APPLE Iphone 11 Review

APPLE IPHONE 11 DESIGN: IT’S AN IPHONE

The iPhone 11 is a direct successor to iPhone XR. So like before, you get an LCD screen which Apple calls Liquid Retina and to be honest it won't melt your eyeballs with searing brightness but most of us will not need any more brightness than Apple has already provided here.

Nearly every time, it's easy to distinguish between an OLED and LCD screen but not with the iPhone 11. I switched from an iPhone XS to the iPhone 11 and the quality and colour are near indistinguishable from each other. Playing Netflix with Dolby Vision content also offers the same great colour quality. And yes, if you stick your nose to the screen, the quality of blacks on the superior iPhone 11 Pro screen becomes apparent but that’s only if you have them side by side. To be fair, the low resolution does tend to hit you in the face from time to time, especially during texting or watching a YouTube video, things don’t look sharp as they should especially from a ₹65K smartphone in 2019.

The bezels are slightly thicker but nothing that will make you stick a ruler and start measuring. Around the back and along the sides, the iPhone’s rounded edges will keep it secure within your grip and this glass back is less slippery than the textured back of the 11 Pro. The aluminum edges blend seamlessly with the glass at the back and it's still one of our favourite smartphones to hold. 

 

APPLE IPHONE 11 PERFORMANCE: IT’S AN APPLE

As if the iPhone XS’ A12 Bionic chip wasn’t fast enough, the A13 Bionic is touted to be 20% faster than its predecessor and more battery efficient. Fast is not a problem for Apple processors and even if you pick up the last year’s XS, chances are, it’ll still leave behind the 2019 Android competition cramming excessive double-digit RAM.

So what are we more excited about? Well, battery life. And like last year’s XR, the iPhone 11’s slightly bigger battery size and lower resolution screen helps preserve a full day’s worth of juice and it does. We managed more than 12hours of battery life with more than 6 hours of screen time. That’s really, really impressive for an iPhone.Load times on Mario Kart Tour and Call of Duty Mobile are really short so you’ll almost always be the first guy to go past the loading screen and onto the server. The A13 Bionic also handles Adobe Rush extremely well. We didn’t notice any drastic difference in performance while editing videos in comparison to the previous iPhones but this time the battery doesn’t drain as fast as it did before

APPLE IPHONE 11 OS: COME TO THE DARK SIDE

 

Much of iOS 13’s updates are just playing catch up with Android. The ones that you should be excited about are Dark Mode and having to hard press on WiFi and Bluetooth to get quick access to the list of available connections right from the Control Centre. Something Android has been doing for quite some time. Thanks, Apple.

Apple also removed the Force Touch from the new generation iPhones and replaced it with long press through software. You can’t really tell the difference in everyday use if you’ve never had the chance to extensively use it or get accustomed Force Touch. That said, I could tell the difference with the level of force applied and slightly miss that damn pressure measuring plate.

The video and photo editor is quite easy and intuitive to use. There are plenty of editing options to adjust the quality but if you want brush tools then Snapseed and Adobe Lightroom are still the best for photo editing.

APPLE IPHONE 11 CAMERA: A SHARP TURN

Dual cameras over the triple threat of the Pros, but is it enough? The only missing circle on the iPhone 11 is the telephoto lens and we’re happy to bag an ultra-wide-angle lens. It’s also a welcome upgrade over the single-lens iPhone XR.

The image quality on the main camera is phenomenal. The jump in sharpness and detail over the iPhone XS’ camera is drastically visible. Meanwhile, the distinct iPhone photo quality is maintained with natural tones and soft blurs in Portraits. 2019 iPhones also do night mode but its more automatic than we’d like. Once the smarty pants camera detects a dark scene, it’ll kick in a longer shutter which you can’t really adjust at whim. There’s a maximum and a minimum limit which the phone decides depending upon the scene. Nevertheless, it does a good job of shedding light on darker scenes at night and maintains the overall composition of the image without overexposing the light source and without smudging details. 

The ultra-wide-angle lens doesn’t have Night Mode and it tends to have a bit more noise and drop in quality when the environment is not lathered in sunlight. Day shots are usually the best playground for the ultra-wide lens.

 

APPLE IPHONE 11: VERDICT

The iPhone 11 has enough of everything you would want to make-do in life with a powerful smartphone. The only separating features from the Pros is the astounding screen quality and a telephoto lens.

We’re fine with the missing lens but if iPhone 11 at least had a FullHD screen, life would’ve been complete. Let's face it, how else would Apple sell you the iPhone 11 Pro? Because it has Pro in the name? Move aside.

For ₹70K, (we’re still ignoring that 64GB variant) the iPhone 11 is probably the smartest and the cheapest (read as: not-wallet-destroying) iPhone from 2019. It comes in various colours to fancy your style but Apple didn’t include the latest fast charger in the box. That’s quite disappointing but at least now the iOS13 is on par with Android competitors in terms of features and it fixes the long due iPhone problems - blotchy volume animation.