iPhone 11 review

iPhone 11 Review: In Brief…

At a glance, the iPhone 11 looks almost identical to last year's iPhone XR in size and shape. It's got a bigger, better camera — two of them again — and a bigger, matte camera bump to go with them.

The Home button, forehead, and chin, are still gone, as is the headphone jack. But, these days that's the norm, not the exception.

It's still Lightning, not USB-C, and still includes a 5 watt USB-A charger, not the beefier 18 watt USB-PD charger now included with the Pro. Though, if you pick one up separately, you can fast-charge to 50% in just 30 minutes.

You can also still charge inductively with a Qi pad at the same 7.5 watts as last year.

The speakers are new and offer spatial audio, which will precisely place 5.1 surround or Dolby Atmos sound to precisely match any video that supports it.

The notch is still here, but now it houses an even faster, more reliable Face ID and a wider, 12MP selfie cam that goes to up to 4K and, yeah, shoots slow-mo selfie video.

Glossy, glassy black and white are still options, but there's also a paler yellow this year, and a slightly different Product Red. Sky blue and coral orange are gone, though, replaced with a lavender purple and mint green.

That glass is also tougher, so hopefully harder to scratch or shatter. Water resistance is still 30 minutes but up from IP67 and one meter to IP68 and two meters. Just take it easy dropping it in the deep end.

Apple says the battery will last an hour longer than the iPhone XR, which — ugh, math — makes it 2.5 hours longer than the iPhone 8 Plus. Roughly 17 hours of local video, 10 hours of streaming video, and 65 hours of wireless audio. Thanks to the huge leaps forward in the Pro models, the 6.1-inch iPhone is no longer the battery life leader, but it packs plenty of power.

There's still a dual SIM, one nanoSIM card, one eSIM. I know some people want dual cards. I can't wait for dual e, but it's upgraded to Gigabit LTE, up to 38% faster Wi-Fi 6, and up to 45% longer-range beam-forming Bluetooth.

It's also packing Apple's top-of-the-line, industry leading chipset, the A13 Bionic. A13's efficiency, performance, graphics, and neural cores aren't just 20% faster each, they use 40, 25, 30, and 15% less power respectively. It also has 4GB of memory instead of 3GB like on the XR, and brings with it a machine-learned ton of new photographic and other features we'll get to in just a few minutes.

Storage options remain the same at 64, 128, and 256 GB, but the price is now $50 cheaper for all of them. So, go for at least 128. You'll thank me later.

I've been using a purple iPhone 11 review unit running iOS 13.0 for almost a week, both while traveling in California and here at home in Montreal, Canada.

And there's a lot here to credit here, but also a good amount still to critique.

Let me explain.

iPhone 11 Review: Design

The iPhone 11 is basically more iPhone XR for less. In case you missed it, or got somehow bamboozled by the repeatedly confused biz pub coverage, the iPhone XR was the most popular iPhone of the last year and, reportedly, the most popular single smartphone phone sold, period. So, taking a bestseller and making it even better also happens to make exactly the kind of sense that does.

The iPhone 11 is the same height, width, depth, and even weight as the iPhone XR. And I straight up love this size. I was a die-hard iPhone Plus-er from the 6 to the 8, but then I found the X's edge-to-edge display was big enough for me that when the Max rolled around, I stayed with the min. But, then, I got my hands on the XR and it was Goldilocks just right in the middle.

I also love that it has Display Zoom, which basically takes the next smaller interface size, in this case the one from the 5.8-inch iPhone Pro, and scales it up to fit its own 6.1-inch screen. That makes everything, every image, every word, just that much bigger, easier to see, and easier to read.

I don't need it quite yet but I have a lot of friends who do, and while it's available on the Max as well, it's not on the regular Pro because there's no even smaller interface than that to scale up. At least not yet.

The iPhone 11 has the same 6.1-inch 1792-by-828-pixel resolution LCD display as the iPhone XR and the same 326 ppi density as the original Retina display, the iPhone 4. Last year, some people gave Apple grief over those numbers, forgetting that unless you're strapping your phone to your face for VR, pixel quantity just isn't as important as pixel quality.

And Apple's quality is still some of the best in the business. Combine the higher RGB sub-pixel count to similarly-sized PenTile OLED displays, add everything from individually color calibrated and managed, wide gamut, True Tone ambient temperature matching, and what Apple calls Liquid Retina still looks terrific.

