Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “iPhone 11 Pro Review: For the Love of Cameras!”.
Welcome to the review of the iphone 11 pro right off the bat. I don’t really agree with the names. I don’t think there’s enough pro about these phones that could have been to warrant putting pro in the name, but the names don’t really matter. What does matter is these are the highest end. Phones that apple makes right now in 2019..
The truth is these are mostly pretty familiar phones to last year, which was also pretty familiar to the year before, but you already knew that what’s new is apple’s really focused on four major things for this new iphone, so the design, barely the new display slight upgrade The battery life major and these new cameras, so the design does grow on you not gon na lie. We saw those renders and the models, and nobody thought they were pretty, including me, but as usual, getting them in your hand and actually looking at them in person is a different thing and it doesn’t look horrible. I love the new matte finish. I think that helps a lot the way it looks the way it feels, even if it is technically a little bit slipperier than glossy, i will take a matte option in any phone every time the camera square is the weird looking part, i’m just happy.
We got memes out of it uh and it’s funny for whatever reason the camera square looks indented, even though it’s sticking out it’s all cut from one piece of glass and it’s kind of like this weird optical illusion. I guess. But this is the design that apple’s crafted for the iphone 11 pro camera bumps in a camera square. And yes, it rocks slightly when it’s on a table.
Apple does say that this is quote the toughest glass in any smartphone. I’M not going to test that. But let’s be real, glass is glass, so you definitely want to protect it or at least try not to drop it. It probably still will shatter, but the good news is, it doesn’t seem to scratch as much as the pixel 3’s matte black glass, that this reminded me of so the matte finish and the camera layout are the only really new things back here with the design.
If it comes down to it, if you don’t want to have to think about it anymore or just want to avoid any chance of fingerprints or scratches, you can grab a grip from our channel sponsor dbrand and this matte black robot skin on it is actually a Limited edition thing so link below if you want to check that out, but around the front of the phone, it’s going to look like almost exactly the same thing as last year. Same screen, sizes and resolutions same notch same bezels literally, you could put it next to last year’s phone and you might have a hard time telling which one’s, which this is the new one here. So this is, what’s actually different. Apple said: they’ve improved face id to be up to 30, faster in the same space and work at a larger variety of angles. I can vouch for a tiny bit faster and you’ll only really notice this, if they’re side by side with the old phone. But you know what i’ll take that improvement anyway, because it’s for security and that’s better than nothing, but the variety of angles thing i don’t know about you, but when i read that i was hoping that meant it could sit on a table in front of you And still read and unlock your face like it couldn’t before, but it still doesn’t do that.
Unfortunately, you still got to do that lean onto whatever surface the phone is on to unlock it. So i’ve noticed honestly no improvement here in the angles. It’S basically the same. Other than that, the buttons are very, very slightly lower on each phone. I don’t know if anyone else has shown that, but that’s true, i guess maybe it’s a little easier to reach and they’ve also upgraded the water resistance, a bit still ip68 certified and this phone is very slightly thicker and heavier. I didn’t really notice the thickness, but i did notice the weight, especially in the pro max. This big phone is 20 grams heavier than last year, and i could tell it’s a bit of a chunker, but you know what that’s perfectly fine, because battery life is back to being excellent on this phone as a result, this is also achieved by getting rid of 3D touch so rip apple watch is really the only new apple product now, with 3d touch shipping in it. But by getting rid of that pressure, sensitive display hardware, that’s allowed more space in the phone for a bigger battery.
It’S true: the teardowns have shown it. The battery is bigger. So that’s why the battery difference from the 10r to the 11 was one hour. That’S just a13 bionic improvements, but the improvement from the 10s to the 11. Pro was four hours, because getting rid of that 3d touch hardware has left room for more bigger batteries. I don’t know if i can measure that four to five hour claim, but from my experience battery life has been excellent.
I’M getting you know, my use of super high brightness high end everything on all the time, i’m getting seven to eight hours of screen on time and a full day of battery pretty much every day on this phone. So that’s really impressive. You can probably kill it in a day, but you’d have to really try now back to that display for a second i mentioned they got rid of 3d touch.
