Apple shares several early iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max reviews ahead of launch

AppleInsider

Ahead of the iPhone XS and XS Max release this Friday, Apple has highlighted a few of the early reviews praising the latest handsets.

As is the case with new product launches, Apple sent pre-release units to select members of the press. The early reviews went live this morning, and Apple has collected a series of excerpts from them.

The general consensus seems to be that Apple's latest iPhones are the best yet, with impressive speed and extremely capable cameras, but limited evolutionary improvements make it hard to justify an upgrade from the iPhone X. Many also recommend those who don't need the absolute best iPhone hold out for the yet-to-be-released iPhone XR, which contains almost all of the new features introduced in the XS series, but with a smaller price tag.

Here are a few of the excerpts shared by Apple:

Mashable

"The improved camera hardware combined with a new automatic Smart HDR' technology, powered again by the Neural Engine and the A12 Bionic's ISP (image signal processor), mean you get the best of both the advanced camera optics and computational photography."

TechRadar (UK)

"The iPhone XS is for those that want a fast, powerful and impressive smartphone -- not just Apple lovers."

The New York Times

"Apple did a terrific job of increasing screen size without adding bulk or compromising the usability of the [iPhone] XS Max. These changes amounted to meaningful improvements in ergonomics and overall convenience."

Apple also threw a spotlight on photographer Austin Mann's first impressions of the iPhone XS camera system, as published by PetaPixel on Monday. As he does every year, Mann turned in a set of stunning images, this time captured during a trip to Zanzibar.

CEO Tim Cook also got in on the action and posted a link to Mashable's review to Twitter, urging followers to take a peek by appending the link with the "eyes" emoji.

The reviews Apple selected are expectedly positive. Others, like CNBC, suggest the latest features make the iPhone XS the best iPhone ever, but do not justify an upgrade from iPhone X. CNET issued a similar assessment, noting enhancements to iPhone's camera system, but said customers might be better served to wait for iPhone XR next month.

Read the rest of Apple's hand-picked review collection in its press release.

ny1822

IJustine YouTube unboxing Gold XS Max & Gold XS
https://youtu.be/tS5KaEWaLIM

Karl Conrad YouTube unboxing Gold XS Max
https://youtu.be/kbVmMX0Z924

Karl Conrad YouTube unboxing Gold XS
https://youtu.be/vZ6xZSuJ6-g

edited September 2018

strangedays

John Gruber's astute reviews aren't to be missed. Here's Xs:

https://daringfireball.net/2018/09/the_iphones_xs

mplsp

AppleInsider said:

...
Read the rest of Apple's hand-picked review collection in its press release.

I'm not sure why AI posted this - hand-picked quotes put out by Apple (or any company, for that matter) are really pretty meaningless. Real reviews like the one StrangeDays posted are worth much more. (Thanks for the link, BTW.)

The pictures Gruber posted of him in the restaurant with backlighting are a great example of how much improved the camera is, but what I found most interesting in his review was the processing power of the Xs - as he describes it, the phone is essentially manipulating 4k video frames on the fly. Holy crap!

nunzy

Canon and Nikon might as well close ttheir doors after this. Who needs them? The pros will just use iPhone if they want the best available cameras.

edited September 2018

bestkeptsecret

nunzy said:

Canon and Nikon might as well close ttheir doors after this. Who needs them? The pros will just use iPhone if they want the best available cameras.

racerhomie3

nunzy said:

Canon and Nikon might as well close ttheir doors after this. Who needs them? The pros will just use iPhone if they want the best available cameras.

I don’t know whether you are being sarcastic or don’t realize that DSLR cameras can take higher quality photos.

kimberly

bestkeptsecret said:

nunzy said:

Canon and Nikon might as well close ttheir doors after this. Who needs them? The pros will just use iPhone if they want the best available cameras.

racerhomie3 said:

nunzy said:

Canon and Nikon might as well close ttheir doors after this. Who needs them? The pros will just use iPhone if they want the best available cameras.

I don’t know whether you are being sarcastic or don’t realize that DSLR cameras can take higher quality photos.

Responding to this person's 'comments', no matter how tempting, will perpetuate the spam.

aaronkalb

"The general consensus seems to be that Apple's latest iPhones are the best yet"

No shit. In what world does Apple say "hey let's decrease battery life, revert back to iOS8 and increase the bezels thus year"? The fact that Apple states this EVERY year and then AI repeats this garbage annoys me to no end. Am I the only one?

jume

So to sum up everything, the only new real-deal is the new camera, everything else is more or less the same! 

edited September 2018

macxpress

NY1822 said:

IJustine YouTube unboxing Gold XS Max & Gold XS
https://youtu.be/tS5KaEWaLIM

iJustine reviews don't really count. Apple could literally take a dump in a box, slap an Apple Logo on it and she'd be crying with excitement. 

macxpress

jume said:

So to sum up everything, the only new real-deal is the new camera, everything else is more or less the same! 

