Review: Apple iPhone XR

Apple wants to make it clear that it's not trying to gouge you. Sure, when the iPhone X launched last year, Apple priced it at nearly $1,000. And yes, this year's iPhone XS sells for the same amount. And of course, Apple killed off its smallest and most affordable handset, the iPhone SE, right as it was introducing the most expensive iPhone yet.

But Apple wants you to know you have a choice. You get to pick from a very small pool of potential devices, but hey, at least you have options! Never mind that certain choices, like color, were predetermined for you by a room full of powerful tastemakers who decided to make coral or cerulean happen. Never mind that whatever you pay, it's still a crazy amount of money for a phone. You are making the call. You, sir or madam, have your choice of new iPhones.

The newest Phone is the iPhone XR, and it's Apple's attempt to convince you that you can buy a new phone without going broke. The iPhone XR starts at $749, a full $250 less than the new flagship XS. (Don't get me started on the price of the iPhone XS Max—the larger handset starts at $1,099.)

The iPhone XR is not the most technologically advanced iPhone; many of Apple's superior components have been reserved for the costlier device. But the iPhone XR is still a moderately great phone. It's great not in the way that super-futuristic, game-changing technology devices are. It's great in the way that a bunch of already-possible things have been packaged together cleanly and nicely.

Most people—those who don't spend their lives comparing specs and staring at bezels on multiple models of new smartphones each fall—are going to be very happy with this phone if they buy it. Especially if those people are upgrading from an older iPhone, which I believe will be the case for a lot of people buying the iPhone XR. They'll have a phone that's running on Apple's top-of-the-line processor. They'll have FaceID, and they'll experience the learning curve that comes with an iPhone without a home button, which feels like a small price to pay for an edge-to-edge display.

The thing you have to think about before you choose this gentler whoosh of money exiting your bank account is how much you care about the differences. I can tell you, since I am a person whose job it is to compare specs and stare at bezels on phones, that there are differences between Apple's best iPhone and the iPhone XR.

Some of these are negligible. For example, the black border around the 6.1-inch display on the iPhone XR is thicker than the black border on the 5.8-inch iPhone XS. If you stare at the two phones side by side, you can see this. It's not a huge deal. But the body of the iPhone XR is slightly thicker overall, due to the backlight panel that goes under the screen. And it's a longer phone, too. By itself, the iPhone XR is a manageably large phone. Put it next to the iPhone XS, and the XR's larger size is apparent.

Here, in no particular order, are the other differences between the iPhone XR and the more expensive iPhone XS and XS Max. Also, where it's appropriate, I've included my observations after using the iPhone XR for the past five days.

The iPhone XR comes in different color finishes that aren't available on the iPhone XS and XS Max. You can pick from white, black, blue, yellow, coral, and red, which is being sold as a (Product) RED product. These colors are admittedly rich, which is apparently the result of what Apple says is a seven-layer color process. They're also a nod to Apple's history of making brightly-colored products, and a stark contrast to the gentle neutral tones that Google went with for the Pixel 3.

I've been using the yellow iPhone XR, which looks more sunflower or cornsilk than lemon citrus. You might recall the iPhone 5C, which was released in 2013 alongside the iPhone 5S. That phone also came in bright colors. But it was plastic, and much less expensive. The XR feels like a premium iPhone, not a sacrificial one.

The glass on the back on the iPhone XR is not as strong as the glass on the back of the iPhone XS. The glass on the front of the iPhone XR, however, is the same glass as the kind used on the front of the iPhone XS. I haven't dropped or scratched the new phone yet, which is good—but also bad because I can't offer insights on whether or not this glass difference matters. Update: Hours after this review was published, the case-free iPhone XR was accidentally dropped on a concrete floor from about 3 feet up. The back is now shattered.

One difference that longtime holdouts will be stoked about is that the iPhone XR's glass back enables wireless charging. If you're currently using an iPhone 6 or 7 and you haven't experienced the convenience of wireless charging yet, you're in for a treat.

The iPhone XR is made of aluminum, while the iPhone XS is made of stainless steel. On an aesthetic level, this means the frame of the iPhone XR has a matte finish that looks more like the iPhones of years past. The iPhone XS's stainless steel not only looks fancier, it's weightier than aluminum. However, the iPhone XR is made with 7000-series-grade aluminum, the strongest that's commercially available, and I've seen no indication yet that this iPhone XR will warp or bend.

The display material used in the iPhone XR is notably different from the display on the iPhone XS, too. Apple is calling the iPhone XR's display "Liquid Retina". This liquid crystal display is the largest LCD to ever ship on an iPhone, and it has the same edge-to-edge (well, minus those borders) design as the iPhone XS. You can tap on it to wake the display, and the display's color balance automatically adjusts to match the lighting environment around you.

In many ways, the iPhone XR's display is functionally the same as the iPhone XS's, but it's not materially the same. It's also not as high-resolution as the screens that have shipped on other flagship phones this year. While the iPhone XR's display is quite nice, it's no OLED. OLED is the pool of water you just can't help but dip your toe into, approximately 80 times a day, or however many times a day you check your phone. On second thought, maybe LCD is not such a bad thing.

