bumps. Yes, bumps. You’ve got the main bump, but that’s not enough for these camera lenses. Oh no. They’ve got bumps of their own. Bumps on bumps. Apple could have made the iPhone imperceptibly thicker and eliminated the first bump and drastically improved battery life. They could have made the phone even faster too, with extra space. Maybe they could have even added a 10x telephoto lens. Instead, we get bumps on bumps.

Apple could easily make a better looking, more durable, more powerful, and unique iPhone. Year after year, they don’t. It’s getting really boring to talk about the same iPhone design for the past five years. Hopefully this is the last time I have to do it.

Screen

I downgraded my screen by upgrading to this phone. At first, it was noticeable. The text almost looked blurry to me. I had gotten used to the higher resolution screen, and now I could tell that this one was lower resolution. But you quickly get used to that lower resolution, adjusting your expectations. It’s not something you notice as you’re using your device. It feels more like watching 4K TV and then switching to a 1080p show. Do you notice it right away? Yes. Do you notice it after five minutes? No.

I do like the fact that it’s slightly larger. I use a Phone Loop with my phone, so I could likely be comfortable with the iPhone 11 Pro Max Large XL Supersized model as well. The extra screen area doesn’t do much for you when it comes to the interface. You don’t get the split screen apps or the landscape home screen of the largest iPhone. There’s room for it, but Apple doesn’t want to make the iPhone 11 better than the smaller iPhone 11 Pro. However, you do get some extra screen space for your apps and content and it’s certainly welcome.

The screen has lower contrast and black is shown as a sort of gray on the screen. This is a problem with LCD vs OLED screens. This screen is backlit, so even with the pixels off, the entire screen is lit up. That lowers contrast significantly. You’ll clearly be able to see it in movies. But the OLED screen turns pixels on or off individually. That allows them to display perfectly inky blacks on the screen. It’s far better. But, again, this is a luxury, one you don’t notice too much if you’re not directly comparing the differences. Does the iPhone 11 have a worse screen than the iPhone 11 Pro? Most certainly. Will you notice it? Definitely. Will you care? Probably not. It’s still an excellent, bright screen with vibrant and accurate colors, wide viewing angles, and a high resolution.

3D Touch Begone!

The thing I was dreading the most about the iPhone 11 was the lack of 3D Touch. I loved 3D Touch, from selecting text to peek and pop, it was great. But it’s dead now. Apple replaced it on every single one of their new phones with “Haptic Touch.” It’s just a long press that gives you a little bump to know it’s been activated. It’s literally a cheap knockoff of 3D Touch.

But ditching 3D Touch also increases the space inside of the phone. That, along with a marginally larger chassis means Apple was able to pack significantly more battery space in the iPhone. When combined with the updated processor, Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro lineup was able to gain about 5 hours of normal use over their predecessors, and the iPhone 11 gained one hour over the already fantastic battery life of the iPhone XR. But is it worth losing 3D Touch?

Text Selection

As it turns out, Apple introduced a way of doing text selection with Haptic Touch that I hadn’t seen discussed online. You can press and hold on the spacebar to move the cursor around. By now, everyone knows that. But you can also tap on the keyboard above it after you start moving the cursor to select text. It’s actually more refined than the 3D Touch method, although less intuitive. It also requires the use of two hands, which can be awkward when on a train or moving. The fact is, having both options on your phone would be the best way of doing it. Unfortunately, Apple won’t give us that. This isn’t terrible, it’s just awkward when you have one hand full. When you can use both hands to type, it’s actually not bad at all.

Peek and Pop

Peek and pop were primary features of 3D Touch. It worked like this: press a little and you’d get a preview, press harder and it would “pop,” opening whatever you were looking at. It was great for navigating results or emails. The thing is, iOS 13 largely crippled this, opening more in the preview, making the preview smaller, and locking you at the preview. Basically, they removed the pop step, and the peek step isn’t very useful. Even with an iPhone XS, you’re not going to like Peek and Pop on iOS 13. This crippling was part of the reason I decided to upgrade. What’s the point of having 3D Touch if Apple won’t even let you use it to its full potential?

