If you have an iPhone that supports wireless or Qi charging (iPhone 8 or newer), you might consider one of these wireless iPhone charging pads to go along with it. Wireless charging offers the convenience of just setting your iPhone down to charge without having to fumble with a Lightning cable. While the iPhone 8 through iPhone 11 handsets can charge at up to 7.5W, the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups can fast-charge at up to 15W, so keep that in mind as you shop. These are some of our favorite iPhone charging pads that you can get right now.

The best wireless charging pads for you

These are all great wireless iPhone charging pads that fit various needs but wireless charging makes your life just a little bit easier. It might seem like a little thing, but there's something great about being able to just pick up your iPhone off of a charging pad and go and put it back there when you return.

If you have any devices from the iPhone 12 or 13 lines, then the Apple MagSafe Charger is the obvious pick. There's something so satisfying about that click when it snaps onto the back of your phone and the animation that shows you where your battery's at right now. There are also a bunch of alternative MagSafe Chargers if you want to go third-party.

If you want something inexpensive and easy, go for the Anker PowerWave 10W Pad. At that price point, you can keep a few in different areas of the home or office; it takes up very little space.

If you need to charge more than just one iPhone at a time, there are triple wireless charging pads available. These will allow you to charge multiple iPhones and other Qi-enabled devices.

Congratulations, you just got a shiny iPhone XS in your hands, but now comes the tough part: protecting that gorgeous phone. Whether you want to go naked or put a case on it, you should always have at least a screen protector to keep that glass panel safe and sound. After all, it just takes one slip of the hand and BAM! A cracked screen. Here are our top recommendations, just for you!

Protect your iPhone's screen with a reliable screen protector

You just dropped a lot of money on a new phone, so the least you should do is ensure it's protected and maintained well. These are the best screen protectors that we know of on Amazon, and none of them are too expensive. I went with the amFilm for my iPhone XS because its Nintendo Switch tempered screen protectors are still going strong on my console, so I trust the quality.

The premium choice, the TORRAS Screen Protector is worth the extra money. While any of the protectors on this list are going to be similar in protective ability, the difference between them is the way they look and feel on your phone. Not only is the TORRAS screen protector great for facial recognition but once installed you can also barely see it or feel it due to its perfect size and shape. This allows you to enjoy your iPhone XS the way it was intended.

Today only at Woot, you can save on an Apple iPhone XS in refurbished condition. These 64GB devices are available fully-unlocked for just $349.99 in your choice of space gray or gold. They are offered in Grade A refurbished condition so there will be little by way of cosmetic blemishes and they will work like new. Each comes backed by a 90-day Woot warranty.

$899.99 $1299.00 Save $399 1623157769

Having now been replaced by the 24-inch M1 iMac, Apple's 21.5-inch iMac has been discontinued. That means big savings at third-party retailers including at Amazon where it's discounted by $399.

Prices Vary 1622214797

This sale includes iPhone models, the Apple Watch, iMac and iPad devices, Beats headphones, Apple services, and more. The deals vary by product, so be sure to check them all out now.

$103.99 $129.99 Save $26 1621604395

Change how you use your iPad with the Apple Pencil. This stylus lets you use your iPad as a notepad, a canvas, or a drawing board for all of your ideas. Today's deal saves you 20% instantly at Verizon.

$599.99 $699.00 Save $99 1621519150

Updated in late 2020, the Mac Mini has Apple's M1 chip that combines CPU, GPU, and machine learning for faster performance, better graphics, and an all around streamlined device. This version has 8GB RAM and a 256GB solid state drive.

From $329 1621244196

Apple Watch Series 6 models are available for some of their best prices ever right now. The lowest price is on the red 40mm version which is $70 off with 44mm and cellular models seeing discounts of up to $91.

Though the iPhone XS is no longer the latest model, it's still a great phone by modern standards. If you were to get a renewed model at Amazon, you'd spend closer to $400 making today's Woot deal all the more attractive. Other refurb stores like BackMarket have phones in "very good" condition for around the same price, too.

Introduced in 2018, the iPhone XS features a 5.8-inch OLED edge-to-edge display with Face ID, a stainless steel and glass construction, and A12 Bionic processor. It has a dual rear camera set up for Portrait Mode photography and TrueDepth front-facing camera and sensor array for Portrait selfies and Animoji, too. We put both sizes of the iPhone XS through their paces in our detailed iPhone XS review and praised both phones' speedy performance.

The fully-unlocked devices available via Woot will work with all major U.S. GSM and CDMA networks. They may come in generic packaging and do not include earbuds, so it may be worth picking up some affordable headphones with the money you save. While these refurbished options from Woot aren't for everyone, the prices make them worth serious consideration. If your teen is asking for a phone, but you don't want to drop a ton of money for a recent model, this is one way to do it.

Woot normally charges $6 for shipping, though you can skip the shipping charge and have your order shipped for free when you link your Amazon Prime account at Woot before checking out. If you've never been a Prime member before, you can start a free 30-day trial to score free shipping at Woot and Amazon. You'll also gain access to the rest of Prime's perks, from the Prime Video streaming service to exclusive members-only discounts and more.

First introduced in September 2018, the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max came and went within a year, only to be replaced by the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max, respectively. Finding a new iPhone Xs/Xs Max on the market in late 2020 is next to impossible. Because of this, we recommend getting the iPhone 11 Pro or iPhone 11 Pro Max instead. These phones are also retired but only left the market in October 2020, meaning these are much easier to find.

Only if you find a great discount

However, you should only purchase an iPhone 11 Pro/Pro Max if you can find one at an incredible discount. The reason? There are now seven active iPhones on the market ranging in price from $399 for the least expensive iPhone SE (2020) to $1,099 for the entry-level iPhone 12 Pro Max. Because of this broad price range, you're likely to find one to fit your budget.

Why the iPhone 11 Pro?

It wasn't that long ago when the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max were the best iPhones you could buy. The introduction of the iPhone 12 series changed this, of course. However, if you're willing to give up the small number of bells and whistles exclusive to that series for the sake of saving some cash, go with the iPhone 11 Pro series.

Among the highly popular features found on the iPhone 11 Pro are Face ID, a Super Retina XDR display, up to 1TB of storage, three back cameras, including ultra-wide, wide, and telephoto, and more.

Therefore, if you're looking for Black Friday iPhone deals, the iPhone 11 Pro could prove to be an excellent candidate.

Should anyone buy an iPhone Xs?

New iPhone Xs units are difficult, if not impossible, to find at the normal locations, such as Amazon, Best Buy, or Walmart. But if you don't mind a pre-owned, refurbished iPhone and don't care about having the most recent phone either, definitely check out Amazon.

Don't wait for Black Friday

You don't need to wait around to find great Black Friday iPhone deals. Discounts for Black Friday are already showing up at certain retailers, including some other Black Friday Apple deals. If you find a great deal now, go for it and enjoy the iPhone you ultimately select!

Be sure to check out the rest of the Black Friday deals that are incoming.

I've been writing about phones for over a decade at this point, and for a long portion of that time I strived to have the latest and greatest. A few years ago that itch started dying down, and I preferred having nicer things in my house than a newer phone in my pocket, and that has caused me to "upgrade" to an iPhone Xs now that the iPhone 12 is official.

It sounds crazy on the surface, I realize that, but to say 2020 has been a crazy year would be an understatement. While I am extremely lucky that my job remained unscathed by everything going on, I know plenty of people who have been affected by everything going on, and it's made me want to be a bit smarter with my money. For a while I had been using an iPhone XR and briefly checked out the iPhone 11 as part of a review, but I've always longed for the smaller phones and both of these just ended up feeling too big for my daily use.

The iPhone SE 2020 is a great size for me, personally, but I tried using one and ended up missing FaceID and the bigger display size, so it went back. Now, when Apple took the stage for the iPhone 12 launch, I was left with a tough choice. Did I keep my current phone, upgrade to an iPhone 12, which I knew would be too big, or try for the iPhone 12 mini, which I feared would seem too small for me. I took some time to think about it, and even weighed the option of getting an iPhone 11 Pro, but ultimately ended up going for an iPhone Xs because Back Market's Black Friday deals ultimately just made it the smartest choice.

Why an iPhone XS in 2020?

In all honesty, it was a combination of the size and price. For the past few years, Apple has been releasing extremely powerful devices and working really hard to keep older iPhone models supported with new operating systems, and this combination means that older devices last much longer than you'd expect. When breaking down my actual phone usage these days, I realized most of it is spent doing silly things like scrolling social networks or browsing the internet. I am one of those whom still prefer to get out my real digital camera when I want to capture great pictures, so the older camera tech wasn't a concern to me.

I knew that with the iPhone XS I could very easily get a few years out of the phone without even a single worry about performance or it not being supported any longer. When I combined that with the price of the device, it made a whole lot of sense for me to pick one up as my next phone.

But Apple doesn't sell the iPhone XS anymore

That's true, Apple no longer sells the iPhone XS as a new phone anymore, but that wasn't a concern to me. I've covered Back Market before and have since become a big fan of what the company is doing. One of the reasons many people stay away from buying refurbished phones and older devices is a worry that they have no warranty, but that wasn't even something that crossed my mind since Back Market offers a one-year warranty on any device purchsaed from it.

I wanted it to look and feel like I got a new phone, not that I had a refurbished one so I sprung for the Mint Condition version of the iPhone XS, which wasn't much more than the other variants at the time. When it arrived it looked brand new, not a scratch to be seen on the whole phone, and the only difference was really the box that it shipped in.

I don't regret not getting the latest

I've had the iPhone XS in hand for a little bit now, and I've done some comparisons with my wife's iPhone 11 and my son's iPhone SE 2020, and honestly I don't think I made the wrong choice at all. The phone is everything that I wanted: it's still fast, a great size, has two cameras, and will be supported for years to come. And best of all, it didn't break the bank. It's easy to long for the latest and the greatest, and we often get caught up in the need to have the "best," but in reality sometimes you don't really need that and something a little bit older, and cheaper, can do just as great of a job.

After updating to iOS 14 I got all the latest and greatest features of the platform without the newest phone. It works as I hoped it would, and I don't need to baby it like I would a new phone normally. Another small benefit I've grown to realize is that accessories are also cheaper. Since most people have upgraded beyond the X line, acceessories like cases and stuff are super cheap now, and Apple even still makes new versions should you wish to buy it new.

Maybe refurbished is right for you

Buying a new phone for yourself doesn't always mean buying the top of the line device. It's time to rethink your needs, see what you actually want in a device, and consider buying a refurb instead of going new. With its great pricing and amazing warranty and support, Back Market is a great place to consider when hunting a new to you phone.

Woot has several refurbished iPhone models on sale today with prices starting at just $149.99. These phones may have some signs of cosmetic wear, but have been tested to ensure they are in full working condition and come with a 90-day Woot warranty. Put your Amazon Prime membership to good use and avoid Woot's $6 shipping fee. Most of the phones on sale are fully unlocked to work with any carrier, though a few specific models are set to work only with AT&T or T-Mobile and subsidiary carriers, so be sure to check carefully before placing your order.

$899.99 $1299.00 Save $399 1623157769

Having now been replaced by the 24-inch M1 iMac, Apple's 21.5-inch iMac has been discontinued. That means big savings at third-party retailers including at Amazon where it's discounted by $399.

Prices Vary 1622214797

This sale includes iPhone models, the Apple Watch, iMac and iPad devices, Beats headphones, Apple services, and more. The deals vary by product, so be sure to check them all out now.

$103.99 $129.99 Save $26 1621604395

Change how you use your iPad with the Apple Pencil. This stylus lets you use your iPad as a notepad, a canvas, or a drawing board for all of your ideas. Today's deal saves you 20% instantly at Verizon.

$599.99 $699.00 Save $99 1621519150

Updated in late 2020, the Mac Mini has Apple's M1 chip that combines CPU, GPU, and machine learning for faster performance, better graphics, and an all around streamlined device. This version has 8GB RAM and a 256GB solid state drive.

From $329 1621244196

Apple Watch Series 6 models are available for some of their best prices ever right now. The lowest price is on the red 40mm version which is $70 off with 44mm and cellular models seeing discounts of up to $91.

The most affordable option on the sale is the iPhone 7 at $149.99. While it might not be the most current generation iPhone, but it has solid specs for day-to-day use and supports Apple's current iOS 13 software. It has a 4.7-inch Retina display with Touch ID fingerprint sensor and can be used to make contactless payments with Apple Pay. The 5.5-inch Plus version is also on sale for $229.99. There are more up-to-date models in the mix including iPhone 8 and iPhone X that would be wiser investments if you want to hang on to the phone for the longer-term as they are more likely to get future software updates.

If you want the top-spec phone in the sale, opt for the iPhone XS from $479.99. Introduced in 2018, the iPhone XS features an OLED edge-to-edge display with Face ID, stainless steel and glass construction, and A12 Bionic processor. It has a dual rear camera set up for Portrait Mode photography and TrueDepth front-facing camera and sensor array for Portrait selfies and Animoji, too. We put the iPhone XS through its paces and praised improved camera and speedy performance.

The deals are good for today only or while supplies last, so be sure to act fast to avoid missing out on the phone you want. The iPhone 11 Pro sold out after just a few hours, so don't let that happen to the handset you want. Be sure to check out all the other great iPhone deals now.

Who doesn't love getting a brand new gorgeous case for their iPhone, especially when it's a pricey iPhone XS? Even though it's a few years old in the market, the iPhone XS is still a great phone to have and gets the job done. A case makes a phone seem even more special and remain in good shape over time. When it comes to getting the best protection for your iPhone XS, these are our go-to choices.

Guardians of the Apple

A great case should not only protect your iPhone XS, but it should complement how you use your phone. That way, you get the most enjoyment out of it, and I can't imagine any better case than the Lanhiem iPhone XS Case. Despite its focus on protection, the Lanhiem case doesn't interfere with regular phone operations to any significant degree.

If you don't want to add any noticeable chunk to your phone but keep it protected, then the TORRAS Slim Fit iPhone XS Case is a perfect fit, literally. The case's primary material is matt, with a silky, soft to touch finish which feels absolutely great every time you hold your phone.

You can still show off the beauty of your glasshouse without sacrificing protection using the Spigen Hybrid Clear Case. The case combines a hybrid rigid back cover, flexible bumper, and Air Cushion Technology to give your a clear protective case that feels great and is comfortable to hold.

What you need to know

• Apple has begun selling the iPhone XS and iPhone Max refurbished.
• The phones are currently available on Apple's refurbished section of the Apple Store website.
• You can grab savings of $200 to $250 off the current selling price a brand new phone.

Today, Apple has begun selling refurbished models of the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max on the refurbished section of the Apple Store website. This is the first time that the website has seen refurbished models of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max available since the phones originally launched in September of 2018.

You can currently find the iPhone XS in all three colors: Space Gray, Silver, and Gold. The Space Gray and Silver are both available in all three size configurations: 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB. The Gold model is currently only available in 64GB and 256GB. The price ranges from $699 for the 64GB to $999 for the 512GB and all of the phones are unlocked.

The iPhone XS Max is currently only available in Silver and Gold, but each color is available in all storage sizes. The iPhone XS Max starts at $799 for the 64GB to $1099 for the 512GB, and all of the phones are unlocked. That means that you are grabbing a savings of anywhere from $200 to $250 off the current price from a new base model iPhone XS to the top-end iPhone XS Max.

• iPhone XS - 64GB in Space Gray, Silver, and Gold: $699 (Save $200)
• iPhone XS - 256GB in Space Gray, Silver, and Gold: $829 (Save $220)
• iPhone XS - 512GB in Space Gray, Silver: $999 (Save $250)
• iPhone XS Max - 64GB in Silver, Gold: $799 (Save $200)
• iPhone XS Max - 256GB in Silver, Gold: $929 (Save $220)
• iPhone XS Max - 512GB in Silver, Gold: $1,099 (Save $250)

Apple says that all of the phones include a one year warranty, all manuals and accessories, a new battery and outer shell, and a new box. The phones all go through "full functional testing, genuine Apple part replacements (if necessary), and a thorough cleaning". All refurbished iPhones are also eligible for AppleCare if you want your iPhone to be protected from accidental damage protection for two years.

What you need to know

• Photographer John Kraus took a photo of a rocket using his iPhone XS Max.
• The rocket was a SpaceX CRS-19.
• The photo looks better than a phone has any right to produce.

In the tech world we're all guilty of chasing the latest, hottest, flashiest, and fastest thing. This year that's iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max. But that's unfair to iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. Until 2019, they were the best iPhones ever made. And photographer John Kraus has reminded us (via 512Pixels) just how good their cameras are, too.