Except its not...apparently you didn't watch the Keynote....

macxpress

racerhomie3 said:

nunzy said:

Canon and Nikon might as well close ttheir doors after this. Who needs them? The pros will just use iPhone if they want the best available cameras.

I don’t know whether you are being sarcastic or don’t realize that DSLR cameras can take higher quality photos.

Never take anything nunzy says seriously. He's just a troll. Why he hasn't been banned yet is beyond me.

tht

macxpress said:

jume said:

So to sum up everything, the only new real-deal is the new camera, everything else is more or less the same! 

Except its not...apparently you didn't watch the Keynote....

Yeah. The criticism of no change is basically the same every S model year because people are hyperficial about newness and how something looks, and the things that make great products are boring or can’t be evaluated in a review. I’m of the opinion that the S model years are always the best models to buy.

The difference between the X and XS:

1.33x more RAM
1.15x more CPU
1.50x more GPU
1.35x more light sensitivity on back cam
2x faster back cam sensor
9x more NE unit
2x more cellular network performance
Lower latency touch input (120 Hz touch layer)
Dual SIM support
Better speakers
More durable glass
Faster Face ID
More efficient Qi charging
512 GB storage top end

If the 2017 iPhone X remained on sale for $900 or even $800, I’d say the XS is simply a better deal at $1000 because these are 4 to 5 year devices now, if not longer. 4 GB RAM in the XS vs 3 GB RAM in the X will loom large 3 years from now.

The more durable glass will play a huge role on wear and tear. My 6S Plus had more durable glass than the 6 Plus, and after 3 years, it does not have micro-scratches on it, and micro-scratches have been endemic on smartphone glass. My 6S Plus looks very very good still, and if I change the battery out, I could use it for another year. If the XS has similar improvements in the glass over the X, that’s a huge win.

The 120 Hz touch layer is an automatic 8.3 ms decrease in input latency over a 60 Hz touch layer. This could be anywhere from a 10% to 40% improvement in UI feel. The XS will feel faster because it will respond faster. Input lag has a huge impact on how a device feels, and this decrease will reward the user over and over and over through the life of the device.

And, I’m partial to a year’s worth of assembly line maturity for the S models. New components and immature software may cause issues, but maturity of the assembly means more consistent, tighter, and reliable products.

tht

I can’t take reading reviews from the usual suspects in gadget reviews anymore. People should read them, but they should know that the value of a review is somewhere between 1¢ (not even 2) and making the reader dumber. Yes, there is an inherent risk of reading a review making you dumber. I couldn’t make it past the first few words or seconds of the Verge’s review and video, the top article on Techmeme yesterday. They’ve gone down the hole of the information-less editorial-as-review too far. They spent more effort on the production of their videos than actually reviewing the gadgets. If I see a review of cameras where the only thing shown are comparison pictures of arbitrary scenes, I skip right past it. At least use calibration posters in controlled lighting for camera reviews, at least. Then, too many reviewers have zero understandering of the underlying technology they review. I mean, do any of these reviewers know the difference between a Watt and an ampere? Do they have any understanding of how software works?

Heck, I couldn’t make past the Watch reviews today where Dieter Bohn and Brian Chen tried to trigger the fall detection by jumping on mattresses and coaches. Really, fuck that, and they should know better let alone writing about it. If they wanted to take one for the team, put on a helmet and fall onto hard flooring with both hand planting motions onto hard surfaces for forward and backward falls.

Best review I’ve read so far was Gruber’s. He at least talked about something in technical detail. No technical analysis, but he discussed something in deeper detail (camera sensor element size) instead of the usual rehashing of PR feature lists.

strangedays

re: Gruber. That’s the difference between a professional and a back like Chen.

chasm

The majority of the reviews essentially say "this phone is worth the money, but the XR is likely to be a better overall deal (if you can accept one minor and one significant compromise, so just wait." Luckily for Apple's financials, many people can afford this (when broken down in monthly payments, it doesn't seem to much more) and are impatient. Also of great help is that the iPhone 7 and 8 are now cheap (relatively speaking), which should help push more Android people over the right side.

I personally have zero issue with the compromises of the XR so far listed (though of course I'll wait for my own in-person experience and the reviews of writers I respect) before deciding, but at present the dual camera and OLED just don't seem worth the extra 300 or more to me -- and I'm pretty sure that will resonate with the majority of buyers who aren't rich or impatient.