So the iPhone 11 lacks peek and pop. After using iOS 13 on the iPhone XS for a while, I can honestly say it left my usage habits. Is my iPhone usage worse for it? Sure. Do I miss it? Yeah, a little. Does it make the iPhone a worse product? Well, it’s complicated. In a magic place where we could have this battery life and 3D Touch, losing it would be silly. But we gain hours of usage by losing 3D Touch. It’s kind of worth it?

Besides, what are you going to do, buy an Android phone that doesn’t even have the remnants of this feature?

App Shortcuts

App Shortcuts are available on the home screen and no one, including myself, used them. It would be one thing if you could use them to automate within apps, creating your own in-app shortcuts, but the largely depended on developers. Most developers didn’t care to make use of the feature, and most users didn’t even know it existed. The problem was simple, people just didn’t know whether or not pressing on an app would be worth their time. When they did, they found the shortcuts were largely useless. As a result, I don’t miss app shortcuts. It’s the one 3D Touch feature I honestly don’t miss one bit.

Lock Screen and Control Center Woes

This was unexpected, but I really miss having 3D Touch on the home screen and Control Center. The problem is, these interfaces were designed with 3D Touch in mind. They were made for 3D Touch. Apple abandoned the “swipe to go to camera” gesture for the pressure activated button it now has on the lock screen specifically to show off 3D Touch. Now that it’s gone, it’s like an appendix. It doesn’t necessarily get in the way, but when it does, it’s a huge problem.

I recently saw a dog on a skateboard. Like, a dog, with his human, on a skateboard. The dog was riding his own skateboard. Are you with me on this? It was pretty awesome. I tried to grab a photo, but I couldn’t, because it took too long to open the camera from the lock screen and I was skating past. If I slowed down, I’d surely cause an accident with other skaters. If I still had 3D Touch or a swipe to open camera setting, I’d have that shot of a radical skateboarding dog. Now I don’t. It wasn’t even the last skateboarding dog I saw that day, and I missed both!

Then you’ve got the control center. It was based around the idea of pressing these buttons to expand your options. Nearly every “button” could react to a touch or expand on a long press. It made adjusting the flash on your flashlight or controlling the lights in your apartment easy. Now, this takes so long that it’s clunky. It’s obnoxious and slow. If Apple wants to ditch 3D Touch, they should do it completely. Don’t leave these vestigial artifacts in the OS. If you remove the hardware, change the software that was made for it, it’s that simple.

Battery Life

Battery life is so hard to judge. I could play a video all day long and see how long it lasts. Or perhaps load up a game. I could design a specific test to figure out just how much power it uses and how long it lasts. But the truth of the matter is that you’d find that utterly useless. How often do you watch a video for 17 hours straight? But let’s take a look at Apple’s testing anyway.

	iPhone XS	iPhone 11	iPhone 11 Pro	iPhone 11 Pro Max
Video Playback	14 Hours	17 Hours	18 Hours	20 Hours
Audio Playback	60 Hours	65 Hours	65 Hours	80 Hours

It’s clear that the iPhone 11 features an improved battery life over the previous models. But is this something you’ll actually notice? Most likely. If you had the iPhone XS, then your battery life likely hasn’t degraded much. That means the new phone won’t feel like a drastic leap forward. However, it does last slightly longer than my iPhone XS. I could believe that it’ll give me an extra 4 hours of battery life a day. I feel like, while it’s not life changing battery life, I don’t need a battery case for it like I did my iPhone XS. Even if I don’t charge at work, it can easily last until 6PM with over 60% battery remaining. This is acceptable battery life. Finally, Apple made an iPhone that has acceptable battery life again. This is kind of a big deal. A major source of iPhone anxiety is going to fade away over time. We’re free!

That. Camera.

Everyday Use

I took a photo late one night in a train station. I thought Night Mode would engage to take the shot. It didn’t. The camera did just fine on its own, adding detail to the scene I may not have noticed otherwise. Apple improved their image processing substantially, but also improved their camera sensors and lenses themselves. The end result comes out to everyday photos that are undoubtedly better than the photos you could take in bright locations on an iPhone XS. I’ve had people ask me how I skated to locations with my big, expensive mirrorless camera. But, nope! Got there and took photos with my iPhone 11. At first glance, especially on social networks, you can be forgiven for making the mistake.

