As you may all know by now, Apple just had a launch event yesterday where they revealed the new iPhones. First, you have the base model iPhone 11. Then you have the iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max as the new flagship devices from the American brand. While their upgrades for this year do seem incremental compared to the previous generation, the new devices pack some new features to stand up against rivals from Samsung, Huawei and even OnePlus. Let’s have a look at how they stack up against the competition.
Starting off, let’s talk about the display. The iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro max have 6.1″, 5.8″, and 6.5″ displays respectively. The display on the base iPhone 11 is a 720p LCD while the 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max have 1080p OLEDs. Compared to other smartphones in this class, this isn’t exactly the best out there. To start off, we have the amazing AMOLED panels on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Series measuring 6.3″ (1080p) and 6.4″ (1440p). If that doesn’t impress you, check out the 6.67″ (1440p) Fluid AMOLED panel on the OnePlus 7 Pro, in all its 90Hz refresh rate glory.
Next, let’s move to the camera. This is where most recent iPhones have truly shined and Apple has heavily revamped the hardware on the latest ones. The iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max finally have a triple camera setup. It consists of 12MP standard, 12MP telephoto, and 12MP ultrawide sensors, just like every other smartphone rocking 3 cameras. Samsung flagships do come with an additional time of flight sensor but it’s not really something I’d consider as a valuable addition.
I personally like the Slowfie feature on the iPhone 11 series that allows you to capture high-quality slow-motion videos from the front camera. That is truly something unique and I can imagine people getting creative with it. However, apart from areas where Apple innovates, it is also slow to adopt some features like the Night Mode. All other flagships have it for over a year now and Apple just gave it to us now. To make matters complicated, it cannot be toggled manually, the camera decides if the scene is dark enough for it to be used.
When it comes to performance, things get interesting. As you may be well aware, most new flagships running Android use the immensely capable 7nm Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 855 that is just one of the most powerful chipsets in the market. However, Apple isn’t a slouch in making processors. Last year, Apple’s A12 Bionic CPU completely dominated the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845, that was used in last year’s Android flagships, in raw performance.
This year, all the new iPhones come with an A13 Bionic CPU that is claimed to not only boost performance by 20% over the old A12 but also to be more power-efficient. We haven’t got our hands on the new iPhones yet but once we do, it’ll be interesting to compare the A13 to the 855 head to head.
Another thing that’s important in a smartphone is good battery life and, from the looks of it, Apple has really taken a step in the right direction with the iPhone 11 series. Apple claims that the base iPhone 11 will last 1 hour longer than the iPhone XR, that it replaces. Similarly, the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max will last 4 and 5 hours longer than the iPhone XS and XS Max.
Impressively, this has been achieved, not by adding bigger batteries, but by using a more efficient CPU and software optimization, which is unheard of in any other brand. However, extensive battery tests will reveal if this is actually true once we get our hands on the devices. I would also love to commend Apple on finally putting an 18W fast charge adapter in the box of the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max. It may not be as fast as other brands but it’s a step in the right direction.
Lastly, we talk about the price because all of this doesn’t matter if you can’t afford it. The iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max start at $699, $999, and $1099 respectively and their base models have 64GB of storage, just like every other flagship on sale. I’m genuinely impressed with the price tag of the base iPhone 11. $699 for an iPhone with those specs seems like a bargain to me and it might just be one of the best value for money smartphones.
However, the same cannot be said about the other two variants but that’s just how it goes with flagships. The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Pro also starts at $999 but it offers features and a display size comparable to the much more expensive iPhone 11 Pro. Similarly, the Huawei P30 Pro cost $900 when new and it too offered some amazing flagship-level specs. However, the device that takes the cake here is the OnePlus 7 Pro, which can give any device a run for its money in terms of specs and performance at just $669.