Kraus took his iPhone XS Max and placed it near the launch site of SpaceX's CRS-19 rocket. The result is a shot that looks highly impressive and reminds us once again that perhaps we don't really need the latest iPhone in order to take some amazing shots.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5u-ardppjQ/

Now admittedly this isn't going to make me trade my iPhone 11 Pro in for a used iPhone XS. But if you're still on the fence about upgrading, this might make you think twice. Especially if you've been happy with your iPhone XS and its photography prowess to this point.

What you need to know

• YouTuber JerryRigEverything attempted a crazy experiment with a broken iPhone.
• It involved removing the shattered glass back using an industrial laser machine.
• The experiment technically worked, but it's not something normal people will be able to do.

Repairing a shattered iPhone has never been an easy or cheap proposition. That's why cases and AppleCare+ are so popular for iPhone owners. But what if there was a simpler way that didn't break the bank?

YouTuber JerryRigEverything took this simple question and found an answer to it. His focus was on the back glass panel that can cost as much as $600 to fix if you don't have AppleCare+. The reason being that Apple uses adhesive that is permanent. Only extreme temperatures will loosen the adhesive, which is almost impossible to recreate without the proper tools.

He took his shattered iPhone X and put it through a crazy experiment that involved removing the glass back with relative ease. To do so, JerryRigEverything used an "all-in-one, multi-functional laser machine" that burns the adhesive from the outside.

The process is so intense, it also burns through the paint on the glass panel.

The experiment worked, but it didn't accomplished its original goal of making repairing iPhones easy. It's not like normal people have industrial laser machines like the one he uses laying around like spare vacuums.

Additionally, the process was still complicated. The adhesive is burned off, but removing the glass is still difficult because you're removing broken glass—it's still shattered into a million different pieces. Then you run into a problem with the camera cut-out. You'll have to buy a special back glass panel that fits over the camera because it is welded on to the steel frame.

JerryRigEverything's experiment was educational and fun to watch, but we doubt many people will embark on this repair journey. Most people will just find it easier to shell out the bucks to repair the phone without hassle. We'd still recommened grabbing a good case or getting AppleCare+.

Best iPhone 11 cases in 2019

You can choose to either have your new iPhone delivered right to your doorstep, or pick it up at your nearest Apple Store. Each option has benefits and drawbacks. It's up to you what you decide. If you've preordered your iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro and selected in-store pickup, you might be wondering what you can expect at your check-in window. Here's what you can do to prepare.

• Keep an eye on your order status
• Make sure you get your email or text message notification first
• Bring the credit card you purchased, your order confirmation number, and your photo ID
• Get there a few minutes early and check in with an Apple staff member right away
• Have patience
• Walk out happy!

Keep an eye on your order status

When you view your iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro preorder online at Apple.com or on the Apple Store app, you'll see, in bold, what your order status is. If it still shows your iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro as "Order Placed" within the next few days, you might want to talk to an Apple support representative to make sure everything is OK. There may be an issue with your credit card or some other problem that is stumping the order from being processed.

It's better to address these potential issues early so you can still get your iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro on the date of your pickup.

Give it some time, though. Your preorder may take a day or two to process. If you preordered on a Friday, give it until Monday before you call. Don't wait for another email. Check your order status online or in the Apple Store app.

If it shows Order In Progress, you're good to go! Don't be worried if you're order is still in-progress leading up to your scheduled window for in-store pickup. Most of my in-store pickup orders show that my order is "in progress" right up until moment I get the email or text notification that it's ready to be picked up.

Make sure you get your email or text message notification first

Even though you might have a pick-up window scheduled for launch day at 9:00 am, you still won't be able to actually pick up your iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro until you receive that confirmation notification. So don't try.

You'll receive either an email or text message (or, sometimes both) letting you know that your order is ready to be picked up. Even if it's before or after your originally scheduled pickup window, this is the time you should go.

You should also make sure your notifications are set to the correct email address and phone number. Go to your account settings and click or tap on your Primary or Default Shipping information and check your email address and phone number to make sure notifications will be sent to the right place.

Bring the credit card you purchased and your order confirmation number (and your photo ID)

Though Apple's website states that you only need to bring one or the other, either your credit card or your order confirmation number, it's smart to have both. If something wonky has happened or the Apple staff member is having trouble looking up your order, you can provide one or the other method for finding your information. It's just good practice to be overly prepared for this scenario so you don't have to walk out of the store empty-handed due to something so trivial as a credit card or confirmation number.

Of course, no matter what, you'll need your photo ID with you.

Get there a few minutes early and check in with an Apple staff member right away

Though Apple's policy is to hold onto your iPhone for up to 20 days under normal order pickup circumstances, that doesn't mean you won't be kicked to the back of the line if you show up late to your appointment.

When you have a reservation for a Genius Bar appointment and show up more than 15 minutes past your appointment start time, if the place is bumpin', you might be asked to wait until the next available Genius is ready, even if that means an hour's wait.

I'm not sure whether your local Apple retail store will have a similar policy for your pick-up window, but are you willing to risk it? I'm not. Get there early. Check in right away.

There is always an Apple staff member at the front of an Apple store waiting to greet customers. Go to that person first. They will point you in the right direction as to whom you want to see to actually check in.

Have patience

Apple employees are people, too. If you're angry because you've had to wait 20 minutes before anyone came to help you, imagine just how difficult their day has been? You're not intentionally being ignored. If your local Apple retail store is a cluster-[expletive deleted], it's not on purpose. If you're getting antsy to pick up your iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro, politely ask an Apple Staff member to help you. Everyone will be happier with their experience in the end if we are all nice to each other on such a chaotic day.

Walk out happy!

If all goes well and there aren't any unforeseen issues that arise and keep you from getting your iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro on the day of your iPhone pickup window, you can walk out of your local Apple retail store with iPhone in hand. Just don't be that guy that drops it right after opening it on the way out of the store.

Any questions?

Do you have any questions about what to expect at your iPhone XR pickup check-in? Put them in the comments and I'll help you out.

Updated September 2019: Updated for iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro.

What you need to know

• People seem to be curious about how much their iPhone XS battery has degraded over the past year.
• YouTuber Dmitry Novoselov began the discussion by revealing his iPhone XS battery health was at 91%.
• Other revealed their battery health were at varying levels like 85% or 99%.

It has been nearly one year since the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max were released. With the one year anniversary being revisited as many users are sending their devices back as part of an upgrade program, many are checking the health of their battery out of curiosity. Turns out the battery degradation is wildly different depending on the user.

YouTuber Dmitry Novoselov began the discussion when he posted a tweet asking how people's battery health was for their iPhones. He noted that his iPhone XS battery health was at 91% after one year of use. He wondered if the battery degradation of 9% was normal.

This got people curious and they began to respond. Some reported battery health of 89% and 94% among other scores for different iPhones. YouTuber Justin Tse responded with one of the most striking declines with his battery health at 85%.

What's more surprising was when I checked the health of my iPhone XS. It is currently at 99% and still going strong. I received it on day one and have used it ever since. For my charging habits, I leave it on a wireless charger every night from 11 p.m to 6 a.m. (for the most part) like clockwork. I also checked with my co-worker to see how his iPhone X battery has aged over the past two years and he confirmed it is at 86%.

In case you are unaware, battery chemistry is not an exact science. Degradation will definitely occur, it just depends on the device and how a person uses it. But it can vary depending on certain differences. Novoselov tagged Apple Support and they responded with this statement:

Additionally, it posted the link for Apple's support page for iPhone Battery and Performance. It states: "As lithium-ion batteries chemically age, the amount of charge they can hold diminishes, resulting in shorter amounts of time before a device needs to be recharged."

iPhone batteries will degrade at different increments for everyone. I have no idea how mine has only degraded 1%, but I'll take it. However, it is not uncommon to see the battery of a brand new iPhone degrade by upwards of 10% over the course of a year. That's something worth noting when checking how your iPhone battery is doing after years of use.

What's the health of your iPhone battery? Let us know in the comments below.

Upgrading from last year's iPhone to this year's can be a difficult decision to make. Does the new iPhone 11 Pro really have more and better features than the one you're holding in your hand right now? Would it be smarter to wait until 2020? There's a lot to unpack, so let's get this party started.

Old vs new: Is an upgrade really necessary this year?

On the one hand, the iPhone 11 Pro has a WAY better camera system than the iPhone XS and the battery improvement is the biggest Apple has ever accomplished year-over-year at four additional hours for the iPhone 11 Pro and five more hours for the iPhone 11 Pro Max. On the other hand, if you're not trying to be a photography hobbyist and your iPhone XS or XS Max batter lasts long enough for you, are these the only features worth the upgrade? Let's break down the major tech specs.

And for the Max models...

New colors, new finish, new you

Lots of people have asked me what I think of the matte finish on the new iPhone 11 Pro and I have to say, it's absolutely lovely, especially on the silver model. That soft white backside is like looking at an elegant pair of satin gloves.

All of the colors we're familiar with — gold, space gray, and silver, have a new, and in my opinion, better look. The colors are richer and more vibrant. They stand out more. Less reflective so you can look deeper into the color. Space gray has this sort of compelling effect on your eyes. You want to look at it more. Find the shadows hidden in the dark.

Of course, there's that brand new color added to the iPhone Pro line: Midnight Green. It's difficult to describe what it looks like in real life, but it's sort of a smokey green. It's very dark, so dark it almost looks gray, but when it hits the light right, you can see that dark green peeking through.

If showing off to your friends that you've got the newest iPhone, the iPhone 11 Pro in Midnight Green will definitely catch their eye.

The elephant-sized camera in the room

There is no way to diminish the absolute 'extra' that is the new triple-lens camera on the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max. It's got an ultra wide lens, a standard lens, and a telephoto lens. That means you can 2x zoom in, like you can on the iPhone XS, or 2x zoom out to capture a wider landscape in the shot without having to move further away. It's not pano. It's not fisheye. It simply optically broadens how much you can fit into the shot by four times.

The video camera has also been improved thanks to extended dynamic range and cinematic video stabilization support for 4K at 60fps. And you can take advantage of the triple lens system to zoom in or out while shooting video. When zoomed in, the microphone will directionally isolate and record audio from the subject you're pointing at.

Night mode is definitely a game changer for the iPhone. It's similar to "Night Sight" in Google's Pixel phone and Samsung's "Night mode." Phones don't yet have option to lower the shutter speed of your camera in order to capture more light. Instead, they use computational software to reproduce the same effect.

With Night mode on the iPhone 11 Pro, you can take pictures in near-black darkness, but get a final photo that has significant light drawn in, and it doesn't look grainy or noisy. This happens automatically (though you can manually turn it off by tapping the Night mode icon in the camera app), so if you quickly want to capture a scene in a dimly lit area, you don't have to fiddle with any settings to get the shot.

I know it's something we've all been dying to have on our phones and its finally here — slo-mo selfie video. OK, so this is a silly little thing, but you and I both know we've tried to take slo-mo video of ourselves using the back camera on the iPhone XS (or whichever iPhone you have). No more flipping the camera around anymore.

The front-facing TrueDepth camera is also now 12MP with 4K video recording capabilities. Excuse me while I go throw my GoPro in the garbage!

If a better camera than the iPhone XS is high on your priority list, the upgrade to the triple lens system on the iPhone 11 Pro is absolutely a reason to upgrade.

If, however, your iPhone XS takes perfectly good pictures and you're not trying to go pro, or at least become a hobbyist photographer, you may not consider this to be a valuable justification to upgrade. Especially if the, very noticable, square camera bump with three "eyes" peering at you is too much of a design change for you to handle right now.

Battery for daaaaaays

Apple claims (no one outside of the company has had a chance to test these claims) that the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max have a massive improvement in battery life over the iPhone XS. We're talking about four hours more for the iPhone 11 Pro and five hours more for the iPhon 11 Pro Max.

As you can see from the spec table above, however, Apple hasn't given any specifics on when the batteries perform these special feats. Apple hasn't yet listed talk time or internet browsing time yet.

In general, however, if my iPhone can power through an additional four or five hours of life without needing a recharge, I can actually go to Disneyland for a day without needing to bring an external charging brick, and that includes a lot of picture taking.

The huge boost in battery performance is one feature that makes me want to say, "Yes! Upgrade! It's worth it!" But I know that, not everyone runs out of juice that often. If you spend much of your day in an office environment where you can charge your iPhone regularly, your daily power needs are less, and four extra hours may not mean anything to you except for the occasions when you're away from anything that can charge your iPhone, like a nature hike (or a day at Disneyland).

Goodbye 3D Touch, hello Haptic Touch

I have one more small thing to mention, and that's the switch from 3D Touch to Haptic Touch. There are a few features you lose in 3D Touch if you upgrade, but for the most part, Haptic Touch, which involves long-pressing instead of pressing harder, performs the same function. You even get that slight bump feeling when you use it, so it feels like you're doing the same thing anyway.

Bottomline TL;DR

If you're still on the fence about whether you should upgrade, consider these few things:

• If you must have the latest colors, styles, and fashion and you want all your friends to know you're ahead of the curve, upgrade to the iPhone 11 Pro and pick the Midnight Green color, since it's the first time this color has appeared on any Apple Device. #iPhoneista
• If you get a little FOMO (fear of missing out) when you think about living the next year with a dual-lens camera instead of a triple-lens camera, and you already have ideas for how you'd use that ultra-wide feature, the iPhone 11 Pro is a justifiable upgrade. There's no denying that it's a huge improvement, front-facing, back-facing, and video-wise, over the iPhone XS. If you just like to take pictures of your food, your new shoes, and maybe girls/boys night out, your iPhone XS camera is good enough ... no, great enough, to last you another year.
• If the iPhone XS' battery performance is the baine of your existence, if it runs out of juice way before you do, the impressive performance improvement of either four or five additional hours of battery makes the iPhone 11 Pro an insta-buy.

What you need to know

• iPhone XS models now start at $899.
• iPhone XS Max models start at $999.
• The prices are only available in stores.

Apple has slashed the price of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max following the announcement of the iPhone 11 lineup. Bargain hunters can now save $100 on every iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max model.

That means that the iPhone XS can be picked up in 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB storage configurations for $899, $1,049, and $1,249, respectively. Likewise, the iPhone XS Max can be had in the same storage configurations for $999, $1,149, and $1,349.

The only catch here, as noted by Macrumors, is that you'll have to head into an Apple Store to make your purchase. Apple removed the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models from its online store to make way for the new iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max.

That doesn't mean that there isn't the potential for a bargain iPhone online, though. Carriers sometimes offer deals to move inventory before a new flagship lands on shelves. If you want to save some money but don't want to venture to the local Apple Store – or there isn't one near your – that's one place to start your search.

If the best of the best is more your style, Apple's newest iPhones will be available for pre-order on September 13th with stock arriving in stores on September 20th. That's also the same date the Apple Watch Series 5 goes on sale, although pre-orders are already available for Apple's latest wearable lifesaver.

What you need to know

• As of today, T-Mobile is bringing eSIM to its postpaid customers
• It had supported eSIM for its prepaid customers since last year
• eSIM is supported by the iPhone XS and iPhone XR

Today, T-Mobile has announced that it is bringing eSIM support to the iPhone XS and iPhone XR for its postpaid customers. Reported by 9to5Mac, this offering by the Uncarrier is actually an expansion of existing functionality. T-Mobile was already supporting eSIM on both iPhone models in December of last year, but it was limited at the time to prepaid customers only.

Apple announced support for eSIM with the launch of the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR in September of last year, and according to Apple's eSIM support website, T-Mobile is now joining AT&T and Verizon as the third largest carrier in the U.S. to support the service. The press release touted the benefits of eSIM, like operating two numbers on one device.

Existing T-Mobile customers who already have an iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, or iPhone XR on a postpaid plan can switch to an eSIM by either visiting a T-Mobile store or getting in contact with their customer support team. Those who are looking to activate a new line will have to do it in store. The release also states that a $20 assisted or upgrade support charge may be required.

You can find out more by reading the full release or visiting T-Mobile's support website.

Following up on the story from last week concerning iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR no longer displays battery health data following third-party battery repairs — what the internet quickly called Apple locking out battery repairs, Apple sent me the following statement:

I've written a ton on this already so I'll keep this update brief: It's pretty much what I covered in the video above and the previous article based on it.

No batteries are being locked out. That's hyperbole, sensationalism, scare tactics. And it's good for customers to know if they're getting or buying and iPhone with an aftermarket battery or third-party installation. Information is good.

I still feel like, while the idea is fine, the implementation could be better. Especially if someone is thinking of buying a used iPhone, they should absolutely have an easy way to verify if it's had any repairs. That can and should inform their decision-making process.

But battery health is also important information, especially for people who have aftermarket batteries or third-party repairs. If Apple can't pull accurate information for batteries they haven't installed and paired, then maybe an approximation would be helpful? That way, if an aftermarket battery or third-party repair was awesome, they can rest easy. If it was bad or deceptive, they can take it to be looked at immediately.