This has been mostly replaced by haptic touch, which is essentially long presses that bring back almost all the functionality from 3d pressing, it’s not quite as good as the peak and pop was, but i hardly use that anyway and there’s also something new about the display, specifically That it can hold a higher 800 nits of brightness and at small points for brief moments, can peak up to 1200 nits, which is incredible on a smartphone display, and also it’s up to a 2 million to 1 contrast ratio. So, of course, they had to name it. They named it. The super retina display xdr, the name – is pretty lame, but the display is impressive again indoors and outdoors now, could you tell the difference side by side with a 10s watching a youtube, video or playing a game or even scrolling? Instagram? Probably not, but there are certain times certain times when watching a movie or something in hdr, where you cannotice, that improved brightness and it looks great and the sound is also pretty good. Thanks to the improved speakers, even though there’s still a notch, you know the highest iphone display has always been pretty great, and this is no exception.
It’S better again, but i can’t help but think what would customers have noticed more, a slightly improved, brightness or shrinking the notch, a bunch. You know that’s something we’ll get more into later. For now, what you need to know is the iphone 11 pro and pro max. Have even better awesome high resolution, oled displays again and they’re also a bit more efficient, contributing to even more battery gains.
So that’s worth it. Oh and the specs. They almost don’t matter on an iphone review, but since people are always curious, it is the new a13 bionic chip this year, which is excellent and four gigs of ram in these pro phones. According to geekbench, it’s still extremely fast, as any new phone should be. Most of these improvements over the a12 are just going to help these stay faster for longer and, as it’s been said, they’ll be appreciated more near the end of the phone’s life than the beginning. All right, i almost can’t believe i made you guys, wait this long for the cameras.
So clearly the cameras are if you’ve watched any of the ads or any of the presentation. Videos. These cameras are the main focus for the iphone 11 pro.
Yes, that’s a pun. So you’ve seen it we’re looking at triple cameras now three new sensors, so you have the primary 12 megapixel sensor, a 2x telephoto camera and a 0.5 x ultrawide camera about 120 degree field of view and it’s true. The iphone 11’s cameras are a big improvement over the 10s in broad daylight.
I would go as far as saying this has been an a plus camera, often taking the best, sharpest and cleanest photos. I’Ve seen a smartphone take colors are great they’re, realistic, so not too. Over processed dynamic range is excellent and, of course, with subjects their tonal mapping is next level. It’S really good, which helps it, of course, in tougher shooting scenarios where it’s improved a lot over the 10s.
So the typical iphone 11 pro photo is, i think, the closest to what the human eye sees of any smartphone camera and i’m, including the pixel on that which tends to be a little contrastier a little more dramatic, but then, of course, the ultra wide camera. Finally, i’ve been waiting for this. I’Ve been waiting to see what an iphone ultra wide camera would look like. Lg done it samsung, did it motorola? Did it asus? Did it oneplus? Did it huawei did it? Everyone had already done it ultrawide.
We just wanted to see. Basically, what google and apple would do with their new cameras, so we finally have an iphone ultra wide and it’s uh, it’s fine. It’S pretty good. It’S actually really fun.
The main advantage should be consistency with the other lenses and color wise white balance wise. It is. It’S very consistent, but in quality and detail thanks to the smaller sensor and slower glass, it is still noticeably a step down.
It’S softer, there’s a little more noise reduction, doing more smoothing on the ultrawide camera, so it’s just generally not as good quality as the main camera, which is to be expected, but that doesn’t stop it from being awesome to have for these new fun perspectives and all The awesomeness that comes with an ultrawide camera, the new ui, also in iphone’s camera app, is improved for the first time in a while, you know they’ve simplified. A few controls brought them to the bottom, where you can reach with one hand, and now, when you open it, you get a preview of what’s going to show up in the ultra wide if you switch to it, but i i don’t really want that there. I i think it’s kind of cool that it shows what you could see, but when i just want to take a normal photo, it’s kind of distracting it lags behind a little, the actual framing and it’s not perfectly aligned all the time. So i want to turn it off, but i can’t it will fade out automatically when it detects that you’re taking a photo of a close-up subject. Since i guess it recognizes that ultra wise or more for landscapes or far away subjects and then it’ll come back automatically when you put that close subject away but yeah, i want to be able to just shut it completely off, there’s also now.
Finally, a dedicated night mode which turns on automatically when it thinks it’s dark enough, but sometimes it’s kind of dim and it doesn’t turn on when you want it to, but there’s no way to manually turn on night mode, which isn’t very pro. But okay, when you do get it turned on, the ui is excellent. It gives you exposure equivalence, so you can turn up or down live and it will go for way longer times if it detects you’re on a tripod or stabilized, and you can see the picture sort of brighten up as it’s being taken almost like. It’S exposing the frame in real time, which is pretty sick and the shots you can get now at night and in low light on the iphone are very good. There’S no clear overall winner, i think for best night mode right now. In my opinion, they also do it a different way. Here’S my take night mode is good enough that i wish i could turn it on more often, i think the natural curious comparison here is with pixel’s night sight. The pixel definitely tends to brighten up photos more and uh bring shadows up, bring highlights up.
