The new iPhones are finally here, and with them, Apple has once again pushed the price of smartphones even higher — especially the iPhone Xs Max which starts at $1,099 USD and goes all the way up to a staggering $1,450 USD if you upgrade to 512GB of storage. But what’s this? There’s a third iPhone, and with a starting price of $749 USD, it’s way more affordable than the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max. The iPhone Xr is the budget-friendlier alternative to the Xs flagships that will no doubt cost about $1,000. For the lower price, you’ll have to make do with some compromises, like no dual-cameras, but at least you’ll get some new features.
The new iPhone Xr features breakthrough technologies from iPhone XS in an all-screen glass and aluminum design with the most advanced LCD in a smartphone featuring a 6.1-inch Liquid Retina display and six beautiful finishes.
iPhone Xr brings the powerful A12 Bionic chip with next-generation Neural Engine, the TrueDepth camera system, Face ID and an advanced camera system that creates dramatic portraits using a single camera lens.
A stunning all-screen design pushes the display of iPhone Xr to its edges. The most durable front glass ever in a smartphone is wrapped in an elegantly matched anodized band made from durable 7000 series aerospace-grade aluminum, and the glass back design enables wireless charging.
iPhone Xr comes in six new finishes: white, black, blue, yellow, coral and (PRODUCT)RED. A seven-layer color process gives the glass back beautiful nuanced hues, and the aluminum band and camera trim are color matched to give a sophisticated finish. This new design is splash and water resistant, with a rating of IP67, and protects against everyday spills including coffee, tea and soda.
iPhone Xr supports fast and fluid iPhone gestures like tap to wake, swipe up to the home screen, swipe down to access notifications and the Control Center, and the new haptic touch feature for pressing on the home screen to instantly launch the camera or flashlight.
Another common point with the Xs flagships is the new Apple-designed A12 Bionic, the smartest and most powerful chip in a smartphone, features the first 7-nanometer chip ever in a smartphone that delivers industry-leading performance in a more power-efficient design. A12 Bionic features a six-core fusion architecture with two performance cores that are up to 15 percent faster, four efficiency cores that are up to 50 percent more efficient, a four-core GPU that is up to 50 percent faster, powerful Apple-designed Image Signal Processor (ISP), video encoder and more. All of this unlocks new experiences for games, photography, video editing and graphics-intensive apps while still offering great battery life. Even with all this power, iPhone XR lasts up to an hour and a half longer than iPhone 8 Plus.
The next-generation Neural Engine is built for advanced machine learning in everything from photography to augmented reality. A new eight-core design allows it to complete up to 5 trillion operations per second compared to 600 billion in A11 Bionic.
This enables new capabilities like faster plane detection for ARKit and new features that use real-time machine learning. For the first time the Neural Engine is open to Core ML, empowering developers to build apps that utilize this highly efficient machine learning engine. Core ML running on the A12 Bionic Neural Engine is up to nine times faster than on A11 Bionic, with as little as one-tenth the energy usage.
Face ID is faster on iPhone XR, enabled by software optimizations and a faster secure enclave. The TrueDepth camera system uses precision depth-sensing technology that goes far beyond the capabilities and security of two-dimensional facial scanners to unlock iPhone, use Apple Pay, gain access to secure apps and many more features with just a simple glance.
iPhone XR features a 12-megapixel f/1.8 aperture wide-angle lens with an all-new sensor, delivering faster auto-focus, while larger and deeper pixels improve image fidelity and low-light performance on photos and videos. Improvements to the ISP, Neural Engine and improved software algorithms enable portrait photos with a beautiful bokeh effect. Smart HDR brings better highlight and shadow detail across photos.
New Depth Control allows users to adjust the depth of field both in real-time preview3 and post-capture to create striking portraits with a beautiful bokeh effect. Selfies have never looked better with an enhanced Portrait mode on the front-facing TrueDepth camera and Portrait Lighting for dramatic studio lighting effects.
The new iPhone XR will be available to pre-order beginning Friday, October 19 and in stores beginning Friday, October 26. iPhone XR will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB models in white, black, blue, yellow, coral and (PRODUCT)RED starting at $749 USD.