But let me know what you think.

August 14, 2019: Apple Statement

Apple sent me the following statement:

A couple of days ago, Justin from TheArtofRepair YouTube channel discovered that, all of a sudden, swapping out the battery on an iPhone resulted in the newish battery health monitoring system turning off and popping up:

Since then, we've seen headlines like Vice's "Apple Is Locking Batteries to Specific iPhones, a Nightmare for DIY Repair" and, of course, iFixit's "Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair" and just a ton more like them.

Now, I'm going to push back kinda hard on using the term "locking" for any of this. Not because I'm an evil Apple apologist or defender, even though I can feel some of you just itching… itching to start typing that in the comments right now already.

But wait... just wait. Because I think it's just dumb and lets Apple off the hook far too easily.

First, It's listed publicly on Apple's iPhone Battery and Performance page as applicable to Phone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. And has been since at least March 1st.

Second, Joe Rossignol has also shown a support document from back in April that tells technicians to run RepairCal to make sure it doesn't happen with Apple repairs. RepairCal being Apple's repair and calibration system that authenticates the hardware for the software.

In this case, there's a chip on the battery that has to be paired with the board, something that only Apple's tools can do, and if it's not, you get that warning.

According to iFixit, it can be worked around by swapping the original chip onto the new battery, but that's a much tougher and more onerous job.

Apple has invested heavily in making iPhones last longer. Everything from devoting most the iOS 12 engineering resources to performance enhancements for older phones, to putting in chipsets with years of overhead, to providing updates longer than pretty much everyone else in the industry. So why make third party repairs harder?

Some of the coverage has then focused on this being a move deliberately designed to hurt third party repair shops and it's going to make Apple look really, really bad.

The first part is about as silly as saying right-to-repair is deliberately pushed to make a buck off selling high priced DYI kits. It's just nonsense. Hurting third parties really sucks. Like really sucks. But it's collateral damage. And it's why the second part is bunk too. Apple doesn't really care about looking bad with this.

What Apple cares about is catastrophic battery failures. Apple cares about that a lot.

It may seem like people didn't really care about Galaxy Note 7 having a failure rate so high people were literally instructed, over the intercom, not to have any on flights. But that's the nightmare scenario here.

Ever notice that when Samsung was going through the whole Galaxy Note 7 thing, Apple didn't take any shots at them. Like zero. Because it's not a company thing. It's a technology thing. Lithium Ion is the best mainstream battery we have right now but it's far from perfect and having lithium-ion batteries explode or catch fire, get further restricted in terms of carry-on or shipping, damage property, or worst of all, hurt people — that's it. That's the end.

While some third party and indy repair shops are among the very best and most highly skilled in the world, some of them aren't. Those tend to be the ones that cause problems.

And if you just can't bring yourself to think Apple or any other manufacturer really cares about property damage or personal injury console yourself, just tell yourself they care about the legal exposure that comes with it, and will do an awful lot to limit it as much as possible.

And again, that totally sucks for the many, many great shops out there. But, beyond the sensationalism and victimy-ness, that's the real issue that needs to be negotiated.

I say negotiated for a reason. Apple didn't just lock out third party battery repairs but they sure as hell heaped a ton of stigma onto them, and at the expense of a super useful feature for customers.

And that's why, ultimately, my thinking on this hasn't changed. I fully support right to repair but, please don't make me quote Spider-Man here, it has to come with responsibility as well.

That includes provisions for the handling of potentially dangerous materials like lithium-ion batteries, quality standards for parts where failure just isn't an option. That includes batteries but also authentication so bad actors can't just swap their way into your data.

With severe penalties for shoddy work and security and privacy violations, like fixing your phone but stealing your nudes and sexts. Which, yes, has happened a bunch of times already as well.

Because, if you're going to regulate right to repair, you need to regulate repair as well. Otherwise, this is just about money and going from Apple, who's a big and easy target, to a bunch of much smaller, much less accountable targets, with unknown benefits to consumers.

And it should always be the consumer who ultimately benefits.

In the meantime, I'm going to hard agree with my colleague, Lory Gil. Instead of turning off battery monitoring, which is hella passive-aggressive, Apple should just steal a page from MFi and pop up an annoyer that says much the same thing, then, each and every time you dismiss it, you get an estimation of battery health anyway. Even in another color if they have to.

That way, people who are buying second-hand iPhones also have a super easy way to know if the battery has been changed and, if it hasn't been changed by Apple. Which may factor into their purchasing decision. Which is totally fair.

Corporate asses covered. Customers disclosed. But I'd love to hear your take on this. How do you think we should balance cost and availability of repair with safety and privacy? Let me know in the comments.

If you're looking to pick up either the iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max, you should ask yourself what you really need from your iPhone. Save for a couple of significant differences, these are very much the same phone. So, unless you need the screen size or additional battery life of the iPhone XS Max, I'd actually recommend the iPhone XS for most people. That being said, if you do find yourself needing more battery, or you just want the biggest display that Apple's ever used on an iPhone, you'll love the iPhone XS Max.

Breaking it all down

One of the great things about Apple's flagship iPhone lineup is that both phones are mostly the same, except for battery life and screen size. If you get the iPhone XS, for instance, you won't be missing out on any extra performance that the iPhone XS Max might have, because they have the exact same A12 Bionic system-on-a-chip.

The single biggest advantage that the iPhone XS Max has over the iPhone XS is the battery life. While factors like size, weight, and screen size often come down to personal preference, battery life is fairly concrete. I don't know a person who would say "I wish my phone had less battery life." While some differences in battery life between the phones are relatively minor (the iPhone XS Max should get up to an hour of additional internet use and video playback, for instance), some are not. The iPhone XS Max gets up to an additional five hours of talk time and audio playback each compared to the iPhone XS.

Meanwhile, the iPhone XS's advantages come down more to personal taste. Some people would rather have an overall smaller phone, even if it meant giving up the iPhone XS Max's larger display, but others wouldn't make that trade-off. The same goes for the size and weight (it should be noted that, while the extra weight of the iPhone XS Max is noticeable, it's not a massive increase over the iPhone XS). If you have smaller hands and like to use your phone one-handed, the iPhone XS is probably best for you. The same goes if you have smaller pockets. But if you have bigger pockets, or you keep your iPhone in a bag or purse, you might be just fine with the larger iPhone XS Max.

Here's how the specs of each phone break down. As you'll see, they really are mostly the same phone.

Despite the fact that it's advantages are mostly down to personal taste, I'd still recommend that most people get the iPhone XS over the iPhone XS Max. If you know you need the battery life and either want or will deal with a bigger phone and an additional $100 to get it, by all means, pick up the iPhone XS Max. If you're not sure you need either more battery life or a larger screen, get the iPhone XS.

I say this as someone who uses the iPhone XS Max everyday without regret. But I wanted the larger screen, and so I knew exactly why I was getting the iPhone XS Max, and what the trade-offs would be. Generally, unless the larger iPhone has something specific that you want, I'd recommend getting the smaller one. Overall, you're going to have a better experience in day-to-day use, from just pulling it out of your pocket to using it with one hand. And when there are no sacrifices in performance, that's even better.

We make a lot of mistakes in this business. One of the biggest is forgetting just who exactly it is we review things for. The vast majority of you aren't buying new phones every year, much less every few months. You're using what you have until you can or are forced to get something new. You're not jumping from review unit to review unit every few weeks. You're living with what you spend your hard-earned cash on for years and years.

You care about how it compares to the two or three or more year phone currently in your pocket, maybe, and other options on the market, a little, but the cost of switching is high, so you mostly what you want to know is if you'll be getting what you pay for. If you'll be getting value for your money, now and over the next two or three or more years you'll be using it.

We forget that. We throw up spec lists without any context and spend more time on flashy new features than overall experience and reliability. So, I want to try and fix that here.

I've been using the iPhone XS since Apple introduced it back in September of 2018, some seven months ago, and here's how it's holding up.

Rather watch than read? Hit play on the video above!

iPhone XS in Brief

• Edge-to-edge design.
• Optically stabilized ƒ/1.8 and ƒ/2.4 dual-camera system.
• Depth-aware front-facing camera.
• Face ID biometrics.
• A big 5.8 or bigger 6.5-inch display.
• Gold!

• Classic iPhone design.
• Home button.
• Fingerprint identity biometrics.
• Lower pricing.
• Android

For all the details and feature deep dives, please see the original iPhone XS and XS Max review, and the 3-week later follow up.

• iPhone XS Review — 3 Weeks Later
• iPhone XS Review

iPhone XS Max is still Max

In my 3-week later review, I said that the iPhone XS Max was Max in every sense of the word. That it wasn't a replacement for the then-still-not-but-now-thankfully-updated 7.9-inch iPad mini and its 4:3 aspect ratio and multi-window apps. But that, thanks to its 6.5-inch edge-to-edge display, it still felt a lot like a tiny tablet.

Having used Plus-sized iPhones almost exclusively from 6 to 6s to 7, even 8 on-and-off thanks to there being no first-get X Max, I figured big would go back to being my go to.

But it really hasn't. The display is just big enough to make it less convenient than the non-Max, without having either the old Plus benefits like landscape Home screen or iPad mini style multi-window apps, stacked in portrait or side-by-side in landscape.

And since the non-max is now 5.8-inches, I find it more than big enough for all the normal iPhone things. Especially now that there's a Smart Battery Case for all the X-class iPhones.

I get extra, extra long life when I need it, like when I'm traveling and tormented by poor signal and poorly tuned international carriers on roaming, or, yeah, out at a multi-hour-long Pokemon Go event. And the rest of the time, I get a light, slim phone that's easy to pocket, easy to hold, easy to shoot with, also for multiple hours a day.

Best of both worlds, and so much so, I hope Apple builds a version with better lenses, bigger speakers, stands, and other options in the future. It would be the modular phone finally done right.

iPhone XS Camera

With the iPhone XS, Apple integrated the new multi-core neural engine into the image signal processor of the A12 Bionic chipset, which let them do a lot of heavy pixel pushing, like Smart HDR for stills and extended dynamic range for up to 4K, 30 frames-per-second video.

The biggest compliment I can give both of those things is that I turned them on, left them on, and don't even think about them anymore.

There was an issue during the first few weeks when Smart HDR was misfiring on the selfie-cam and making most of us look far too smooth and far too rosy, but Apple fixed that early on in an update.

I said in my three-weeks later review my criteria for judging any camera, attached to a phone or not, is whether it lets me get photos I simply never could before. Like the iPhone 7 Plus, optically in low light and computationally with portrait mode. I

Both have gotten progressively better since. iPhone XS doesn't have anything like the post-processing Google or Huawei are using to deliver night-as-daylight shots, and that's hugely important so I hope they're working on it and we get it soon. But Smart HDR has gotten really good, almost too good, at resolving details in both shadow and light, and depth effect not only looks beautiful with its virtual lens models, but you can use it to bokeh out a child. Not that I would ever do that.

But, more recently, I've added another criteria for judging cameras — reliability.

I was at CES with my friends and colleagues from Android Central and they were complaining about their Pixel 3 cameras, simply not launching when they needed it to, and forcing them to miss shots they really needed.

I came to learn later it also had a problem actually saving photos and frames in video. And even when Google pushed out an update, it only made it fail less often. Which, ended up being absolutely unacceptable to them and to other high-profile reviewers.

That's something, as someone who primarily shoots with iPhone, including almost all the b-roll for almost all the videos on this channel, I simply never have to worry about.

Apple has gone so far as to build a custom storage controller into their custom silicon to make sure every burst, every frame gets saved. As a user, it's not something I really think about, probably not something most people even realize is there, except through the reliability and trust we've developed for the camera.

I get that it's not as flashy as a periscope lens or night sight algorithms, and those are mind-blowingly cool and super useful and I totally want them as well.

But not all innovations are neon and we have to stop pretending otherwise. Some are the systems that keep the neon from flickering so damn annoyingly we turn it off. And we have to start recognizing that as well.

When it comes to the full imaging pipeline, from wide gamut capture to color science to color management to ensuring it's all saved, to wide gamut display and easy sharing, from high dynamic range stills to extended dynamic range, stereo video, even though other camera phones have single elements that I envy, no one else is coming close in terms of total package.

And when I'm out shooting burst mode action, or family portraits, or friend's special occasions, or capturing that tasty b-roll, or just, yeah, living life, that consistency, that dependability is what really matters.

iPhone XS Durability

I don't usually have a case on my iPhone. I test some, sometimes, and now use the battery case when I travel, but most of the time I use my iPhone the way nature and Jony Ive intended. I also don't baby it or any of my tech.

It's not just that I'm a fan of the Star Wars worn aesthetic, though I am, but that this stuff is supposed to save time and serve me, not take time being served by me. So, it'll get thrown in pockets with keys, fall off tables, and generally get knocked about a fair bit.

So, how has the iPhone XS faired? Better than the iPhone X. That shouldn't be a surprise, since it's got even stronger, better balanced glass, but it still is. It's proven remarkably resistant to scratches and scuffs, especially on the back.

I do have a few on the front. None that I notice when actually using it, but I can see them when I hold my phone up in just the right light.

Otherwise, it's as rock solid as the day I got it. Which, when you combine that glass with the stainless steel band, is about as solid a phone as I've ever felt.

That's probably why they maintain such good resale value. A flawless entry-level 64GB XS will get you over $500, XS Max over $600 from a popular trade in company. More if you sell it yourself.

Same service, 128GB Note 9, which is same era, higher capacity doesn't quite get you $350. 128GB Galaxy S10, which is 6-months newer and high capacity, won't even get you $450. 128 GB Pixel 3, same era, higher capacity, gets you to $365. Pixel 3XL, weirdly, just under that at $361.

As reviewers, we don't often talk about things like how well a phone retains its value, but it's incredibly important to people who need to sell their current phone in order to afford their next phone.

It's almost the equal and opposite aspect to the free education and trading Apple provides at retail. A family friend recently bought a Samsung phone because the carrier offered her a great deal. She was new to smartphones and didn't know where to start with it. I pointed her to Android Central, of course, but she knew my mom had gone to a bunch of the classes at our local Apple Store and wanted to know if she could do the same. All I could do was point her back to the same carrier kiosk and, needless to say, they were spectacularly less than helpful.

This is one of my biggest complaints about modern phones: As the companies that make them get more aggressive on features and less… restrained on pricing, they need to do a better job justifying those prices and explaining everything we get for our money.

Just like the eco-friendly slides on stage, I want to see the total value prop slide so I know just exactly what every company is offering for every dollar I'm paying.

iPhone XS Security

There's a faster Secure Enclave on the iPhone XS that, theoretically at least, makes Face ID faster. I can't say I've noticed. There are some occasions, like when my phone is on the table or charger or whatever, that I still miss Touch ID. But, the vast majority of the time, Face ID is so much less obtrusive it still feels if not transparent than certainly translucent.

Because it's Apple, it's also been tested and beaten up on by the biggest papers of record and by every YouTuber in tech. In an age where Samsung's face scanner is being fooled by photos and video, and their fingerprint sensors by 3D printers, that's the kind of reassurance, of review, no company can buy.

Though, as consumers, I sincerely think we should absolutely insist on for any and every phone. It's a huge advantage to Apple that their stuff gets the highest scrutiny in the industry. And that makes it a huge disadvantage to every other vendor.

There have been some issues on the Mac, and the FaceTime Group Call bug bit iPhone as well. And hard. Which is why I think Apple needs to do for security this year what it did for performance last year — dedicate time and resources to go back and nail everything down from the base level frameworks on up.

Privacy has also remained a top priority for Apple, even up to and including all the entertainment pre-announcements from last month. That might not sound important, but given how many entertainment services, how many games, are tracking not only our behavior but our location, it's critical.

There are still some areas I'd like to see Apple address, like Google being default search instead of an option alongside Duck Duck Go in setup buddy.

If you want to use Facebook or Google or Amazon, or any of their services, as a grown-ass adult, you can totally do that. But if you don't want to, you can use Apple or Microsoft or indie services, without having to log your entire phone into Google to begin with. And if, like me, you have to use Google for work, you can stay logged out of the services you don't absolutely need to be logged into, which is, admittedly, the best of the worst.

iPhone XS With AirPods 2

Thanks to the new H1 chip, pairing and switching is faster than ever. Where, previously, moving between the Mac and iPhone, which was my most common scenario, could take up to several taps and long, long seconds, now it's almost always almost instant.

Read the full AirPods 2 Review

Having Hey Siri on the AirPods is also great, yes, even when already having it on the phone. Because you don't have to stay with your phone. It can be in your pocket or bag, on the charger or in the glove compartment, and you can still get a lot of things done.

