Hands On With the iPhone XR

The iPhone XR might be 2022's breakout iPhone. With the XR, Apple manages to have many of the standout features of the iPhone XS and encase them in a processed-colored shell that costs $250 less.

At 5.94 by 2.98 by 0.33 inches (HWD), the XR is betwixt the size of the iPhone 8 and the iPhone eight Plus. Small-handed people are just going to take to bargain; Apple seems to be moving away from smaller phones in general (it's stopped selling the iPhone SE). It's certainly a little bit wider than I'd prefer, but recently I've been using the iii.06-inch-wide OnePlus 6 as my main phone, and it's fine. I practise miss narrower phones a scrap.

The XR'southward two key features are both visual, and they're both things that pop when you're handling the phone in person. The first is the LCD, a 6.1-inch, 326ppi console with the weird resolution of 1,792 past 828 pixels. It appears to have been chosen to proceed the dot pitch at a standard iPhone density, which lets apps work properly.

Okay, so wait, yous say. The iPhone eight Plus has a v.v-inch screen and it's bigger and wider. That's the magic of aspect ratios: The XR's screen is taller and narrower and goes right up to the edge of the phone, with the infamous notch at the peak, so Apple tin can quote 6.one inches while making a physically smaller phone.

Simply man—this looks a lot similar an iPhone X display. Information technology'due south a very good, very saturated, very deep LCD. Agree information technology correct next to an iPhone XS and aye, you can tell the departure, but it definitely looks more saturated and OLED-like than your boilerplate LCD.

The other thing that jumps out is the dorsum: The colors are terrific. Apple has done colored phones before, with the iPhone 5c, only these colors are shimmery aluminum under glass, and they take a rich, enamel-similar await to them. The XR's bluish, red, and yellow are much more appealing than the XS's golden, which honestly looks pretty brown. The phone also comes in coral, which is a stake pink color, as well as black and white, but actually, go assuming.

The domicile button is gone, merely the screen acts much like the X's, with Face ID and swiping to go home. The phone is water resistant, it has wireless charging, and no, it has no headphone jack. Information technology's a lot similar an X that manner.

On the back, there's a single 12-megapixel, f/ane.viii photographic camera with a noticeable bump. (There'south a seven-megapixel, f/2.2 photographic camera on the front.) Like the Google Pixel phones, the XR tin can exercise software bokeh or portrait mode; using iOS 12, it tin also fool with the extent of the bokeh after the fact, blurring or sharpening the groundwork of the prototype. I took some software bokeh shots, and they are typical of the kind: faces are silhouetted quite well, but flyaway $.25 of pilus got caught in the bokeh distortion field.

The XR has dual speakers, one on the bottom and one at the top of the phone. Trying them simply after listening to the iPhone XS Max, they don't seem to have the crazy, almost room-filling stereo separation that the Max's speakers practice.

Within, the XR has the aforementioned A12 Bionic processor as the XS and the XS Max, backed by betwixt 64GB and 256GB of storage. I couldn't run benchmarks during my short time with the phone, but the A12's specs look absolutely fearsome, especially in the graphics and image-processing departments.

There's still some mystery around the XR'south modem. The phone doesn't take gigabit LTE like the XS does, although it does support T-Mobile's new rural Band 71.

The XR supports Apple's unique dual-SIM solution, which uses one physical and one embedded SIM. (I couldn't test information technology because it wasn't activated on the phones in the demo room.) In general, our carriers have banned dual-SIM phones in the past; the most successful so far have been OnePlus phones, which oasis't been sold through carriers. Apple tree'southward dual SIM solution, in the US, would enable someone to use AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile (simply non Sprint) as their principal carrier while using any carrier that offers a SIM bill of fare as the secondary carrier. (What happens to Sprint users? That's another mystery I'm working on.)

The XR is coming a petty afterward than the XS is, with a sale date of October 19 and an inflow date of October 26. At $749, I recall this is really the sweet spot for iPhones this year. The difference between the XR and the XS comes primarily in the screen, camera, and modem. I don't think iPhone users intendance about modem functioning, and the XR'south screen and photographic camera are both very, very expert—probably good enough to make iPhone buyers wonder why they should spend more.