You can it’s it’s more of like a night time to daytime transformation, sort of situation happening there with pixel, where the iphone is a bit more true to life, and then it’s also taking what i think are the most detailed sharpest low-light photos of any smartphone. Even more so than the pixel, but in dim light it just it doesn’t turn on very much and there is no night mode in the ultrawide camera. So really it’s a great start, but no doubt it can get better over time. I think this will make a really good blind, smartphone camera test if we, if we do like a separate bracket specifically for phones that have a dedicated night mode now, which is a lot of them.
I think that could be really good, but just in general i am really happy that there’s this new focus on smartphone cameras, i feel, like the last year of presentations of smartphones, have had more time spent on the camera than any other feature and they’re all just Fighting against each other to try to make the best possible camera to put in our pockets and we win from that. The iphone 11 pro still does the best video of any smartphone. That’S still pretty clear to me and they’re also making it easier now in the ui to just quickly start taking a video. So if you see something you like you open the camera up and just hold down the shutter button, and it just starts recording.
So just like instagram or snapchat, and if you want to lock it into video recording, you just drag it over to the right and it’s hands-free you’re taking a video but yeah in the photo front. The competition is pretty stiff and it’s coming from all different directions. We’Re about to get pixel 4. We just had the new huawei mate 30 pro come out.
Oneplus 7t is right around the corner. You can count on that stuff and then i just want to touch on ios 13 for a second, so i’ve been using it in beta on my iphone 10s max before this came out. So i’ve already used the things you get again here like dark mode and the long presses and quick settings and stuff like that. It’S great a bunch of little tweaks here and there, but i got ta say it has been kind of buggy. I’Ve had some weird issues with lock screen controls, just not showing up, sometimes sometimes the camera app just freezes all together until i close it and then i’ve had some other weird app issues with like the tesla app and instagram app. But now those are fixed so yeah.
I should definitely mention that, hopefully ios 13.1 and future software updates will iron a lot of this stuff out. Otherwise, it’s ios as you’d expect it also for those wondering the u1 chip in these new phones, which should again basically give you ultra wide band signal for referential locating of other u1 enabled devices and should improve airdrop. That’S not enabled in this version of the software. I think that’s also coming in 13.1 um. Aside from that, we don’t really know what else it does, but generally the software experience of the iphone is pretty much unchanged same ui same feature set. You already know what it is. Nothing is dramatically or drastically different here beyond. I think night mode.
So i’m not super surprised here. Look you, you probably don’t need an iphone 11 pro, but it is a great upgrade like, especially when a lot of these improvements, even though they’re small are on such core functional things to normal people like speed battery life and camera like if you were to ask Normal people, what they care about the most in their phone, it’s those things, but i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again. A lot of the features that i was looking forward to, especially when we heard it was going to be a pro phone, are just not here, and that’s got me hyped way too early for this 2020 iphone or the iphone 12 or whatever. They call that and actually new design shrinking the notch, maybe usb type c. Of course, a high refresh rate pro motion display that would have been super pro uh, putting touch id back underneath the display glass reverse wireless charging. Any of these things in this phone would have been would have would have felt a little more pro and would have maybe made it worth the name or just felt really cool to have.
But of course, none of it happened. So really the focus for this new iphone 11 pro has come down to the a13, the battery life, the slightly improved display, and just these new cameras you want it, you got it if you’re, just someone who wants the best possible camera in your phone or if You do a lot of video creation or, if you’re, a pro content creator on your phone, then you’re going to be really happy with this phone, with the new iphone classic or even with the new iphone 11 non-pro, which is 300 cheaper and has the same cameras And same processing and a great battery life minus the telephoto, but again that much cheaper price that’ll get its own review but i’ll say as a whole. The iphone 11 pro is a really great phone, and unless you have the 10s, it’s probably worth the upgrade.
Just for the love of cameras, but really the big looming, reason for someone like me not to get this phone is the 2020 iphone or the next iphone. So that’s something to think about, but we’ll stay ready for that, as i expect a lot more, but this package they’ve shipped today, it’s pretty damn good either way, that’s been it. Thank you for watching catch.
You guys, the next one peace you .