Not everything, though. Now that AirPods make everything almost transparent, the opacities that remain are super apparent. More specifically, anything that requires authentication, like unlocking doors or even just checking messages.

Because what's the point of having Hey Siri on AirPods when they answer back that you have to unlock your iPhone first? Maybe Apple can figure out something there, at least until they get a heart rate sensor into the AirPods themselves.

Meanwhile, the sound is the same for music, podcasts, video, and everything else, the mic is even better for calls, and the latency is so much better I haven't reached for wired headphones since I got them. Not for anything.

iPhone XS Conclusion

Over the last 7 months, I've come to realize something about the iPhone XS. It's not just the experience that keeps me coming back, although I appreciate how consistent and considerate it remains. It's the reliability. The trust. Not just during the first week or two when I'm doing my review but throughout the year that I typically keep using the phone, and the years that follow when I give them to family members to keep using.

My sister has my 6S Plus and my mom has my 7 Plus. They've been using them day in, day out, since they got them, for years, and they're still looking and working great. Especially with the performance improvements in iOS 12.

It's why everyone from pro photographers to survivalists trust the iPhone to keep their photos and to keep them safe.

Look, I've bought most Google phones most years, starting with the Nexus One, which I loved. I have a Huawei phone. I might even get one of the current Samsung's, because my work affords me that luxury. But, when it comes down to what really matters to me, year in, year out, the overall value of the iPhone is still impossible to beat. And that includes the iPhone XS.

If you've had your phone for a while and you think you're ready to upgrade but you're still now sure, and you just want to know, 7 months later, sales and promotions and whatever is tempting you, is the iPhone XS still worth getting? Is it worth being your next phone?

Apple kept the same basic iPhone design for 4 generations, from 6 to 8. Since the XS is only the second iteration of the new, modern design, I wouldn't expect any major changes again this year. Apple's also made it a point of competition and, yes, pride, to push out updates to every phone, on every carrier, in every region, all at the same time, all the time, for years. So, what you get now should last you a good long time.

Either way, my buying advice is always the same: If you can wait, wait as long as you can, because there'll always be something new around the corner. But if you need it or would benefit from getting it now, absolutely get and iPhone XS — or XR if you don't care about the OLED display or dual camera system and want to save some cash — now and have zero regrets. Because, again, there'll always be something new around the corner.

Apple's has finally released battery cases for the 2018 iPhone models, including the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. You can charge these battery cases in several different ways, including fast charging and wirelessly with Qi-certified charging mats. You can also do this in a more traditional way using a regular Lightning to USB cable and charger. Here's how to do this.

Note that we used an iPhone XS for this guide. If you have an iPhone XR or iPhone XS Max, you're going to need the Smart Battery Case for your specific model.

• The case: iPhone XS Smart Battery Case ($129)
• The connector: Lightning to USB Cable (2 m) ($29)
• The power: Apple 5W USB Power Adapter ($19)

How to charge your Apple Smart Battery Case

Plug in the power adapter. Apple's 5W (mentioned above) or 12W USB Power Adapter will work.

If you're unsure of what Apple adapter you have, you can easily check by taking a look at the bottom of the adapter. It will say the wattage number in a square. You can also use a third-party USB power adapter.

Plug your Lightning to USB Cable into the port on the power adapter. Then plug in your Smart Battery Case on the Lightning end.

If your phone is inside the Smart Battery Case, the iPhone will charge first, and once it reaches 80 percent, the Smart Battery Case starts charging. You can charge the Smart Battery Case on its own. The light on the inside of the Smart Battery Case is solid red color while it's charging and green when it's fully charged.

Our top equipment picks

To get the most out of your iPhone's battery, you're going to need the new Smart Battery Case.

The iPhone XS Smart Battery Case is a great battery case for those who want to get more life out of their smartphone throughout the day. The soft inner lining protects your device from scratches and scuffs, and the exterior has a silky, soft-touch finish silicone material that gives you more grip. The elastomer hinge makes it easy to get your phone in and out of the case, and the intelligent battery status display on iOS lets you know how much charge you have left.

Your iPhone XS already comes with a charging cable. Purchase one separately as needed.

Your iPhone XS already comes with one of these power adapters. Purchase a separate one as necessary.

Here are your options for Smart Battery Cases for the iPhone XS Max and XR.

iPhone XS Max Smart Battery Case ($129 at Amazon)

With this case, iPhone XS Max users will get 37 more hours of talk time, 20 extra hours web browsing, and 25 more hours of video playback.

iPhone XR Max Smart Battery Case ($129 at Amazon)

If you have an iPhone XR, then get this case. It adds 39 hours talk time, 22 hours of web browsing, and 27 hours of video playback.

Apple tested these new Smart Battery cases back in November 2018 using the proper iPhone models, battery case units, and preproduction software. All of the talk tests were conducted over Voice over LTE (VoLTE) network. They did the internet tests over LTE and Wi-Fi networks with a dedicated web server, browsing snapshot versions of 20 popular websites and getting mail at a rate of once per hour. The video playback tests were done with repeated playback of a 2-hour and 23-minute movie from iTunes.

All of the settings on the iPhones were set at the default, with the following exceptions: Bluetooth paired with headphones and Wi-Fi associated with a network for all except Internet LTE test. Wi-Fi was also set to Ask to Join Networks, and Auto-Brightness and True Tone were off during the testing phase.

All battery claims are dependent on the user's network configurations and many other factors, so your mileage may vary here.

The Smart Battery Cases feature a soft, flexible lining on the inside to protect your iPhone from scratches and scuffs. The exterior features a silky, soft-touch silicone material that gives you extra grip. The elastomer hinge makes it easy to get your phone into the case as well as get it out when needed.

Apple's new Smart Battery Cases are also Qi-certified chargers. This means you can charge them up wirelessly on any Qi-compatible charger. It also supports Fast Charging with a Lightning to USB-C cable and a compatible power adapter (Apple 18W, 29W, 30W, 61W, or 87W USB-C Power Adapter or a comparable third-party adapter that supports USB Power Delivery). You can also charge it via the old-fashioned way with Lightning-to-USB.

When you charge your iPhone in the Smart Battery Case, the iPhone will usually have priority when normal or fast charging. Once the iPhone reaches about 80 percent charged, the charging is split and allocated to the Smart Battery Case instead. However, if you use a power adapter that can provide more power, such as a MacBook Pro USB-C power adapter, then it can fast charge both the iPhone and Smart Battery Case at the same time. What has priority depends on how much power is being taken in.

You can check on the battery levels with the intelligent battery status display in the iPhone lock screen and Notification Center.

If all you do is text, stream, and access web portals, you'll probably be able to live on 64GB. If you shoot 4K 60 fps video, download all your media, and want tons of apps, 512GB might be the blessing you've been waiting for. Either way, you're going to want to choose the best iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max storage capacity to fit your needs. Here's what you need to consider!

• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Price per gigabyte breakdowns

Many products are segmented from entry level to standard to premium. Appliances, gadgets, even food brands. Entry level gets you in the door and premium is for those who want or need more. Apple could segment iPhones based on processor speed or color but the company prefers storage size. It's easy for everyone to understand: More money buys you more storage.

For iPhone X or iPhone 8, rather than the traditional three storage tiers, Apple is only offering two:

iPhone XS, full price:

• 64GB: $999 or $15.61 per GB
• 256GB: $1149 or $4.49 per GB
• 512GB: $1359 or $2.65 per GB

iPhone XS Plus, full price:

• 64GB: $1099 or $17.17 per GB
• 256GB: $1249 or $4.88 per GB
• 512GB: $1449 or $2.83 per GB

So, the lowest priced iPhones are just that, but the premium models give you far, far more gigabyte bang for your buck.

• If you can't afford anything more, 64GB gets you in the door.
• If you want the best value for your money, 512GB is it. Especially on the non-Max iPhone XS.

Local vs. Cloud storage

Apple's iCloud gives you free, unlimited storage for all your iTunes stuff. That includes iBooks, music, movies, TV shows, and apps. You also get 5GB of additional storage for backups, data, and photos. You can purchase more iCloud storage if you need it, and Apple has just dropped expanded their paid tiers:

• 5GB - Free
• 50GB: $0.99/month
• 200GB: $2.99/month
• 2TB: $9.99/month

iCloud integrates with iOS and macOS and otherwise keeps all your stuff connected and collected. Thanks to some really intelligent nearline management, iCloud can help make sure you're recent and frequently accessed content is instantly available, and your older and infrequently accessed content is only a tap and a download away when you need it.

If you prefer other solutions, there's also built-in storage provider support for Dropbox, One Drive, Google Drive, and more. They also all tie right into the iOS 12 Files app.

The Cloud still can't take the place of lots of on-device storage — you can't shoot 4K video straight to the cloud, for example — but it can help you get the most of what you have.

• If you use a lot of cloud services you may be able to eek the most out of 64GB.
• If you don't use or like the cloud, you'll want to stick with 256GB.
• If you're a digital pack rat, and only local will do, maybe you need 512GB.

Photos and videos

iPhone X and iPhone 8 don't just shoot 4K video — it can shoot 4K video at 60 fps. If that's something that interests you, be aware it will chew through a ton of local storage and fast. iCloud Photo Library can help nearline a lot of that for you, but then you have to pay for iCloud Photo Library. Other services and even offloading to your PC can free up storage but it's a chore you'll have to keep doing whenever you shoot, and you might still run out of space if you shoot a lot between offloads.

• If you hardly ever shoot photos or video, 64GB may do you.
• If you shoot a ton of photos, and especially video, you'll want 256GB.
• If you shoot all the photos and videos, and don't offload regularly, you may want 512GB

Apps and Games

Thanks to new technologies like app thinning — asset slicing, on-demand resources, and bitcode — Apple and developers can do a lot to keep apps and games slim and trim. Effectively that means not downloading anything they don't need to download onto your iPhone, unless and until they need to download it. iOS 11 will even offload apps and games you haven't used in a while.

Still, not every app lends itself to significant thinning. So, if you download a ton of games or apps with a lot of graphics and video — hello Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram! — you can still use up a lot of storage.

• If you keep your iPhone light on apps and games, you might be able to get away with 64GB.
• If you want to have tons of apps and games on your iPhone all the time, you'll need 256GB.
• I'm hard pressed to think of any amount of apps or games that'll push you all the way to 512GB.

Media

HDR video is the future. Even with HEVC (H.265) compression, though, it still takes up a lot of space. If you're simply streaming, as long as you have enough space for at least one movie per Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. to buffer, you'll be ok. If you want to download for watching offline, like on plane rides or road trips, you'll need a lot more. Same with Apple Music, Spotify, and music streaming. But music files, though small, can add up if you want to keep tons of songs and albums on your iPhone.

• If you stream almost everything, you might be able to get away with 64GB.
• If you prefer to download your movies, TV Shows, or music, you'll need 256GB.
• If you're going away on an incredibly long trip and want vast amounts of content, you can go to 512GB.

Who should get the 64GB iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max?

If you really only want an iPhone for streaming, if you live on the cloud, if you only do light social and gaming, if you have an iPad or computer that stores your long-term data and collections, and you don't intend to keep a ton of content on your phone, then you'll be okay with 64GB.

• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Who should get the 256GB iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max?

If you don't want to worry about running out of space but don't think you'll ever really max it out, if you mix the cloud and on-device, if you want the happy middle ground, the sweet spot, the best for the most, then get 256GB.

• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Who should get the 512GB iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max?

If you really do want your iPhone to do everything, all of the time, and never (or rarely) have to worry about running out of space or going to the cloud, if you want to shoot a ton of photos and 4K video without having to offload it, or if you simply want to make sure you're future proofed well into the future, then you've probably already decided on the 512GB iPhone, haven't you?

• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Still undecided?

If you literally can't afford a dime over $999, get the 64GB iPhone XS. Otherwise, get the 256GB. The difference isn't that much over the course of a year or two but the extra storage capacity really will be.

Are iPhone prices too $%&$ high?

So, are they? And, if so, is that what caused Apple's iPhone pain this quarter?

Watch the video version. Seriously. It's so much better.

Tim Cook was asked about pricing directly during the Q&A portion of Apple's Q1 2019 financial results call yesterday.

I'll go over historical pricing changes in the U.S. in more detail in a minute, but so far, so clear.

Cook also brought the exchange rates with Reuters right before the call:

We saw these quasi miss-reported as price cuts in some markets, notably Japan, earlier in the year.

But that's outside the U.S. What about inside?

So, let's break this all down.

Pricing progression

The original iPhone was expensive for its time. Real expensive. $499 and $599 U.S. And that was on contract.

At that price point, it prompted Steve Balmer, then CEO of one of Apple's biggest rivals at the time, Microsoft, to say it was, if not DOA, functionally the same thing.

But, if there's one thing history has shown us about Apple, it's that they're not afraid of changing course. Sometimes in a big way.

And so, when Steve Jobs announced the second generation iPhone, the 3G, one of the key areas he and it addressed was pricing: $199 and $299 on contract, which was the only price almost everyone in the U.S. saw, at least for the first 9-months. Off-contract, though, they were up to $599 and $699.

Pricing for the iPhone 3GS stayed the same, and, even though it contained the first-ever Retina display and FaceTime camera, so did the iPhone 4.

The iPhone 4s off-contract, though, went up to $649, $749, and $849. And that's where iPhone pricing stayed for the taller iPhone 5 and the Touch ID iPhone 5s.

I'm only focusing on the flagships here, not the experiments like iPhone 5c, which was an iPhone 5 in a colorful plastic shell, that slid in under at $99 and $199 on contract, and $549 and $649 off.

The bigger iPhone 6 also stuck with the $649, $749, $849 range, but the even bigger iPhone 6 Plus, which also had a slightly better camera, added $100 to the bill, making it $749, $849, and $949.

iPhone 6s was the same again, but while iPhone 7 kept the $649, $749, and $849, the iPhone 7 Plus and it's all-new 2-camera portrait mode system crept up $20 to $769, $869, and $969.

iPhone 8, which added inductive charging, also added $50 to the pricing, going to $699, and for the iPhone 8 Plus, $40, going to $799.

Then came iPhone X, with its pricy edge-to-edge OLED display, and a sticker price of $999 and $1149.

iPhone XS kept the same pricing but added a $1349 option. iPhone XS Max followed the same formula as the previous Plus models by adding $100 to the price, but only for a bigger screen — the camera stayed the same. $1099, $1249, and $1449.

Again, I'm sticking to flagships here, but Apple also released the iPhone XR last year, took over the old iPhone 6 Plus price point of $749, but without the usual jump to the second tier. Just $799, then $899.

At the same time, though, Apple retired the previous entry-level, iPhone SE at $349 and $449, and made iPhone 7 the new buy in at $449 or $549.

Searing all that down, though, we have the base price of the iPhone going from $499 in 2007 to either $749 or $999 in 2018.

And that's a lot. Even though the price of everything from a movie ticket to a car has gone up considerably over the last 10+ years, and what you get in the latest iPhone is a Star Trek: The Next Generation leap over what you got for the first one, the difference in pricing is still a lot.

Margins minus

From Apple's point of view — not that Apple's point of view really matters to customers, we're the ones buying this stuff, but for the sake of completeness — they're charging more for iPhones but making less.

Gross iPhone margins — which are dumb things to look at as they discount pretty much everything but raw materials, like no humans were ever involved in anything, and seriously, you try making a phone out of a glass and metal, so don't ever do this even though I'm about to ever do this — have gone from 74% for the iPhone 3GS in 2008 to an average of 60% for the X-type iPhones in 2018. 53% for the deeply discounted iPhone SE.

Gross margins company-wide, which obfuscate iPhone specifics but include, you know, all the humans who have to bring the products to market, most recently peaked around 43% in 2012 but were down to just over 38% last year. And, some would point at all the new services revenue, which is traditionally much, much higher margin, and how it could be masking even lower margins now on the hardware products like iPhone.

So, even with higher retail prices, Apple is making less money on iPhones than ever before. And, if they'd kept retail prices lower, they'd be making even less money. Likely significantly less.

But, again, who cares about Apple. This is about us.

Loss of subsidies

What Cook and Maestri also stressed, and have been stressing for a while, is that the loss of subsidies and exposure of full iPhone pricing has caused sticker shock, primarily in the U.S. but in some other markets as well.

While markets, like in the E.U., have always trended hard towards full price, in the U.S., and a few other places, most customers only ever saw the $199 on-contract.

But, with T-Mobile leading the charge to decouple device subsidies from monthly rates, in order to make the monthly rates sound lower, and with Verizon completing the market transformation a few years later, all that changed. It was great for the carriers and the perception that competition was driving down prices, but what it really did was shift costs back to the vendors. Hard.