I do miss the inky blacks, high dynamic range, and peak brightness of the OLED iPhone 11 Pro, but I'm a display nerd. Anyone who thinks pulse width modulation on OLED phones gives them eye strain will really appreciate that LCD is still an option. At least for now.

But… I do think a bump here to honest-to-Plus-sized iPhone 1080p would have been better. It would have added that final bit of crispness for closer-than-Retina viewing. Especially if it could have also expanded the display just enough to delete what little's left of the bezel, which is still thicker on the LCD iPhones than the OLED Pros, which makes it look even more dated compared to the more recent, more expansive devices from the likes of Samsung.

I'd love to see the display just blasted all the way out into the antenna bands. That would be pure, screen-to-bezel ratio fire.

I also preferred last year's colors to this year's. Apple has tweaked the black and white, but not so much as I can really notice the difference. The new PRODUCT RED seems, I don't know, a little rosier if anything. It's fine. The yellow is paler, and while I don't like the shade as much, I like that the bands match way better than they did last year.

The purple and the green… I'm just not a fan. Again, personal opinion, but I've waited a long, long time for a purple iPhone and what I got was more like lavender creme than grape explosion. Likewise the green, which is more mild mint than zesty lime. They're just… Miami Vice, but, you know, not even the Archer version.

If pastels are the trend and one of these will once again be Pantone color of the year, like coral was last, so be it. I'll be out back yelling at the swatch clouds. But, to me, they just lack a little punch, a little spice. Things Samsung and Huawei have been doing really, really well lately.

And, at the bottom, is the good old, increasingly old at this point, Lightning port. I'll talk about USB-C in the iPhone 11 Pro review but, for the very much mainstream iPhone 11, I think the very much mainstream Lightning port is still fine. Maybe not ideal, as more and more USB-C becomes available. But fine, same as it is on the mainstream iPads.

There are just so many people with so many existing cables and accessories that even Apple, famous for ditching floppies and jacks, before anyone is really comfortable with the idea, is wisely waiting just a little bit longer. Who knows, maybe even for something just a lot better?

Water resistance is blessedly better. The rating, which really only mean what the manufacturers attest they mean, have gone from the XR's IP67 to the 11's new IP68, and from 30 minutes at up to one meter to 30 minutes at up to two meters. That's the same as last year's iPhone XS if not quite as good as this years' iPhone 11 Pro.

In other words, getting your iPhone 11 wet from either sudden rain or spilled coffee, or, sure, the occasional base dive into the toilet bowl is even less of a problem now than it was before. But, water resistance can and will degrade, so it's still no replacement for a proper underwater case if you want to take your iPhone 11 swimming, diving, or bowl hopping on a regular basis.

The camera bump, which is milled out of the rear glass but matted up to contrast with the shiny finish of the phone, now encompasses not just both cameras like every iPhone has since the 7 Plus did, but the flash and rear mic as well. And it's… hidee-aciously ugly. Weirdly uglier to my eyes than the triple camera version on the back of the iPhone 11 Pro.

Real world cameras, especially real world multi camera systems are just as ugly, they've just always looked that way. The iPhone has it and I'm not used to it at all. I keep thinking it's the owl Animoji, staring at me, head all twisted to the side, just staring...

And yes, I know Apple gets knocked all the time for being too much form over function but the truth is, whenever Apple does function over form, they get KTFO'd way harder for it.

The two stage bump does better hide how far the cameras actually project out from the back, but I just liked the X-style better. At least for the double camera system. Your bump mileage might vary.

Both the contrast and the size do make it look like Apple is intent on owning the look. Leaning into it even. And hard. But, they kinda have to. Apple still wants good optics and good optics still want good z-index.

At least until computational finally kicks the crap out of physics.

Overall though, I love the iPhone 11 design. I know some people are exhaustingly bored and just want Apple to make a triangle or donut shaped phone or whatever, but as I've said before, this is Apple's current platonic ideal for form iPhone. And I don't see them changing it until they find something that isn't just different, but is objectively much better.

So, the iPhone looks like an iPhone, the way a Porsche looks like a Porsche, an Omega looks like an Omega, and a Leica looks like a Leica. Companies don't kill this kind of brand identity. They kill for it.