All right Tech fans, the next major iPhone came out today, and I had a chance to go hands-on with it today.
For transparency, I want everyone to know that I haven’t bought one or been given one. Every phone I tried was actually tethered to a table. I don’t own one, I’m not planning to buy one, but I want to give my readers my thoughts on it.
I went to my local Apple Store to see it in person, check out all the colors, and compare them to the XS and XS Max.
So what did I think?
Size
Coming from the XS Max I shouldn’t have been surprised that the XR felt small in my hands. I think it will all be relative to what phone you would be coming from for how this phone feels in the hand. You can see from the photo above that the XR looks much smaller than the Max.
But that’s me coming from the Max or Plus-sized phones. If you’re coming from one of the smaller phones or even an SE, I feel like this will be a giant jump. I don’t think it’s too big though.
I wasn’t able to put it in my pocket. Right now, I don’t feel like my Max is too big for my pocket, so I don’t think this will be too much of a problem for guys (girls I know you’re clothes don’t usually have pockets so no matter what you’ll have pocketability issues).
Screen
One of the biggest knocks against this phone that I’ve seen online has been the screen resolution. Just like I expected in my preview of the phone, the screen looks great. It might not have the color range of the OLED on the iPhone X, XS, or Max, but it still looks crisp. Colors still pop off the screen.
Those complaining about the lower screen resolution, I don’t think it matters. The pixels don’t stand out, and you can’t tell that the resolution is lower.
Colors
So these colors really pop in person.
Even the yellow, which I heard looked mismatched, looked better than I thought it would.
The White and Black felt very similar to what’s out now, but the colors felt bolder… if that makes sense. The white didn’t look like the pearl white of the XS, but a strong white with silver bands. The black appeared much darker.
The new colors though-wow. I wish they made these for the XS line. My favorite was actually the red phone, which surprised me. The strong red and black face just seemed strong.
If I had to pick an order it would go: Red, Blue, Corel, Black, White, and Yellow. Yes, yellow still brings up the rear of my list, but I don’t think it is bad at all. If you love yellow, you’ll probably like the phone.
Other stuff
Haptic Touch
While I didn’t spend too much time with them, I did get to try them out. If you don’t use 3D touch, the new haptic touch will be perfect for you (even though Apple plans on adding more features in future)
If you currently use 3D touch, you might hold off on the XR until they figure out the other gestures they want to use. Or you might look at the XS or XS Max.
Using Haptic touch works though. I used it to mess around in control center and to get the camera to open from the lock screen. You get the same vibration from the haptic engine as you would using 3D touch.
Camera
I used the camera to take a couple of pictures in the gallery I posted above. See if you can figure out which one without cheating.
The camera worked great. The photos look just like the XS do.
When the camera app opened up on the XR I expected the 1x/2x zoom option to be at the bottom because I’m so used to it. Since the phone doesn’t have the telephoto lens it doesn’t need to be on the screen anyway. It still felt jarring.
Wrap up
Overall, these phones impressed me, just like I thought they would.
The store wasn’t crowded. The employees there said it had been a steady flow of people all day and not a typical iPhone launch. I expected as much. I still think this phone will do better in the long run than at first anyway.
Do you plan on getting one of these phones? Which color are you going for?
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Thanks for reading guys