And, you know, I got a lot of this wrong. I figured it was in no one's best interest, not Apple's or Samsung's or any other vendor, and not AT&T or Verizon or any other carrier, to show those full prices up front. So, I guessed they would lean more heavily into the leasing programs, which effectively provide 0% financing on new phones, and only advertise the monthly cost of the phone.

Instead, they did both, full price and monthly price, maybe in an attempt to show how little the monthly price was compared to the full price, which again was good for carriers, bad for vendors. Because that sticker, it shocked. All people saw was that full price. Glowing. Pounding. Like neon. Like techno.

Figuring forward

Costs. Subsidies. Exchange rates. Margins. Ultimately, none of that matters. Even if iPhone price increases were in line with inflation and the increases in quality and diversity of components and new features, and we factored out exchange, and we didn't give a damn about margins, it wouldn't matter.

Pricing is physiological more than mathematical. In the market, perception really is reality.

And the perception is that iPhone pricing is too damn high.

And, as evidenced by Tim Cook's comments, Apple knows it and is working to change that perception.

Trade-ins, for example, are being experimented with as a partial replacement for subsidies. They work for Apple because, ultimately, they get more devices onto the market and that increases the user base and that plays into Apple's new ecosystem narrative. More people with iPhones, more people to sell accessories like Watch and AirPods, and services like Music and Apple Pay to.

Apple is also arguing total value now rather than just upfront cost. From higher quality materials and manufacturing to to more capable chipsets to performance enhancements for older devices to free support and educational services from AppleCare and Today at Apple, Apple is making the case that when you buy an iPhone you get much more than you pay for, especially a couple or a few years down the road. Up front, even without any additional accessories or services.

This has led to some investors and analysts complaining that Apple is making iPhones too valuable and making them last too long, but fiery Tim Cook — on record, my favorite Tim Cook — addressed that on the same call yesterday.

Apple could also, obviously, cut prices by either using less expensive components — including the exorbitant amount Samsung currently charges them for OLED panels — or by further reducing margins.

I don't think anybody wants to buy a lower quality iPhones, though. We've seen that, historically, with the rejection of iPhone 5c and even the shade thrown at iPhone XR before it got in saner, smarter reviewers hands.

If anything, iPhone X and XS show that Apple wants to make higher quality iPhones.

Again, Apple hasn't been making iPhones more expensive. Apple has been making more expensive iPhones. A lot of the increased cost has gone to increased components like the OLED displays, TrueDepth and Portrait Mode cameras, and A12 Bionic. Apple is thinking long term here, not short term.

That's also what makes just cutting margins tough. I mean, it sounds like the best answer to most customers, because it's Apple's money and not ours, and screw Apple's money, right?

But the market already down-values Apple more than any other major tech company, and losing margin would be an amazingly effective way to bring on even more punishment from Wall Street.

More importantly, Apple attracts and retains talent — the designers and engineers who make the products — through stock incentives, and devaluing Apple stock is a great way to repulse and lose that talent.

So, Apple has to be incredibly careful with not only the levers it chooses to pull, but how fast and how hard it chooses to pull on them.

Cost Conclusions

Whether iPhone pricing really is too high or not, that's the perception. Flossy knows it. And Tim Cook just said as much. So, what is Apple doing about it?

Ramp up will take care of some of it. As OLED capacity increases, for example, and more high-quality suppliers come online, component prices will drop. Same with TrueDepth camera modules. Apple will always pack new features into new iPhones, but massive leaps like iPhone X will continue to be stretched out over many years, not every year. So, as costs come down, so too should prices.

Trade-ins, if they become generally accepted, could mitigate against the lack of subsidies. But so could the iPhone Upgrade Program if Apple could break it out of just the U.S., roll with it internationally, and figure out how to make the messaging less up-front shocking and more over-time compelling.

If Apple really wants to get big into services, iPhone as a service is potentially one of the biggest. Especially if it comes with the other ones, like Music, Magazines, TV, games, and more.

Same with making the case for overall value. Break down everything you get for every dollar you spend, including the longevity, the support, the education, and everything else. Don't just throw the price up on a slide. Show the value you're getting over multiple slides.

And, of course, figure out that sweet, sweet spot where people aren't just willing to pay what you ask but are happy to pay it for what they get.

That way, people stop complaining about how damn high iPhone prices are and go back to preaching how damn good iPhone are. Period.

The amount of work, and the results achieved, by Apple's camera team when it comes to video — including up to 30fps enhanced dynamic range, and stereo audio recording — are beyond impressive. Witness the latest Shot on iPhone video:

American Samoa - 'Football Island' - produces athletes that are 56 times more likely to play in the NFL than Americans from anywhere else. Photographer and Director Steven Counts presents a portrait of Eddie Siaumau, a 17 - year old athlete who has just accepted a full ride scholarship to a D1 university.

• Director: Steven Counts
• Director of Photography: Eric Kuzma
• Executive Producer: Heather Zara
• Assistant: Harrison Smith

Shot on iPhone XS, with the aid of: DJI Osmo Mobile 2, FiLMiC Pro, Joby GripTight PRO Video GP Stand, NiSi Smartphones Filter Kit

The talent of the production team is obviously paramount but the tools, in this case the iPhone camera and the accessories and apps used to get the most out of it, are force multipliers.

You often hear debate about which phone has the best camera. It almost never includes mention of video. It absolutely should.

The iPhone XS and XS Max are a pair of pretty great phones, and there are a lot of accessories out there to go along with them. If you are looking for some last-minute gift ideas for someone with an iPhone XS or XS Max, here are some great options to consider!

There are a lot of accessories out there for iPhone XS and XS Max owners, but these are some great options for last minute shoppers! Out of these, our favorite has to be the Kenu AirFrame+, because it's super sturdy, stable, and extremely versatile for both iPhone XS and XS Max! I've had one for years and can't live without it.

Silk makes nice cases at bargain prices, and the Wallet Slayer Vol.1 iPhone Case is no exception. With a pocket on the back large enough to hold up to three cards, you might just be able to leave your wallet at home.

• Protective
• Securely holds up to three cards  
• Comes in multiple appealing colors.
• Wireless charging still works even with cards in it.
• Not overly bulky for a wallet case
• Easy to get on and off

• Looks odd without cards in the slot.

Excellent functionality

Silk Wallet Slayer Vol.1 iPhone Case: What I like

This is an excellent quality case for the money. The matte finish is scratch and fingerprint-resistant and air-pocket corners protect your phone in case you drop it. The edges have a rough texture for extra grip, to prevent drops and the raised bezel comes well over the phone screen so that if you place the phone face down, the screen doesn't make contact with the surface. The Silk Wallet Slayer Vol.1 iPhone Case one has just enough flexibility that it's easy to put on and take off of your phone without too much struggle.

There are precision cut-outs for the Ring/Silent switch, camera, speaker, and Lightning connector. There are also raised button covers for Volume up/down buttons and a Side button, so the case won't interfere with your phone's functionality.

Silk claims that wireless charging works with the case on, even with cards in the slot, so we tested that, and it's true. Most cases of this style cannot charge wirelessly, especially with cards in the slot, but this one can.

The card slot on the back of the case can hold up to three cards. From the outside, it looks like your cards might easily fall out, especially if you only put one or two in the slot, but they won't. There is a rubbery bump inside the slot that holds the cards securely in place, regardless of how many you put in there.

The case is available in all three of the latest iPhone sizes (as well as older models). Choose from Black Tie Affair (black), Blues on the Green (teal blue), Red Rover Red Rover (burgundy), or choose from a bunch of custom designs on the background color of your choice.

Kind of silly without cards

Silk Wallet Slayer Vol.1 iPhone Case: What I don't like

Though you can certainly use this case without carrying anything the card slot, I'm not sure why you would. It looks a little funny with nothing in there at all. If you don't plan on using your case as a wallet, there's no reason to get this one.

Also, this is a plastic case. If you prefer a case made from more expensive-looking materials, this isn't the case for you, but that's what you get for the very low price.

Overall great case

Silk Wallet Slayer Vol.1 iPhone Case: Bottom line

I love a case that delivers great quality at a low price point, and Silk's Wallet Slayer Vol.1 iPhone Case certainly does. You can leave your wallet at home and securely carry your three most important cards in the molded slot on the back. The case doesn't hinder the iPhone's functionality at all — even wireless charging still works with credit cards inside the slot. This is an excellent choice for anyone who needs an inexpensive case that both protects the phone well and holds up to three cards.

• See iPhone XS/S case at Amazon
• See iPhone XR case at Amazon

• See iPhone XS Max case at Amazon
• $25 at Walmart

Whether you're someone who shoots regularly with their iPhone or someone who likes to take casual snapshots, having a device that can take an incredible photo is always a good thing. A few weeks ago, Apple unveiled the iPhone XS in all it's glory, but as always, potential buyers were holding their breath and waiting to see the camera and shooting quality.

Now people are saying that the camera on the iPhone XS isn't just a game changer, but it's also a whole new shooting experience all together.

Halide's Sebastiaan de With spent the last week testing and shooting on the iPhone XS and was thrilled at the results, calling the iPhones camera 'completely new'.

What Halide loves about shooting on the iPhone XS

• Noise reduction:

• Smoother selfies:

• Complete control:

What about RAW photos?

One issue that de With had when it came to the iPhone XS's camera was how the device shot RAW photos.

The images ended up being over-exposed, grainy, and just not up to snuff, the camera's sensor noise being stronger and more colorful than the iPhone X certainly doesn't help.

So Halide did what they do best and came out with a solution: Smart RAW.

Halide's Smart RAW feature uses the new sensor technology in the iPhone XS that allows you to capture the ideal, noise-reduced RAW image. Smart RAW doesn't actually use any aspects of Smart HDR — in fact, it avoids it altogether.

As a photographer, being able to capture RAW images that aren't overexposed or horrifically grainy is key. While it's remarkable that you can even capture RAW images on your iPhone at all, being able to do it properly is key. Halide makes shooting RAW with your iPhone XS effortless, smooth, and most importantly of all, beautiful.

So does this mean the iPhone X has a bad camera?

Nope. Absolutely not. It just means that the iPhone XS is really changing the game when it comes to iPhoneography.

What do you think?

Are you a big fan of the iPhone XS's camera? Maybe you've fallen in love with the look and feel of your iPhone X and couldn't imagine shooting with anything else?

Let us know what you think in the comments down below, and have fun shooting!

iPhone XR has the same front-facing TrueDepth camera system as iPhone X, XS, and XS Max. That means it can do the same Portrait Selfies, including with Portrait Lighting, new Depth Control that lets you change the bokeh from f/1.4 to f/16, and the same Animoji, Memoji, and augmented reality effects, as all of those higher-priced phones.

Don't want to read? Watch the video version above and subscribe for more!

And, by the way, Apple says it's heard our complaints — no, not the wacky internet hashtag smooth gate conspiracy theories that were being foisted around — but the legit complaints I talked about previously:

Apple identified a bug, not just with faces but with everything it was processing, and will be fixing it in iOS 12.1 by making sure it picks the sharpest frame possible to compute from, and we'll all be getting better, crisper selfies going forward.

What's different is the camera on the back. Where iPhone X, XS, and XS Max had dual systems with wide angle and telephoto lenses, and fused them together to for 2x optical zoom and rear-facing Portrait mode, iPhone XR has just the wide angle.

Eyes Wide Open

iPhone XR has the same, improved wide angle as on the XS and XS Max, complete with a 30% bigger sensor, with bigger and deeper pixels to drink in more light and more accurately preserve colors. And it has the same, new Smart HDR feature that ties the image signal processor to the 8-core neural engine, buffers up to 4 frames ahead, shoots a series of exposures, interleaves them a series of over exposures to get details from the highlights, and tops it off with a long exposure to pull similar details from the shadows.

You can turn it off in Settings, or keep both the Smart HDR and original version if you like, but it all adds up to very similar experience for a camera phone that costs only 3/4 as much.

Where iPhone XR really differs from XS and XS Max is in the rear Portrait Mode. Absent a second, telephoto camera to leverage for more, real depth data, Apple is doing with iPhone XR something similar to what Google did with Pixel 2 last year — using the parallax pulled off the phase detect autofocus system, or what Apple calls Focus Pixels — to get some depth data, and then applying a machine learning powered segmentation mask to separate the subject from the background.

Portraits Mode

Now, as Apple was announcing this on stage, I was worried. I know a lot of people love, love, love Google's Portrait Mode, but as someone who's owned a Pixel 2 XL for a year now, I've had some issues with it.

Some were minor, like the slightly cooler color cast it looks like Google fixed with Pixel 3. Others were bigger, like the card-board cut out effect segmentation masks can produce and, frankly, I see a little bit on the XR as well. One was a deal-breaker, and kept me using the Pixel for regular photography but not for Portrait Mode: It's inability to show the effect live, in the preview.

I explained why in my review but I'll quickly repeat it again:

The Pixel's Portrait Mode isn't really Portrait Mode because it doesn't show the actual effect live in the preview, it only applies it after a few, long seconds as a post-production filter. Something you could do with any app. Heck, something Google could release as an app for other camera phones.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbzYB5YFyvM/?taken-by=reneritchie

Many would argue that none of this matters, just the end result. I say bullshit. At least for me, because I'm used to shooting with a DSLR, I'm used to framing for the actual shot I'm getting. If I don't like the depth of field in the preview, I can move a little and get it just how I want it before taking the shot. With Pixel, I had to take the shot, go check it, wait for it to apply, and then, if I didn't like it, shoot it all over again.

And all of that was a nasty surprise when I got the phone because everything is terrible and almost no on one covered it in their reviews.

What I think it comes down to is that Google seems to be using separate pipelines for the Pixel's live preview and actual camera capture where Apple has gone to great engineering and silicon pains to make sure that, like a DSLR, what you see is what you shoot. Even more so because the iPhone display is so much better and more accurate than any DSLR.

Doesn't sound like Pixel 3 solves this so, while I'm getting one, I'll likely be sticking to non-Portrait mode photos with it. Yell at me in the comments all you want Google nerds, I heart you anyway, I just skew far more towards optical nerdy.

So, long tangent short, I was worried Apple would end up doing the same on iPhone XR. But, turns out, not so much. Whether it's the power of the A12 Bionic or just the result of different design trade-offs, Apple has managed to push the depth effect into the live view on iPhone XR so, blessedly, what you see is what you should.

Follow the money... er... demo

Apple showed off the results on stage and in its demo picks. I know you can't always trust demo picks. They tend to be the cherry-picked, idealized, best-of-the-best examples.

Apple has a good reputation here though. They don't cheat and claim DSLR photos are shot with their phone, or bring special lighting gear with them that an average customer wouldn't have access to. And they also don't hire professional photographers to go on tour, or make huge publicity buys with massive magazine media companies, including cover shots.

A lot of famous photographers use iPhones, and plenty of magazines have shot covers and features on iPhones, but as far as I can tell, Apple hasn't ever paid for carry or placements.

And the demo shots are usually quickly backed up by "shot on iPhone" shots, which is something Apple latched onto early: People started hash tagging their photos on Flickr and Instagram, and Apple noticed, became enamored, and quickly got behind it and started amplifying it. Which was smart: the best campaigns are often the ones your customers come up with.

Second long tangent, short: I thought I had an idea what the XR could do with its new Portrait Mode. But, no. Shooting with it for the last week has been one surprise after another. Some good. Some not so good. All of it educational.

The major difference is this:

With all previous Portraits Mode, from iPhone 7 Plus to iPhone XS and XS Max, you were shooting with the effectively 52mm telephoto lens. With iPhone XR, you're shooting with the effectively 26mm wide angle lens. Switching from one to the other is like swapping glass on a traditional camera.

That's especially true because, instead of just slapping on a custom gaussian or disc blur over the background and calling it a day, which is what Apple used to do and, I think, pretty much every other camera phone maker still does, this year Apple examined a bunch of high-end cameras and lenses and created a virtual model for both the iPhone XS and iPhone XR.

That means, it ingests the scene with computer vision, makes sense of everything it sees, and then renders the bokeh, including lights, overlapping lights, and the kind of distortions real glass physics produces in the real world.

And, when you slide the new Depth Control back and forth between f/1.4 and f.16, it re-calculates and re-renders the virtual lens model.

The result is the same kind of character and, yeah, personality you get with real-world lenses. And that means shooting with iPhone XS vs. iPhone XR gives you photos with different character and, yeah, personality.

There are also some huge pros and cons to get used to.

The good, the bad, and the bug'ly

Apple's wide lens is, of course, wide. So, if you want a face to fill the frame, you'll have to sneaker zoom in instead of out. That you can move in and out so much Is terrific, though. You're not bound by the same sweet spot that you are with the dual camera Portrait Mode system that often seems to be telling you to move closer or move further away.