However, you truly notice the iPhone 11’s impressive new cameras during edge cases. These are the times when the camera on older iPhones would have failed miserably. They’re times when you don’t think a phone could possibly take a photo of this scene. When you need gimbal-like smooth video, when a scene is a little dark, or when you want to fit more people into a shot or get a more dramatic look for a closeup.

The camera for perfect conditions is slightly improved over the iPhone XS. But when it comes to low light, almost no light, wide angles, and video, the iPhone 11 shows that it’s a leap ahead of previous iPhones, and possibly a giant leap ahead of even the Google Pixel’s photographic capabilities. With the iPhone 11, Apple has reclaimed their top spot as the best camera for every situation.

Night Mode

I took a few shots with night mode on my camera in a bar, at a BBQ, in a park at night, and even of the night sky in NYC. The resulting photos convinced a few of my friends to get the iPhone 11. My mother saw some of my photos on Instagram and thought I took them with my mirrorless camera, not the iPhone. That’s just how shockingly good night mode is.

It pulls out details and brightens up a scene far more than you’d think is possible. The resulting shots look brighter than what you see with your own eyes, and show details you may have missed. You’d have to set up a camera with a tripod and a 3 second exposure to get lighting like this, and you’d suffer motion effects. The water and clouds in the pics would look smooth. A cool effect, to be sure, but it doesn’t capture the scene accurately. The iPhone 11 freezes motion while still getting amazing lighting.

And did I mention photos of the night sky? Here’s a photo I took during a BBQ in Harlem, around 8PM. Notice something? The trees in the photo look bright, and are those stars off to the right?

Yes! They are! The thing is, it was nearly pitch black outside. Most of the light we had was ambient, coming from the building. On top of that, even with the dark setting, you couldn’t ever see so many stars in Manhattan. But here they are. To get this, I put my phone down on the table, pointed it up, and pressed the shutter button. The rest was the iPhone’s magic, removing vibrations on the table and revealing details we couldn’t see with our own eyes in 30 seconds.

I feel like this is going to be a plot device in a horror movie at some point. Some kids will be out in the dark, they take a photo, someone says, “Hey, what’s that?” They look around and see nothing, but they can hear something. They take another photo and it has moved. Now it’s behind another object, but closer. They take another photo. It takes 3 seconds to take the shot, by the time it has processed… WHAM! Big scary monster right there. Get on it Hollywood!

Night mode is a reason to buy the iPhone 11. If it’s your only reason for buying the iPhone 11, you made the right decision. It’s so far ahead of what we thought was possible from a phone, let alone any camera. The way it captures light, freezes motion, and preserves detail is just unthinkable in standard photography.

Ultra Wide Angle Lens

The wide angle lens on the iPhone 11 is actually pretty good, unlike the secondary lens on the iPhone XS. It’s not perfect though. There’s no optical image stabilization, you can’t get raw photos out of it for some reason (perhaps too much processing to correct distortion), and you lose some lighting and details. Still, it’s a fantastic camera lens that will get you thinking differently about how you take photos. Should this really be a panorama or can I get it all in one shot? What about closeups of items that make them look huge and dramatic? Maybe you’re just trying to get all your friends together for a group shot. The wide angle lens makes all of that possible.

The photo quality coming out of the ultra wide angle lens is passable. It’s not as good as the primary lens, but the details are still there. Color accuracy is still good. Lighting works, especially in brighter settings. I’d say in most occasions when you’d use the wide angle lens, you’ll be happy with it. The preview in the iPhone’s camera app that shows what could be in the frame is a great way to help you decide which lens would be best for a shot.

No Telephoto Lens

In my review of the iPhone XS, I called out Apple’s continued use of a terrible lens and sensor for the telephoto lens. Photos taken with it were more grainy, had lower detail, and were darker. Apple thought of it as a secondary camera, which made the iPhone XR actually better than the iPhone XS when it came to photos. This year they improved that camera for the iPhone 11 Pro, but the iPhone 11 lacks it. Do I miss it? No, I almost never used it. Chances are, taking a photo with the wide angle and cropping produced better photos than using the zoom lens.

I don’t mind missing out on the lack of a telephoto lens, and prefer the wide angle lens. With the iPhone 11, I get portrait mode, depth information, and extra wide shots. I also can add more to my photos later by zooming out. This is far better than a zoom lens for everyday use.

