Starting this Friday, you can purchase an iPhone XR. If you have an older iPhone and you are ready to upgrade to the edge-to-edge screen of the iPhone X-type devices, that means that you now have a choice. Do you get the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max, or the iPhone XR?
Apple gave review units of the iPhone XR to select members of the press, and the initial reviews were published yesterday. Interestingly, there is largely a consensus: the iPhone XR is the right phone for most folks who are ready to upgrade. Although I haven't tried to iPhone XR myself, based on what I am reading, I think that this conclusion will also hold true for most attorneys.
Save $250 — make that $350 — with the iPhone XR
One of the most helpful reviews comes from John Gruber of Daring Fireball. He points out that the price difference is even bigger than what you might expect. I had been thinking of the iPhone XR as being a $250 discount over the iPhone XS (and $350 less than the iPhone XS Max) because that is the price difference for the entry-level 64 GB models. However, while 64 GB will be enough for many folks, if you want the ability to carry around tons of documents, pictures, and videos, it is nice to have more than that. In the iPhone XS line, the next step up is $150 more for the 256 GB model. But for the iPhone XR, the next step up is only $50 more for the 128 GB model. 128 GB is a perfect size for almost any attorney today, and $50 is a small price increase for double the capacity. As much as I use my iPhone, I only have about 140 GB (of my 256 GB model) used right now, so 128 GB seems like a very reasonable number for most attorneys.
Thus, for most attorneys, the real choice will be between the $1,150 iPhone XS 256 GB versus $800 for the iPhone XR 128 GB model. That's a $350 difference.
More battery life with the iPhone XR
Another reason to go for the iPhone XR over the iPhone XS is battery life. The iPhone XR seems to have the best battery life of any iPhone ever sold, with performance similar to plus-size iPhones like the iPhone XS Max. Attorney Nilay Patel of The Verge got 13 hours of battery life under normal use conditions. That's very impressive, and is around an hour more than the iPhone XS.
Colors
If you don't plan to use a case with your iPhone, or if you plan to use a clear case, then another advantage of the iPhone XR is that it can be more colorful, coming in blue, white, yellow, coral, and red. If you want silver or gold, you need to go with the iPhone XS. Both models come in black.
The tradeoffs
So you save $350 and get more battery life. Why isn't the iPhone XR the best iPhone for everyone? There are only a few downsides, and if these don't matter to you, then the iPhone XR is your best bet.
• Screen size. Most obviously, if you want the very largest iPhone screen, then you will want to go with the iPhone XS Max, which Apple says has a 6.5" screen, versus 6.1" for the iPhone XR and 5.8" for the iPhone XS. John Gruber points out in his review that the actual measurements are 6.46", 6.06" and 5.85", so the iPhone XR is actually closer to the iPhone XS size than the iPhone XS Max size.
For the rest of these tradeoffs, I'll focus on the iPhone XR versus the iPhone XS.
• Telephoto camera. I think that this is the biggest thing you miss with the iPhone XR. I didn't have an iPhone with two lenses, one of which is a telephoto lens, before I started using the iPhone X last year. Now that I am used to this feature, I would never want to give it up. I use the telephoto lens on a significant number of the photos and videos that I take, and it results in a much better picture when people or objects are farther away. I get much better pictures of my kids and other family members thanks to the telephoto lens, and because I love taking pictures, this is important to me. If you also like taking pictures, this is a major difference.
If you like taking portrait mode pictures, you also get better results with the iPhone XS, but most of the reviewers seemed to find that the difference was typically pretty minor.
While this is the #1 reason that I know that the iPhone XS is the best iPhone for me, it is just as true that if a telephoto lens doesn't matter to you, then the iPhone XR will almost certainly be the best phone for you. The rest of the tradeoffs listed below just are not as important, in my mind.
• Screen quality. I love the colors and deep blacks on the OLED screen of the iPhone XS. But to my surprise, the consensus among the reviewers seems to be that the LED screen of the iPhone XR is almost as good, and is close enough that it probably won't make a difference to most people. Unless you are comparing them side-by-side, you are unlikely to notice the difference. As Raymond Wang of Mashable says in his review: "The bottom line is: The iPhone XR’s screen looks terrific and unless you’re comparing it to the iPhone XS, you’re not gonna find much to dislike. Sure, you’re giving up deeper blacks for a very dark gray, and the XR’s screen isn’t HDR-ready like on the XS, but neither of these are deal breakers." Similarly, Rene Ritchie of iMore says that while you will notice the nicer screen on the iPhone XS if you are using virtual reality apps, "[f]or everything else and everyone else, you probably won't notice a difference. It looks terrific and is yet another example of the overall experience being far more important than any one spec read off any one sheet."
• Larger bezels. The iPhone XR also has larger bezels on the sides than the iPhone XS. Because the edge-to-edge screen is such a key feature of an iPhone X-class device, I thought that the reviewers would be universally bothered by this. And some were. For example, Nilay Patel wrote: "But the bezel... well, you’re going to notice that bezel every time you see an iPhone X or XS anywhere near an XR. It’s very large, and it definitely makes the iPhone XR seem less premium than the iPhone XS." On the other hand, Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch said the larger bezels are just "slightly less elegant" and "not a big deal." John Gruber says: "People who use an iPhone case — which is to say the vast majority of iPhone owners — may not even notice the larger bezel. And even without a case it’s not a problem, per se, and is really only evident when compared side-by-side." And Raymond Wong said: "They were larger than I remembered from my hands-on with them back in September, but they didn’t bother me at all. Almost all the time, you’re looking at the screen, not the bezels around it. At the same time, some people are bound to find them downright distasteful."
• 3D Touch. I really like 3D Touch on my iPhone XS. For example, I like being able to push on the app icon for the Shortcuts app to see a menu of my top four shortcuts so that I can tap one to launch it. But if I somehow lost that feature, it wouldn't be a major issue for me. The iPhone XR doesn't have 3D Touch, although there are some circumstances in which you can hold your finger on the screen for a little bit and the iPhone will trigger a similar Haptic Touch feature. The reviewers generally thought that it wasn't a big loss to not have 3D Touch, and that sounds about right to me.
• Etc. There are some other smaller differences, but the reviewers seemed to indicate that they were less important, and I agree. The iPhone XR is slightly less waterproof. If you are in an area that supports Gigabit-class LTE, you can take advantage of those faster speeds on an iPhone XS but not on an iPhone XR. And while the front glass is the same on the iPhone XR and the iPhone XS, the iPhone XR has a less durable glass on the back.
Conclusion
After reading the numerous hands-on reviews quoted above and many more, I'm still happy that I have the iPhone XS. The telephoto lens alone makes that iPhone worth it to me, and then all of the other minor differences add up to make me happier with that model.
Having said that, I think that the iPhone XR with 128 GB is the best iPhone for most attorneys. If you like a larger screen, get the iPhone XS Max. If you like taking pictures with your device, you'll really appreciate the telephoto lens on the iPhone XS. But if those two don't matter to you, I don't think that the additional differences are worth the $350 you can save and the extra battery life that you get by choosing the iPhone XR instead of the iPhone XS.