And that means you can get a lot closer or a lot further away with the XR than you can the XS, and still trigger the depth effect.

And because the XR is using the f/1.8 aperture wide angle for portrait mode, and not the f/2.4 telephoto like dual camera iPhones, it can pull in more light and compute its version of the depth affect in much darker conditions than iPhone XS or previous.

But only for human faces. Which is where XR might experience it's own deal-breaker, at least for some people.

And, unlike iPhone 7 Plus when it first shipped, where Portrait mode was optimized for human faces but would do its best with everything else — and now with iOS 12 does amazingly well on an incredibly diverse set of subjects and objects — iPhone XR literally won't engage Portrait Mode if it can't detect a human face.

Now, like I said in my review, it's pretty great at engaging when it does. It uses a Face ID-like neural network to not only identify human faces but identify them even if they're partially obscured by glasses, hats, scarves, and other forms of clothing. Apple trained and tested it on an incredibly diverse and varied pool of people and things that people usually have on their heads and faces.

But that does mean no coffee or cocktail cups in deep blur, no pets in depth effect, and it can even lose track of human faces if they turn too far past profile.

Like I also said in my review, the f/1.8 comera has gotten good enough that you can get a lot of real depth of field by picking your shots. But, if you want the computational stuff and you want it for everything, you'll have to move up to an iPhone XS or Max or even iPhone 8 or iPhone 7 Plus to get it.

The computational era

I'm going to say this again, because it bears repeating again and again: As good as DSLRs and micro 4/3rds have become, and I shoot the sit-down scenes and some of the b-roll for this very show on Panasonic and Canon, we now live in an age of computational photography. Of bits that can go far beyond the atoms.

Theoretically, those bits — those computational cameras — have no limits. That can reproduce the world in a way no bound-by-physics glass ever could. It could end up looking more real than real. Scientific and sterile or just uncanny and unnatural.

By imposing some of the constraints of real world physics and lenses to computational models, not only does the wrong we've gotten used to look right, the limits add character and drive creativity.

And, physical or computational, that's what you want from a great camera.

So, is the difference in cameras worth $250+?

I've been shooting with Apple's dual camera system for a few years now and the new single camera system for just around a week. So, obviously, I want to shoot a lot more to get a better handle on it.

But, I think it's abundantly clear already that, if you absolutely don't care about the telephoto lens, including 2x optical zoom, real depth data for more diverse rear portrait mode photos, and the framing you get from all of that, then you can indeed save yourself $250+ by going with iPhone XR instead.

Personally, I do want the double camera system, so I'll be sticking with XS, but let me know which way you're leaning — or if you've already made your choice.

Our protests have been heard and our long international selfie nightmare will soon be ended: Apple will the "fixing" the computational photography algorithms used for selfies to eliminate the smoothing and warming that led to the misconception that a "beauty filter" was being applied to our faces.

Nilay Patel first reported the good news on The Verge:

I've heard the same. So, if you hated the old look, get ready for a new look as soon as iOS 12.1 drops... maybe at or following Apple's October 30 event?

I've covered the new iPhone XS imaging system in both my initial review and my 3-weeks-later review, but one particularly bad bit of intel just keeps making the rounds, so I wanted to do a real explainer to lay it to rest once and for all.

So, #BeautyGate or #SmoothSelfieGate began as most quote-unquote gates do: A combination of people with legitimate questions and concerns and those who are super eager to amplify anything they can in order to get attention, even and especially if it does nothing to answer those questions or address those concerns. Add internet and… wildfire.

But, if you dig into why people are concerned and you go beyond those who's sole intent is to sensationalize, you get to something truly fascinating:

The ongoing evolution for camera system to computational photography system.

Rather watch than read? Check out the video above and subscribe for more.

Computational photography

If you're not familiar with computational photography, you're probably familiar with two of its biggest watershed moments: Google's auto-awesome, that sucked photos up from a dizzying array of different hardware to give you the best possible process on the cloud, and Apple's iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode, that simulated the bokeh of big, prime lens glass using two separate, tiny phone cameras.

In other words, using the near-limitless potential of custom silicon and machine learning to go far beyond the physical limits of sensors and lenses.

And with iPhone XS and Smart HDR, Apple is using computational photography to a far greater degree than ever before. So much so that we're seeing hashtag smoothgate or hashtag selfiegate as a result.

So, to get into in, iPhone XS has not just a new camera system this year but a whole new imaging pipeline.

The iPhone XS camera

It starts with the wide angle on the back. It's still a f/1.8 lens with a 12-megapixel but it's got bigger pixels, up from 1.22 to 1.4 microns, to drink in more light and deeper pixels, up from 3.1 to 3.5 microns to keep that light from getting cross-contaminated. It's also got more focus pixels — Apple's name for phase detection autofocus, so it can latch on to your subject twice as fast as before.

It results in a sensor that, according to John Gruber's calculations on Daring Fireball, is 30% larger and a lens that moves from a focal equivalent of 28mm to 26mm.

It's so different it's led to some speculation that Apple switched from Sony to Samsung as its supplier, with all the changes in characteristics that come with it.

Now, computational front-facing selfies have little to do with rear-facing hardware, but I wanted to highlight just how much and how deeply everything has changed this year.

The RGB camera in the TrueDepth array also has a new sensor on iPhone XS. Apple's only said that it's twice as fast as last year, but that's just burying the lede.

The biggest change is that Apple is tying the new 8-core neural engine in the A12 Bionic into the image signal processor to not only do more, but to do more faster.

Back to the rear camera for a moment, only because Apple has provided more detail on what it's doing there, but I don't believe the processes are that dissimilar.

From the moment you open the camera, it starts buffering so that there's zero shutter lag when you go to take the photo. Like I said in my review, that's not new. That it can buffer 4 frames now in order to better isolate and capture motion is new. At the same time, it's also capturing underexposed versions of each frame to preserve highlight details. And, once you take the shot, it's capturing a long exposure as well so you can get even greater details from the shadows.

By the way, it's also doing something similar for up to 30 frame-per-second 4K video by capturing extended dynamic range data in between each of those frames and seconds.

So, #BeautyGate...

The all new, all better optics combined with the huge advance in computational photography that Apple is calling Smart HDR — is what's leading to the new selfie look.

Specifically, what we're seeing with #beautygate is the result of the new noise reduction and extended dynamic range.

Matthew Panzarino, former pro photographer, current sneaker aficionado and editor-in-chief of TechCrunch tweeted it this way:

https://twitter.com/panzer/status/1046870351563505664

Sebastiaan de With, former Apple stitched-leather enabler, DoubleTwist Pentile Anti-Aliasing inventor, and current Leica shooter and Halide designer, did an amazing deep dive on how the new, higher dynamic range creates images very different from traditional contrast-based sharpening filters. From the Halide blog:

Seb goes on to note that it's a result of just how fast iPhone XS is taking photos now, both shutter speed and ISO, and the noise that comes with that speed requiring new and different kinds of reduction.

On the rear-facing camera, with its big, bright sensor, even in low light, it's not as noticeable. On the much smaller front-facing camera sensor, it's more noticeable.

So, it all comes down to this, which is what it always comes down to: Design is compromise and engineering is trade-offs.

With iPhone XS, you get much better exposure, much better dynamic range, detail in highlights and shadows, which means fewer blow-outs and less banding, and a much, much higher tolerance for back, side, or just plain bad lighting. Which means more better selfies in more badder places. But it comes at the cost of what's traditionally been seen as edge detail and image texture.

And, yeah, it has nothing to do with beauty filters or faces — the iPhone XS camera treats all similar objects similarly with this new pipeline.

It's similar if not the same as what Austin Mann mentioned in his iPhone XS camera review: That the dynamic range is now so good he's finding it nearly impossible to shoot silhouettes anymore. Every step forward, dammit, leaves something behind.

Bring the noise

The bad news is, if you hate the way selfies look on iPhone XS, since there's no beauty mode, there's no way for Apple to add an on/off switch for the smoothing. It's an integral part of the entire process. Also, if you shoot RAW, as Seb also explains in his deep-dive, you're in a for a world of computationally-optimized hurt as Neural Networks and ISPs become increasingly, inextricably coupled together.

Apple, for its part, really, truly, deeply believes the new imaging pipeline is better than the previous one and better than what anyone else is doing today. If you disagree — and when it comes to the selfie results, I personally disagree hard — or soft, or smooth, or whatever — it's important to let Apple know. A lot. Because pipelines can and will be tweaked, updated, and improved over time.

And, like I said, if they can detect and preserve fabric, rope, cloud, and other textures, why not skin texture as well?

For now, if you want to avoid it, and you want to shoot in traditional RAW, you're going to have to get a third-party app and go manual.

There are nearly a dozen carriers on tips of Canadians' tongues — Rogers, Bell, Telus and their flankers, Fido, Virgin Mobile, Koodo; regionals like SaskTel, MTS, Videotron, Eastlink; and national upstarts like Wind — but in many cases, there are very few ways to differentiate them.

The Canadian mobile market can be defined using two simple words: fast, and expensive. We have some of the consistently fastest networks outside of Asia, with providers adopting standards like LTE-Advanced and Voice Over LTE before those in the U.S. and Europe. But we also pay a premium for that privilege, resulting in some of the highest average revenue per user (ARPU) per carrier in the the world.

As much as Canadians complain about their telecom providers, a growing number are spending an increasing amount of their devices. Basically, we're all addicts, and the telcos are our dealers. So if you're going to go with one, which one should it be, iPhone users? We've got the scoop.

• Bell
• Rogers
• Telus
• Freedom Mobile
• Videotron, BellMTS, SaskTel, Eastlink

Important note: All plans and prices listed below are subject to change, this is just meant to give you a basic overview of what each carrier has to offer.

Bell

Canada's Big Blue, Bell is one of the oldest mobile providers in the country. After transitioning from CDMA technology to a more modern HSPA+ network in 2009, Bell launched its LTE network in late 2011.

Bell partners with Telus on the network side, which includes tower and equipment sharing in various parts of the country. Bell, however, has consistently outperformed both Rogers and Telus in recent speed tests, owing to its prodigious use of carrier aggregation.

For the iPhone, Bell uses a hybrid plan structure. Like all other carriers, Bell offers share plans, which allow users the choice of unlimited local or national calling and Canada-wide texting, and a data bucket that can be shared with up to nine additional people.

Sample plan for family with four iPhones (exc. Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan)

• Unlimited nationwide calling and texting for account holder: $60
• 6GB of shareable data: $45
• Three more iPhones with unlimited nationwide calling: $60x3 = $180
• Total: $285 per month (plus tax)

Bell is a national carrier with coverage in every province and territory. It is also one of the only Canadian carriers with active towers in Canada's North.

Bell offers LTE-Advanced speeds, which are compatible with the latest-generation iPhones, in big cities in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. Bell is also the only carrier in Canada to offer tri-carrier aggregation, which allows for speeds of up to 225Mbps with compatible devices.

Bell, which owns a number of media properties in Canada, such as CTV, offers 24-months of Mobile TV access when signing a two-year contract. It also owns CraveTV, a streaming service that exclusively licenses HBO and Showtime content.

While Bell isn't particularly well-known for its customer service, it has been trying to improve its reputation in recent years.

What to know: Bell also owns Virgin Mobile, which is aimed at a slightly younger demographic than its main brand. While Virgin Mobile uses the same network as Bell, it does not offer share plans, and occasionally has more competitive prices.

See the iPhone at Bell

Rogers

Rogers is the largest carrier in Canada, and possesses the largest individually-built network (since Bell and Telus share significant portions of infrastructure). With over nine million customers, Rogers has struggled in recent years to maintain growth in the wireless space.

Rogers has the oldest relationship in Canada with Apple on the iPhone, since it was the only de facto GSM carrier when the iPhone 3G expanded beyond the U.S. in 2008. But since rivals Telus and Bell began selling the iPhone alongside the iPhone 3GS, Rogers has no distinct advantages for iPhone users beyond a strong network.

Under the guidance of CEO Guy Laurence, Rogers has revamped its customer service process, promising shorter wait times and more comprehensive, one-on-one support.

Rogers uses its media properties and partnerships to great effect, offering share plan customers the option of two years of either streaming music service Spotify, streaming video service Shomi, or all-you-can-read magazine service Texture. Rogers also offers competitive roaming rates with its Roam Like Home service.

Like Bell, Rogers uses a hybrid plan structure. It offers share plans, which allow users the choice of unlimited local or national calling and Canada-wide texting, and a data bucket that can be shared with up to nine additional people. It also offers non-share plans that aren't as generous on a per-gigabyte basis.

Sample plan for family with four iPhones (exc. Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan)

• Unlimited nationwide calling, texting and 6GB data for account holder: $95
• Three more iPhones with unlimited nationwide calling: $70x3 = $210
• Total: $305 per month (plus tax)

iPhone prices include up to $600 in subsidy, which lowers by equal amounts over 24 months, which is required by the Wireless Code of Conduct. For example, an iPhone 6s costs $398.99 with a two-year agreement or $899 outright. That difference, $500, is reduced by equal amounts (516 / 24 = 20.83) of $20.83 over two years. Customers canceling need to pay back the outstanding device balance.

Rogers also offers a $10 per month discount for customers purchasing their own iPhones and bringing them to the carrier, or under the Smart Tab brand, for spending more on their devices upfront.

Rogers is a national carrier with coverage in every province and territory. It has historically fared strongest in Ontario and British Columbia but offers at least 3G HSPA+ in provinces where it has partnerships with regional carriers such as SaskTel and Eastlink.

Wireless customers looking for strong, but not necessarily the fastest, LTE speeds in most of the country, plus a wide range of content add-ons, should look at Rogers. Rogers is currently the only carrier to offer Voice over LTE service on the iPhone, though that statistic may not last long.

What to know: Rogers also owns Fido, which is aimed at a younger millennial demographic than its parent company. It also forgoes shared data plans in favor of three tiers of plans that vary in price depending on the amount of subsidy included.

See the iPhone at Rogers

Telus

Telus has traditionally been strongest in Canada's western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, but with its network partnership with Bell, has pivoted to being a viable national carrier. Telus has the second-highest number of subscribers in the country after Rogers, though it changes places with Bell every once in a while.

Telus tries to simplify its device and monthly plan prices by rounding up to the nearest hundred dollar — no $*.99. It has also taken a customer-friendly approach, in lieu of content partnerships, since the telco owns no media properties. For iPhone users, Telus is alone in offering in-house AppleCare+ at the same level as Apple itself, which means that anyone in the program can come to Telus for Genius Bar-like repairs and support.

Like Bell, Telus uses a hybrid plan structure. It offers share plans, which allow users the choice of unlimited local or national calling and Canada-wide texting, and a data bucket that can be shared with up to four additional people. In addition to unlimited nationwide and local calls, it offers a cheaper 300-minute calling tier. Telus is also more generous than Bell or Rogers in discounting customers who bring their own iPhones, offering a $15 per month discount compared to $10 on the other two.

Sample plan for family with four iPhones (exc. Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan)

• Unlimited nationwide calling, texting, and 10GB of data and 2GB of shareable data for account holder: $135
• Three additional iPhones with unlimited nationwide calling: $55x3 = $165
• Total: $300 per month (plus tax)

iPhone prices can include up to $600 in subsidy, which lowers by equal amounts over 24 months, which is required by the Wireless Code of Conduct. For example, an iPhone 6s costs $300 with a two-year agreement or $915 outright. That difference, $615, is reduced by equal amounts (615 / 24 = 25.63) of $25.63 over two years. Customers canceling need to pay back the outstanding device balance.

Telus doesn't offer the latest and greatest in technology — it has yet to launch tri-carrier aggregation (though it piggybacks off Bell's network in certain parts of the country) or Voice over LTE — but it does have some of the strongest customer service credentials around. It is also a preferred AppleCare+ partner, which is great for people buying extended warranties in cities where there aren't Apple Stores close by.

What to know: Telus also owns Koodo, which tries to be both a value brand and, like Fido and Virgin, a more youthful one. Koodo doesn't offer share plans, but it does have a simple financing system that separates the cost of the phone from the plan. As a result, monthly plans cost less because the cost of the phone is tacked, in 24 equal payments, to the price of the plan. Once the phone is paid off, the monthly plan drops accordingly. We wish more carriers would do this.

See the iPhone at Telus

Freedom Mobile

When Wind was bought out by Shaw, it became Freedom Mobile which services big cities Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver — and smaller ones in Ontario like London, Hamilton, Kingston and Windsor (and pockets in between) with an LTE network.

Freedom Mobile doesn't officially sell the iPhone, but users who have an unlocked iPhone that is the iPhone 6 model or higher (and some later iPhone 5s models) can connect to the Freedom Mobile network.