The iPhone XS phones have an IP68 waterproof rating, while the iPhone XR has an IP67 waterproof rating. This means you can submerge the iPhone XS in water up to two meters deep for 30 minutes, and the iPhone XR up to one meter for 30 minutes. Just fish the darn thing out of the water as fast as you can, is the point.

It's also worth pointing out that Samsung's high-end phones and the Google's Pixel 3 have higher waterproof ratings than the iPhone XR.

Since the iPhone XR only has a single-lens rear camera (it has a wide-angle lens, but not a telephoto lens), it doesn't capture as much depth information as the dual-lens camera on the iPhone XS.

This means that when you swipe to Portrait mode in the Camera app, the background-softening effect will only work if you're snapping a picture of a person, since Apple has decided to train the camera's machine learning on human shapes. Try to snap a Portrait photo of your food, or your cat, or a pumpkin (because it's pumpkin season) and "No person detected" will appear at the top of the photo frame. The iPhone XR also only has three lighting options in Portrait mode, versus five on the iPhone XS.

Google has done something similar with the single-lens rear camera on the Pixel 3, relying on machine intelligence rather than hardware to produce photos with a bokeh effect. But as you can see in the photos below, the Pixel 3 applies this effect to objects as well as people.

But, if you're comparing the XR with the XS, the camera capabilities on the iPhone XR are nearly the same as those on the XS, both when it comes to capturing still images and recording video. It has that wide-angle 12-megapixel rear camera, a 7-megapixel front camera with 3-D sensors, and dynamic range that has been improved from the HDR in last year's phones. Overall, it's an excellent camera.

The iPhone XR's battery lasted me almost an entire weekend, from early Saturday morning through Sunday evening. Granted, I use my phone a little bit less on the weekends than I do during the work week. But I was still taxing the phone. I scrolled through Twitter and Instagram, read the news, streamed music, watched YouTube, ran Google Maps, and captured photos and videos. I was seriously impressed with how long the handset lasted on a single charge, and have only experienced comparable battery life on a Plus-size phone. The XR's battery life was even better than what I got on the iPhone XS Max.

Apple won't say exactly how large the iPhone XR's battery is (though tear-downs will eventually reveal this); just that you can expect it to last 1.5 hours longer than the iPhone 8 Plus. But the efficiency of Apple's custom A12 Bionic chip is clearly helping here, along with the fact that there's just more structural room within the phone to fit what is likely a larger battery. That extra space exists partly because Apple has removed 3D Touch from the iPhone XR.

Instead of 3D Touch, the iPhone XR has something called Haptic Touch. This is annoying because the name swap makes it seem like the iPhone XR has something equivalent, and the reality is that this is not like 3D Touch. It requires a light press and hold instead of a push. The haptic feedback doesn't feel as satisfying.

More importantly, the available interactions are limited, at least for now. You can still press on the flashlight from the home screen, press for shortcuts within the Control Center, and turn the space bar on the phone's virtual keyboard into a mini-trackpad. But you can't press on the native camera icon for quick access to the selfie cam, or press on an email within Mail to see a preview. And Haptic Touch on the iPhone XR doesn't come with all the quick actions and "peeks" from third-party apps that supported 3D Touch previously—apps like Yelp, Flipboard, and Facebook. These may be updated in the future to support Haptic Touch. But who knows?

Some people won't miss these on the iPhone XR. But Haptic Touch doesn't seem as powerful as 3D Touch, at least not yet.

The iPhone XR has the same button-less UI as the iPhone XS and XS Max. That means if you're one of those people upgrading from an old iPhone, you'll have to get used to swiping and tapping your way around iOS rather than pushing a home button to wake the phone, switch apps, and so on. This also means the iPhone XR doesn't have a fingerprint sensor for authentication, though it does have FaceID. The iPhone XR also supports split-screen mode, something that's reserved for the Plus phones and the iPhone XS Max.

When I first fired up the iPhone XR, I noticed that the Gmail app had a jarring gap between the top of the app screen and the top border of the iPhone XR—something I attributed to the phone having a larger, 6.1-inch display. I assume that some third-party app makers might have to optimize their apps for the slightly larger iPhone screen. However, the Gmail situation appears to have been fixed in the time since I first spotted it. This is not a deal-breaker, just something to keep in mind.

So there are some differences between the iPhone XR and the flagship iPhone XS that are positive. Like the fact that the iPhone XR's battery life is better than the smaller iPhone XS's. And, personally, I really like the colors tones offered with the iPhone XR. There are other differences between the two iPhones that show clear signs of cost-cutting in the XR. Apple wants to offer you choices, but it also wants to make sure it continues to make money selling smartphones.

That's probably not something you'll think about all that much as you're using your colorful new iPhone XR everyday. If you buy one on installments, you'll be paying the equivalent of $43 dollars per month, as opposed to $56 per month for an iPhone XS with the same amount of storage. You'll have a great smartphone camera. Your phone's battery might last a whole weekend, the way mine did, and you probably won't miss the OLED display, since you won't be looking at the two different displays side-by-side every day like I've been. This iPhone was a steal, you'll think to yourself. Well. Maybe. Sort of.