Panorama: Wide vs Ultra-Wide

When it comes to panoramic shots, you may think the ultra-wide angle will be best. After all, it captures more in each movement, and therefore requires less movement and time to make the panorama. Clearly it’s the best, right?

Well, it depends. Is time of the essence? Are you leaning over a railing, holding your phone over the Grand Canyon or, I don’t know, maybe a river? Then perhaps you will prefer the fast panorama capabilities of the ultra wide.

On the other hand, perhaps you want to preserve as much detail as you can, and create a panorama that doesn’t have as much distortion. In that case, you’ll prefer the panorama from the wide angle camera. You’ll lose a bit of the sky and ground, but unless that’s what you want a photo of, you won’t miss it.

Deep Fusion

You’ll never be sure when Deep Fusion is turned on for a photo. It works in medium to low light, when flash would be too much light or too disruptive (like at a bar), but night mode wouldn’t work either, as the exposure wouldn’t need a second. It’s for that middle area where the lighting is so bad that nothing your phone can do can help your photo. Until now.

Very first tests of #DeepFusion on the #iPhone11 pic.twitter.com/TbdhvgJFB2

— Tyler Stalman (@stalman) October 2, 2019

Deep Fusion works by combining a variety of shots, like night mode or smart HDR. However, it adds a machine learning process to the pipeline. This adds details to photos that the camera could barely pick up before. If the camera, for example, could pick up that a person was wearing a shirt, deep fusion could add an appropriate amount of detail to the threads to make the shirt look far more detailed and clearer. This works for skin, hair, and other textures, to bring out details that technically weren’t there. But they look natural and, to the human eye, the feature means a better looking photo, even if it is part digital painting.

Deep Fusion is designed to work without you noticing it. You can figure out later by looking through the exif data, but from the camera, it’s tough to tell when a photo will use Deep Fusion. I updated my iPhone 11 to the beta so I could use it, and, to be honest, you can’t tell when it’s in use. Often I’m not looking at the screen when rapidly lining up a shot. However, a hint would be if Live Photo doesn’t turn on for the shot. The computational photos don’t have this capability.

Video

The short clip above was from a group skateboarding event. One guy with a boosted board helped two other skaters make it up a steep hill in Tribeca. I was pushing a longboard, which is the cause of the giant sweeping motion in the middle of the video. However, as you can see, the rest is smooth. Even that large sweeping motion feels subdued, as though the iPhone reduced the range of the motion it went through magically.

The stabilization on the iPhone 11 is surprisingly good. It’s got optical image stabilization on the main camera, but not on the ultra-wide. Still, through software stabilization and optical stabilization, the iPhone 11 produces some of the smoothest phone video I’ve ever seen. It’s not up to par with a GoPro Hero7 or an iPhone attached to a gimbal, but it’s still impressive. I took some video skateboarding around town and was surprised to find that it wasn’t a shaken mess, despite me pushing, carving, and even sliding.

One of the things that bugs me is that I can’t zoom out once I’ve started recording with the standard camera, and you can’t switch to the “1x” camera when you zoom in with the wide angle. Apple claims both cameras are collecting data at all times, so why can’t you switch during a recording?

Face ID

Apple sped up Face ID with iOS 13. I have a theory that this is done with periodic face scans while you use your device. I used my own camera to watch the Face ID sensor, and noticed the IR blaster seems to flash at a regular rate. This means Face ID must do some processing while you’re using the device. That way, when you go to an app that uses Face ID, or if you lock and unlock your phone, it can unlock very quickly.

The iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro expand upon this even further. Apple claims the new iPhones have faster Face ID unlocking than the iPhone XS and iPhone XR. It’s definitely noticeable. I used the iPhone 11 alongside my iPhone XS, and the iPhone 11 was able to recognize my face slightly faster in most situations. If the first generations of Face ID were slow and annoying, this may make you more comfortable with Face ID.

Unfortunately, Apple didn’t make the feature recognize you while laying flat on a table. However, they did supposedly improve the angles at which Face ID will recognize you. I didn’t notice a large difference between the two, but if angling my phones away from my face and then bringing them in, the iPhone 11 always recognized me first.

You’re also still in trouble if you have a twin or a nearly identical sibling or family member. That’s the biggest problem with using Face ID instead of fingerprints. Faces aren’t as unique as fingerprints.