Freedom Mobile offers plans that start as low as $25 per month for a basic talk and text plan, all the way to $100 per month for 20GB of data, unlimited calling and texting. Freedom doesn't have a lot of plans, but has a decent selection of options and add-ons to choose from so you can tailor a plan to your liking.

For example, The $60 per month Big Data + Talk Plan includes unlimited talk to Canada and the U.S., and unlimited text, and 10GB of data.

Even though the company doesn't sell the iPhone, plenty of users have made the jump to Freedom Mobile because they offer fairly competitive prices. Some customers love it, and since Shaw bought the company, the network speeds have increased and the service area has expanded.

If you live in an area where Freedom Mobile has service and you don't do a ton of travelling aroudn the country, give Freedom Mobile a look.

See at Freedom Mobile

Videotron, BellMTS, SaskTel, Eastlink

These four regional carriers all sell the iPhone, and introduce significant competition in their respective provinces of Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Maritimes.

All of them operate LTE networks, either on their own (in the case of Eastlink and SaskTel), or in partnership with Rogers (Videotron and BellMTS). As a result, they all have roaming agreements with one or all of the incumbents for Extended Coverage, where they don't offer their own service.

Unlike Wind, which the incumbents Rogers, Bell and Telus don't consider a true competitor, the presence of the above regional carriers has a direct impact on the cost of monthly service in these provinces. Monthly plans in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are often 30 to 40% lower than in the rest of Canada; in Quebec, they are between 10 and 15% lower; and in the Maritimes, around five to 10% lower.

Videotron has quickly become a force in Quebec, garnering nearly a million customers since its wireless service launched in 2009. Like Rogers, Bell and Telus, parent company Quebecor offers home television, internet and home phone service, so many of its customers are bundlers, but Videotron has been smart about undercutting the incumbents while systematically increasingly ARPU with compelling services. Recently, it launched Unlimited Music, which zero-rates popular music streaming services like Spotify and Deezer. And like Bell, Videotron offers streaming television through its Illico brand, which it bundles with some of its more expensive wireless plans.

Videotron also offers the iPhone series at different prices depending on a customer's monthly price spend. The higher the plan, the greater the subsidy.

See the iPhone at Videotron

Wireless customers that live in either Manitoba or Saskatchewan would do well to check out BellMTS or SaskTel, both of which offers fantastic LTE speeds and coverage in their respective provinces. Those who travel outside the province regularly, though, are at the whim of so-called Extended Service, and may not benefit as much from the carriers' lower prices. Since Rogers, Bell and Telus tend to match the regional carriers' prices in both provinces, choosing a carrier is more a matter of comfort than price.

Both BellMTS and SaskTel sell the iPhone at standard two-year contract prices.

See the iPhone at BellMTS See the iPhone at SaskTel

Customers in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia, along with parts of Eastern Quebec, could benefit from Eastlink's excellent LTE coverage and financing plans. Eastlink is the only carrier in Canada that offers true financing, which means that it sells every phone for free upfront, but amortizes the cost of the device over two years in 24 equal payments. American wireless customers know that this is not novel — nearly all of them have switched over in the past year — but in Canada, financing is still a novelty.

See the iPhone at Eastlink

So, which is the best carrier for iPhone?

• If you're after national coverage with the best customer service, Telus is the best carrier.
• If you're after national coverage with the fastest speeds and the newest LTE technology, Bell is the best carrier.
• If you're after national coverage with fast speeds, and lots of content bundling options, Rogers is the best carrier.
• If you're after national coverage at the lowest prices, Koodo is the best carrier.
• If you're after the lowest prices, period, Wind Mobile is the best carrier.
• And if you're satisfied with the regional coverage, try Videotron, BellMTS, SaskTel or Eastlink, which are often cheaper than the incumbents.

tl;dr: There are no bad carriers for the iPhone, but Canadians should do some research before deciding which one is right for them.

Updated September 2018: Added newest prices on family plans ahead of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max release.

The iPhone XR is available to pre-order starting on October 19 at 12:01 AM PT, both from Apple's own site and its carrier partners.

If you're looking to pick up the iPhone XR in Canada on launch day or beyond, here's where you can go, and what you need to know about the different ways to buy the new phone.

Buy the iPhone XR unlocked from the Apple Store

Apple sells the iPhone unlocked through its retail and online stores, and the phone is already available for pre-order. While Canadians don't have access to the iPhone Upgrade Program (IUP) that allows annual upgrades through a monthly payment, Apple does allow customers to trade in their old phones for credit towards a new one.

Here's how it breaks down:

iPhone XR

• 64GB - $1,029
• 128GB - $1,099
• 256GB - $1,239

See at Apple

Buy the iPhone XR from Rogers

The iPhone XR will be available from Rogers in the following configurations and prices when bought with a 2-year Share Everything Ultra Plan:

iPhone XR

• 64GB - $99
• 128GB - $169
• 256GB - $299

See at Rogers

Buy the iPhone XR from Bell

The iPhone XR will be available from Bell in the following configurations:

iPhone XR

• 64GB - $99.99
• 128GB - $169.99
• 256GB - $299.99

All the above prices are on a two-year term and require a minimum of 1 GB ($25/month) of data per account plus a minimum of $90/month per user.

See at Bell

Buy the iPhone XR from Telus

The iPhone XR will be available from Bell in the following configurations:

iPhone XR

• 64GB - $530
• 128GB - $600
• 256GB - $730

All prices above are on a two-year term with a plan that's a minimum $95 a month.

See at Telus

Freedom Mobile

Freedom Mobile is the only carrier allowing customers to pick up the iPhone XR in either the 64GB,128GB, or 256GB, for $0 up-front if you have a 2-year plan. We'll have this information updated as soon as we know what the prices are.

iPhone XR

• 64GB - $0
• 128GB - $0
• 256GB - $0

All these prices require 2-year plans with a minimum monthly cost of $60 or more and depending on the storage size, tack on an extra $30, $35, $40 subsidy charge onto your plane for the 64Gb, 128GB, and 256GB resoectively.

See at Freedom Mobile

Buy the iPhone XR from Koodo

Koodo, Telus' sub-brand, will also sell the iPhone XR in the following configurations:

iPhone XR

• 64GB - $100
• 128GB - $175
• 256GB - $315

All prices above are on a Tab Extra Large plan, which is a two-year term.

See at Koodo

Buy the iPhone XR from Fido

Fido, Rogers' subbrand, is selling the iPhone XR in the following configurations.

iPhone XR

• 64GB - $99
• 128GB - $169
• 256GB -$299

All prices above require a 2-year data plan from Fido.

See at Fido

Buy the iPhone XR from Virgin Mobile

Bell's subbrand, Virgin Mobile, is selling the iPhone XR in the following configurations:

iPhone XR

• 64GB $99.99
• 128GB $169.99
• 256GB 299.99

All prices above are with a two-year Diamond plan that is a minimum of $75 a month

See at Virgin Mobile

Any questions?

If you have any other questions about getting your iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max in Canada, drop them in the comments!

Updated October 2018: Updated with prices for the new iPhone XR.

Google's Pixel 3 event was… strange. Not that the Pixel 3 itself leaked well before the event. Leaks, whether you consider them advanced shopping intel or surprise-killing spoilers, have only been getting more and more pervasive over the years. It was how Google reactive to them that was strange. Instead of a "you might have already seen it" joke like Steve Jobs made following the iPhone 4 incident, Google released a teaser video heavily suggesting no one might have seen it yet — at all.

It led some in the community to believe the Pixel 3 leaks had been some kind of elaborate and enormously expensive hoax, or that Google had a secret third phone, a Pixel Ultra, that it was going to whip out and shock the world.

But that didn't happen. We got exactly what had leaked. And the expectational debt, already huge, became bankrupting. Jokes of S-years, which have plagued Apple every other release, and more recently, Samsung, turned on Google. And even more so. Half an S. A C year. whatever.

And hell hath no fury like a herd of nerds scorned.

In the wake of Facebook's downward spiral following the Cambridge Analytica scandal and seemingly ever-escalating data breaches that have followed, Google has faced increased sensitivity and scrutiny over privacy as well. And it's faced its own share of scandals, including a now-cancelled plan to see facial recognition to the military for use in drones, a non-canceled plan to re-enter the Chinese search market, and an expose incident all its own with Gmail, the day before the event, which Google didn't disclose for months and didn't even address at the event.

I've done a couple of articles already on how and why to delete Facebook but now, more recently, in light of all of this, a lot of you have been asking how to delete Google as well.

The choice of 'no'

Now, before all you Android aficionados and Google lovers start pouring your rage out into the comments, give me a couple of minutes.

Android is all about choice and, because of that, not using Android has to be a valid choice as well. Not for everyone, of course, but for those who were either so disappointed in the latest Pixels or so concerned with Google's direction that they want to explore a change.

Why just the hardware? First, software, be it the Google Play Services that are increasingly being used to lock Android down, or Google's many other excellent services that are increasingly being used to keep people using Google, is a topic so big I'm going to save them for a separate video.

Second, you may still be fine with Google services but just want a way to run them on an operating system that gives easier control over how much you choose to share with Google, and on hardware supplied by a vendor, namely Apple, that's made privacy a top-down, front-facing customer feature.

Let's be clear, any hardware you use will tie you into the company that makes it. It'll let them collect data and telemetry on you and on what you're doing. So, how companies handle that data and what they do — and don't do — with it are absolutely things you have the right to be concerned and care about.

Since almost everyone who isn't Apple uses Android, not using Android protects you — if you feel you want or need that protection — from every other vendor that isn't Apple.

Also, using Google apps on iPhone, lets you choose which ones, if any, you want to log into, and which ones, with a few huge exceptions, of course, you don't.

Anonymous-ish

Google can still use all sorts of techniques to try and figure out who you are and what you're using — most forms of anonymity most companies claim they give you is a charade if not outright lie — and if you do have to log into a personal or work account for mail, calendars, contacts, or anything else, Google will try to quote-unquote-helpfully log you into other apps like Maps, to pull your location when you absolutely don't have to allow it.

But, if you're consistently careful and conscientious, you can minimize your logged into profile as much as possible.

That's what I do. I have to use Google Apps for work, which means I have to be logged into Mail and Calendar. And I make YouTube videos, obviously, so I have to be logged into YouTube Creator Studio. But, I stay logged out of absolutely everything else, including the web, Maps, and more.

And when I do search, I tend to use Siri, which intermediates my profile with Apple's.

Obviously, I can't do that with Google Assistant. In fact, since every time I try to enable it on my Pixel 2 XL, it demands I give it permission to track my web and app usages, and when I decline, it refuses to let me use Google Assistant at all, even for mundane things that have nothing to do with tracking me, not using it is a super easy choice to make.

Besting both worlds

If you do choose to go with Apple hardware for your Google software, you also get the advantages that come with Apple hardware: Namely, Apple's willingness to spend ungodly amounts of money to develop and secure processes that are sometimes years ahead of other companies.

This year, first dibs at TSMC's 7 nanometer process for the industry-leading A12 Bionic processor, is a clear example. So are the results of combining the best OLED panel process Samsung has with the best display technology Apple has, to provide something that really is the best of both worlds.

You also get Apple's new camera hardware. Now, you may legitimately think Google's Pixel still has the best camera software, and that it can segmentation mask and blur, and OIS shake and zoom, better than anyone else. And that's a perfectly valid opinion. But you'd still only be one Google Camera release for iOS away from getting a similar best-of-both worlds experience as well. Sure, Google may never do that, but history shows Google wants its bits everywhere, and iPhone bits remain some of Google's most profitable.

That's why iOS has so many Google apps, including YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Google Search, Chrome, Earth, Drive, Translate, Docs, Photos, Music, Hangouts, Sheets, Home, Slides, Calendar, Classroom, Snapseed, Duo, Voice, YouTube TV, Authenticator, Movies & TV, Inbox, News, Keep, Assistant, and the list literally goes on and on and on and on…

If you want to, you can legitimately turn the iPhone into one of the best Google phones in the world. Especially if your definition of "best" includes a heavy focus on privacy and security.

Google, but on your terms

It's not going to be for everyone, especially those of you who didn't give me those few minutes I asked for and have already staked your ragey comments several threads deep, but I think, increasingly, in light of how Pixel 3 was handled and privacy has been mishandled, it will be for more and more people.

Maybe, eventually, you'll want to delete Google entirely and ditch the services along with the platform. But that can be extremely hard. So, trying out a new platform with the same apps you're used to can be a good start. Step by step.

I'm going to keep quoting this, but it feels like we're now at the same place with privacy that we were with security back in the Windows XP days. Not everyone is concerned and certainly not everyone is ready to make or pay for change. But some are and if you're one of them, I want to make sure you have all the information you need to make the best choices possible for you and yours.

Now, if you really want to rage, have at it. I'd love to hear your opinion, regardless of the bits and atoms you personally choose to use. If you do have concerns, though, then I'd love to hear those as well, along with what you're thinking of doing about it.

It's not whether we all agree or not that's important. It's keeping the conversation going that matters.

Dream Big Pricess is an amazingly cool project from Disney, realized with amazingly cool technology from Apple:

Ahead of International Day of the Girl (October 11), Disney today launched a new global video series offering advice and inspiration on achieving success for the next generation of young leaders around the globe. The #DreamBigPrincess video series, produced and directed by young women from the United Nations Foundation's Girl Up initiative, shares the stories of 20 trailblazing women across technology, entertainment, medicine, law, sports, arts, science, fashion and politics to show the next generation what's possible if you dream big.

"Dreaming big is one of the most important things any of us can do – to keep aiming higher," says Kathleen Kennedy, President of Lucasfilm, who was interviewed for the series by Maud Webster, age 16, from the UK. "The #DreamBigPrincess series is giving a voice to a group of talented young women, helping them tell stories that kids can learn from, whatever their ambition."

Disney provided mentorship support for the 21 Girl Up leaders from different corners of the globe as they captured the stories of a diverse group of role models in digital shorts. Each video will be shared across Disney's global media platforms as part of a campaign to unlock up to a $1 million donation to Girl Up, an initiative of the UN Foundation to support girls' leadership.

"We have the responsibility to hand that baton of self-belief and positivity to the next generation," says Jo Malone CBE, Entrepreneur and Founder of Jo Loves, who was interviewed by Bethel Kyeza, age 16. "Storytelling can help us believe that no matter who we are or where we come from, we have every right to write the story of our own life and fulfill it."

"There's a line in Mary Poppins where she says anything is possible, even the impossible. I think that really symbolizes what dreaming big is all about, the idea if you want something big enough that the universe is going to conspire to give it to you," says Emily Blunt, Golden Globe Award-winning actress who was interviewed by Marisa Torre, age 17.

Spanning a host of professions, an accomplished roster of women share their tips for success in the 20-part series:

• Asmaa Boujibar - Research scientist and the first Moroccan woman in history to join NASA Johnson Space Center.
• Ashima Narain - Photographer, filmmaker and former photo editor for National Geographic Traveler India.
• Blanca Treviño - President and CEO of Softtek, the leading IT services company in Latin America, champion for entrepreneurialism, IT and the role of women in business.
• Emily Blunt - Golden Globe Award-winning actress and star of upcoming Disney movies Mary Poppins Returns and Jungle Cruise.
• Celina Caesar-Chavannes - Canadian member of Parliament who served as Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister of Canada.
• Jennifer Lee - Chief creative officer at Walt Disney Animation Studios, writer and co-director of Disney's Frozen for which she won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
• Jo Malone CBE - Founder and creative director of Jo Loves, responsible for creating some of the world's most-loved fragrances, awarded a CBE in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honors List for her services to the British Economy and the GREAT Britain campaign.
• Karen Jonz - Brazilian skateboarder, designer and musician who won the 2008 X Games women's vertical and the World Cup Skateboarding Championship four times, first Brazilian to win the title of World Champion.
• Karen Walker - Designer with a global, multimillion-dollar eponymous fashion label, awarded the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to fashion design in 2014.
• Kathleen Kennedy - Film producer and president of Lucasfilm, has produced more than 60 films, including three of the highest-grossing movies in motion picture history.
• Leia Mi - Art director for Shanghai Disneyland who creates concept designs and provides art direction for Shanghai Disney Resort, was a creative designer at Walt Disney Imagineering.
• Maria Teresa Ruiz - Chilean astronomer, the first woman to study astronomy at the University of Chile, the first female scientist to receive a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton University and the first woman to receive Chile's National Prize for Exact Sciences.
• Martina Stoessel - Actress and singer who played the leading role on the internationally successful Disney Channel telenovela Violetta, first Argentine singer to reach one million views on YouTube in less than 24 hours for her single "Te Quiero Mas."
• Monica Lopez Hidalgo – Accomplished professor and researcher of neuroscience, one of the winners of the L'Oréal Unesco Conacyt AMC 2017 Scholarships for Women in Science for her research on the deterioration of cognitive functions related to age.
• Dr. Ndifanji Namacha - Medical doctor and assistant lecturer of public health, Malaria No More UK youth ambassador, delivered a keynote speech at the 2018 Malaria Summit in London.
• Paola Carosella – Award-winning chef and restaurateur, opened her first restaurant in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2001, has appeared as a judge on MasterChef Brazil since 2014.
• Robin Roberts – Award-winning broadcaster and co-anchor of ABC's Good Morning America.
• Susan Prescott - Vice president of product marketing at Apple with more than 25 years of experience in the computing industry.
• Virginie Delalande – Founder of Handicapower, first deaf person to become a lawyer in France.
• Victoria Arlen – Accomplished motivational speaker, actress, model and swimmer, won three Silver medals and a Gold medal from the London 2012 Paralympic Games, joined ESPN as one of the company's youngest on-air talents.