Value

I didn’t used to write about value when it came to the iPhone. It was the price it was, and it was worth it. But those were the days before the iPhone X. The iPhone X changed things. Apple started charging over $1,000 for a phone with the same features and quality of Android phones that were half the price. It was fine when the iPhone was about $100-$200 more than the competition. It was easy to see that price difference as paying for the quality of the iPhone and the Apple ecosystem. But $400-$500? Apple’s out of their damn minds.

“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.”

– Danielle of Leaf and Core (me), 1 Year Ago

“[T]he iPhone X [was] the first iPhone that was actually worth over $1,000. It’ll also be the last iPhone that’s worth over $1,000.”

– Also me, 2 Years Ago

Last year, after getting the iPhone XS and, frankly, regretting it, I decided that I would either not upgrade this year or I’d only get the iPhone XR replacement. I’m on the yearly upgrade program, so, for me, upgrading only costs the tax of the device and an activation fee from my carrier. It comes out to only slightly more than replacing every two years outright. Still, I didn’t think the iPhone XS was worth $1,000. I called the iPhone XR the iPhone you should buy, and looking back, I was right. Now the iPhone 11 is out, and it’s leaps and bounds better than the iPhone XR, while the iPhone 11 Pro isn’t much better than the iPhone XS.

So is the iPhone 11 worth the price? Yes. Finally, the iPhone is priced correctly again. Forget the iPhone 11 Pro, it’s not worth the price and is a worse phone for the terrible value alone. The iPhone 11? Worth every penny. Based on pure value alone, the iPhone 11 gives you far more for your money, and is better than the iPhone 11 Pro. It’s like going to the local family owned Mexican restaurant for an amazing burrito for $10 vs going to an extremely fancy restaurant charging $200/person for a 5-course meal that will be delicious, but only slightly better than that $10 burrito.

I’m done wasting my money for the “best” iPhone. Value is a part of the equation, and it can’t be ignored. I want my burrito, dammit.

Overall 9 / 10

Pros:

• Amazing camera
• Beautiful colors
• Improved battery life
• Incredible performance
• Faster Face ID
• Incredible value for the money. Finally.

Cons:

• Stale design
• No 3D Touch
• Notches and camera bumps
• Lower resolution and contrast
• Still expensive

I won’t sit here and lie to you. If money was no object, of course I’d go for the iPhone 11 Pro. Perhaps the iPhone 11 Pro Max, as I’ve now grown accustomed to a larger iPhone and want to keep the party going. The main reason, for me, would be the OLED display. However, I’d miss having this beautiful red iPhone in the “just right” size of 6.1 inches. But would that be worth $400, the price of two decent longboards, or perhaps one really cool keyboard? No. Also, I need a better system of measuring wealth than keyboards and skateboards.

The fact is, the marginally improved battery life and telephoto camera just doesn’t justify the price for me. The gap between the capabilities of Apple’s “cheap” iPhone and expensive iPhone has never been smaller, while the price gap has never been larger. Frankly, you’re giving up a beautiful phone in a perfect size for a screen, some battery life, and a camera lens you’ll rarely use. It’s just not worth it. I think that’s a message Apple needs to hear. The iPhone isn’t worth more than $1,000, period. I say this as a longtime Apple fan. The iPhone 11 Pro is not a $1,000 phone, it’s barely better than this $700 phone. In fact, if aesthetics are your thing, it’s arguably worse.

The iPhone 11 is amazing. The camera alone represents a huge leap forward over the iPhone XS. The battery life is fantastic. After a while, I barely notice the screen isn’t as good, and instead notice the super fast Face ID unlock and app loading. Frankly, the iPhone 11, despite being a “downgrade upgrade” over the iPhone XS is a larger leap forward for smartphones than most yearly iPhone updates.

The Best iPhone Yet

This has easily been my favorite iPhone. The screen size is just right, the color looks amazing, battery life is a significant improvement, it has an amazing camera, and, as a feature this year, the price is just right. Is it a “lower end” iPhone? Sure. That doesn’t mean anything this generation. The iPhone 11 is the best iPhone for all but the Bezos’ and the foolish or insecure. If you’re buying a new iPhone this year, make it an iPhone 11, you won’t regret it.