Susan Prescott might sound familiar — she's been on stage at a few of Apple's more recent events.

We live in a time where the technology needed to share our voices has never been more accessible and yet, for many, it's still not accessible enough. To have the opportunity to see your future reflected in the faces and achievements of terrifically talented women in the present, and to have the tools made available to start working towards achievements of your own...

That really is a modern day mythical journey.

Kudos, Disney and Apple. More like this please.

Google has just announced the brand new Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. It comes on the heels of what may well be the biggest and most unprecedented leaks in industry history, with devices not only showing up in blurry cam pics and sketchy videos but actually being sold underground and given the full-on hands-on treatment in the days and weeks leading up to the event.

Worse, especially for hard-core Google users — the ones most predisposed to lust after and covet the new pixel, the announcement comes just one day after Google finally admitted to a Cambridge Analytica style data exposure all its own, and one that it had failed to disclose for months.

Yeah, #$%&ing ouch.

Rather watch then read? Check out the video above and subscribe for more

I'm not worried about Pixel 3 or Pixel 3 XL, though. It's never been positioned or sold as a mass-market brand like Galaxy or iPhone, and the people who love Google and the Pixel love Google and the Pixel in a way that makes Apple's old Steve Jobs reality distortion field seem kinda tame and tepid by comparison.

Read the full Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL hands-on at Android Central

And when you take the drama out of it, Google does field some amazing technology in Pixel, including some I'd love Apple to strongly consider for iPhones next.

Now, it's important to say up front that this is very much an S year, in iPhone parlance, for the Pixel. Google isn't making any radical redesigns or changes. It's' fixing some things that badly need fixing, like the tragedy that was the Pixel 2 XL display, and making a lot of already good things great.

Which, as someone who buys the new Google phone almost every year, going back to the Nexus One and continuing through both the original Pixel and the 2 XL, I'm totally cool with.

1. That camera

This one is obvious, right? Maybe not. Google has always had one of the best cameras in the business — many would argue the best — despite not having the best camera hardware. It's never been bad hardware, big sensors, good lenses, and all that. But the original lacked OIS, the 2 lacked dual cameras, and the 3 hasn't done much to address anything on the optics side. Because, for Google, it's always been about those AI bits, both in the software and the silicon of the Pixel Visual Core.

Apple's going with a single camera on the back of the upcoming iPhone XR, so once I get a chance to shoot with both of them, it's going to be really interesting to see what the respective computational photography teams have been able to deliver.

And that might be trickier to judge than you think, given what the astonishingly talented Jonathan Morrison pointed out earlier this week — trolling pretty much the entire Pixel Selfie community with iPhone XS selfies.

Make sure you check that video out. It's perspective shattering.

Ok, so, what looks interesting on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL side is Night Mode where, like HDR, it takes a ton of pictures but instead of trying to get the maximum dynamic range, it tries to pull out the best, most detailed picture possible from the darkness.

It also uses optical image stabilization — OIS shake — to collect more data and produce better quality images when digitally zoomed in. iPhone can already do optical zoom up to 2x, but anything that could improve greater than 2x is a huge win.

The crazy part here, of course, is that Google could ship all this for iPhone or Galaxy phones or any phone tomorrow if they wanted to. Because so much of what's being done is with software, Google could ship a new Camera app for iOS and Android that exposes almost all of the Pixel tech for almost any user.

That Google isn't doing that is super interesting, especially since it would give them a much bigger and more compelling data harvesting hose to stick in front of Google Photos.

Tragically or heroically, I can't tell which yet, while Google has been steadfast in not adding a second camera to the back, it's added one to the front this year. Not a TrueDepth system like Apple, but a wide angle so you can turn more easily your selfies into groupies.

I love wide angle lenses and, front and/or back, even if it takes a second or third camera, I'd love to see that come to iPhone.

2. Those speakers

If you'd asked me a month ago if I'd want a bottom front-facing speaker on the new iPhone, I maybe would have thought about it. After hearing the new, wider stereo on iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, it's clear the current positions are more than fine.

It's so good, it kinda makes you wonder if Google made the chin to hold the speaker, or stuck the speaker there to cover up for still needing a chin.

It's clear the only thing that stands between us and a truly bezel-less future is cost and engineering talent. And that damn notch.

So, yeah, scratch this one from the list.

3. Fast Charging

Last year it was easy to dunk on both Apple and Google. Apple didn't include a fast charger in the iPhone box and Google didn't include headphones in the Pixel box. This year, Google does indeed include the headphones and Apple… still crickets on the fast charger.

Where Apple's stuck at 5 watts, Google has 18 watts in the box. And, while, yeah, it's tough to dissect individual parts pricing out of overall package value, and Google did bump up Pixel by $150 to $799 and $899, Apple starts iPhone XS at $999 and $1099, and going to 12 watts will cost you $19 and 30 watts, $49, plus a $35 Lightning to USB-C cable.

Speaking of USB-C, it's still thicker than Lightning, and we're still heading towards a wireless world. But, if we're not getting there soon — and quickly transferring future video formats like 4K HDR 60fps, never mind 8K — might still make more sense over wires — USB-C in the box, on one or both ends, starts to make the kind of sense that does. Especially if Apple, as rumor has it, is switching iPad Pro over this year.

One cable to rule them all… until Wi-Fi 7 or whatever rules it all out.

There's this other aspect of the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL that sounds interesting: The back glass is etched with a fine texture that makes it feel — and grip — more like metal. At least that's what my colleagues at Android Central who've had a chance to go hands-on with it have said.

iPhone 8 and, to a similar extent, iPhone X and iPhone XS aren't like Nexus 4 slippery. We used to put those at the center of conference tables at CES and time how long it would take them to slide off an almost perfectly level surface and hit the floor. But they're closer to that than any aluminum-backed iPhone in recent memory.

If Apple could figure out a way to increase the frictional coefficient of the back iPhone glass, I'd be super happy. And so would everything from the armrests on my sofa to the wood on my floors.

And… More?

And that's about it this year. S is going to S, right?

Both the Pixels and the iPhones XS have 4 GB of RAM, so its what they manage to do with it that'll count. Pixel goes up to 128 GB of storage and iPhone XS, 256 or 512 GB but Google often offers more data harvesting subsidized cloud storage, so digital pack rats can maybe offload some via upload… if you still trust Google's servers that is.

And that's honestly becoming a bigger and more important story than the phones, where both companies are again converging and we're moving from a race of atoms and bits to one of computer vision and machine learning.

And you know what, that's inspiring.

So, that's the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL. Not new, not revolutionary, but with a few features I'd love to see Apple consider for the next generation iPhones.

We'll have lots more coverage of both new Pixel phones over on Android Central, links below, and you know Mr. Mobile is going to be weighing in, so check out his channel as well.

So, hit like, hit subscribe, and then hit up the comments and let me know what you think. And thank you so much for watching!

When it was launched last year, the iPhone X was Apple's first real advancement in iPhone displays since the iPhone 4. For 2018, Apple is all-in on the X design with three new iPhones (although the iPhone XR doesn't launch until next month).

The iPhone XS is a slight upgrade to the iPhone X, but the iPhone XS Max offers the largest display ever in an iPhone. At 6.5 inches, it offers 18% more screen in a body that's almost identical to the iPhone 8 Plus. The resolution has been bumped up to 1242x2688 pixels, offering a modest 458 ppi pixel density.

On paper, you should definitely upgrade to the iPhone XS Max if you want the best screen, but is the iPhone XS Max the best screen available on an iPhone? Is bigger really better?

Understanding display technology

Apple uses OLED display technology in its new iPhones (including the iPhone X) versus the LCD technology it uses in the iPhone 8 and older devices. The main difference between both technologies is that OLED displays are able to turn on individual pixels, while LCD displays use a backlight underneath the screen. As a result, OLED displays offer much deeper blacks, more vibrant colors, and a higher contrast ratio, but they are known for favoring a blue tint or being red-shifted.

OLED displays aren't new, as Samsung and other companies have been using them in flagships like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 for years, but Apple first adopted them last year with the iPhone X. LCD still plays a part in Apple's offering, as the new iPhone XR features the iPhone X design with a lower-cost LCD display.

There are plenty of competing display standards, but to test the iPhones, we used the DCI P3 standard. Apple says its displays are calibrated to that standard – which offers a wider range of colors than the sRGB standard it used in the past – but we also tested it against the sRGB standard as a point of reference. We also ensured that Apple's True Tone display was turned off since this will adjust the temperature of the display based on the surroundings.

How much you enjoy a display is subjective, but we can use the following tests to discern which iPhone offers the best display:

• Display brightness: Specifically, how bright is the display? We test this with and without the presence of ambient light, as well as with auto brightness turned off. This allows us to see the max brightness the iPhone can achieve, which impacts upon legibility in direct sunlight and the playback of HDR content.
• Color temperature: Ever noticed that some screens a little warmer than others, or some have a slight tint? What we think of as white light is different coming from every screen – try putting two phones next to each other and displaying a fully white background, you'll notice they are slightly different.
  • To understand the color temperature of a display, we measure how cool or warm the light is, in degrees Kelvin. Normal daylight temperature is 6500K, which is otherwise known as D65. A color temperature under 6500K means it'll have a yellow hue to it, while above 6500K means it will have a slight blue tint. Displays are rarely calibrated to exactly 6500K, so there'll be some variation, but it only becomes really apparent when you have excessive color temperatures (2000K either side of D65).
• Gamma: This test simply refers to how well the screen can display all the brightness values from black to white. This is an excellent test of contrast, and while there's no standard for gamma, we look for results between 2.1 and 2.2, which is ideal for movie playback. Too high a number means you'll get banding (where it doesn't display a continue color gradient, but a series of steps), while too low will result in a lack of contrast.
• Color gamut: When Apple (or any company) says it supports X percentage of the DCI P3, rec.2020, sRGB (or any other) standard, how accurate are these claims? The answer directly impacts on the overall experience: if you're trying to watch HDR content on your iPhone, it will need to support 100% of that applicable standard for you to get the full experience.

Now we understand the measurements behind displays, how do Apple's new devices stack up? Specifically, is newer really better?

The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max

The iPhone XS and XS Max have incredible displays. Both support the HDR 10 standard, are rich in detail, and offer a wide spectrum of colors. When we dig into the details, however, we find that the XS Max is more impressive than its smaller sibling and its predecessor, despite a larger display that's harder to manufacture at scale.

Absolute peak brightness is often high on smartphones, but most of the time this is unnecessary. Where high brightness matters is in direct sunlight, and when set to auto brightness, a phone can bump its display brightness by up to 30% (or more) in the presence of sunlight. All phones do this, and it's designed to make sure your phone isn't too blinding when you pick it up in a dark room, but you're also able to read text on the screen in the bright outdoors.

During this test, we found the iPhone XS Max offered a max brightness of 547 nits, which is boosted up to 677 lumens in bright light. The iPhone XS has a slightly lower 534 nits max brightness which boosts up to 658 nits. Interestingly, the iPhone X splits the two new iPhones with a max brightness of 540 nits and a peak brightness of 669 nits. All three devices are incredibly bright and a high peak brightness allows HDR content to be more immersive.

The results here provide some interesting data, but the simple take away is that the iPhone XS and XS Max screens are near perfect. An acceptable variation for differences in manufacturing processes is 2% and both devices come under that figure. The iPhone XS offers a color temperature of 6388 Kelvin, while the iPhone XS Max is a little colder at 6442 Kelvin. Both are near perfect, and so is the iPhone X which offers a color temperature of 6597 Kelvin. Essentially, this means that a white image will appear as white on any of these iPhones, rather than with a slight orange or blue tint as you might find on other phones.

In our testing, the iPhone X delivers a gamma rating of 2.13, which is in the bracket of movie-quality. The iPhone XS Max has a gamma of 2.21 while the iPhone XS has a gamma of 2.18. Both displays are within the realms of near perfect gamma and offer an excellent overall viewing experience. By way of comparison, the Galaxy Note 9 lacks a little contrast (although imperceptibly) with a gamma score of 2.04 and the OnePlus 6 has a score of 2.29 resulting in a slightly over-contrasted experience. These variations aren't noticeable to the human eye as they're so small, but the gamma test does yield interesting results when looking at the wider spectrum of smartphone screens (some screens we've tested have a gamma in excess of 2.8 and aren't very good.)

Gamma, Color Temperature, and Brightness all play a part in how impressive a display looks, but where smartphone screens can be separated is in the accuracy of the colors and the range of colors they support. Color accuracy is a way for us to measure how accurate colors are appearing on the screen. Have you ever noticed a red screen (whether it's your Mac, iPhone, or TV) sometimes looks orange? Similarly, white can be a little off-white and blue can appear a little green. That's down to the color accuracy of your screen and we measure this using the DeltaE2000 formula.

The iPhone X offers an average color error of 4.9, while the iPhone XS is better at 3.6. The iPhone XS Max is the most accurate iPhone to date, with an average color error of 2.4. Anything below 1 is imperceptible to the human eye, while most people can't notice a color error between 1 and 3. Looking at the charts above, the iPhone XS Max and iPhone XS are near perfect when measured against the sRGB standard. The differences are infinitesimal, and although more noticeable against the DCI P3 standard, the displays offer excellent overall color accuracy.

Should you upgrade to the iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max?

The iPhone XS Max is definitely Apple's best screen on an iPhone so far, and given the larger display size, it's our recommended option if you want something bigger and better than your current iPhone X. If you like the size of your iPhone X, the iPhone XS doesn't offer enough to warrant upgrading, unless of course, other features like dual SIM, a new gold color and upgraded cameras are enough to persuade you.

How important is the screen on your iPhone to you? Would you rather have the bigger iPhone XS Max screen, or the original iPhone X? Let us know in the comments! On your way, check out our iPhone XS and XS Max review!

My original iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max review was written a week after using Apple's latest devices. Ever since just after the Apple Event at the Steve Jobs Theater. In that time I used to as my main driver. For communication, photography, videography, travel, reading, listening, watching, writing… pretty much everything I do everyday.

For the first week, that was all on the 5.8-inch iPhone XS proper. For the last two weeks, I've been alternating between the XS and the 6.5-inch XS Max. It's a big phone. But, wow, is it a big phone.

So, now that I've had some more real-life, quality time with both phones, I'm revisiting my review and taking a second look.

Update: iOS 12.1 beta pushes out fix for charging issue

Just as I was getting ready to publish this re-review, Apple pushed out an iOS 12.1 beta that addresses the charging issue some people were seeing with iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and older iPhones and iPads running iOS 12.

When it goes into public release later this month/fall, there'll be no more delay or uncertainty about charging. You'll be back to just plugging it in and getting power.

(Pretty much what I said in my video above.)

Max is Max

Max really is Max in every sense of the word. Using it day in, day out, it totally feels more like a tiny tablet than just a big phone. It isn't only the size of the display, which at 6.5-inches is the biggest Apple's ever put into an iPhone, it's how that display goes edge-to-edge that makes it look and feel even more expansive. Like a literal none-more-display meme.

It's no iPad mini replacement. That has — or had, depending on what Apple does or doesn't do with that product line — not only a 7.9-inch screen and, more importantly for a lot of the work I did on it, a 4:3 aspect ratio so I could see more lines of text or rows of content in landscape. But I don't find myself using the Max in landscape unless I'm shooting or watching video. Because it looks and feels so expansive, for productivity stuff, I'm just leaving it in portrait.

And that's caused two interesting reactions.

First, I'm kinda insulated from the complaints about how Apple is handling landscape on the Max. Unlike iPhone Plus, there's no landscape home screen and the split-view controllers in apps like mail aren't persistent — they require a swipe in to get the list, and that's irked some people. Of course, the persistent list in apps like News on iPad have also inspired a ton of complaints because you can't swipe them away to maximize the detail view so… Yeah, not all design has a clear winner.

Personally, I'd prefer landscape icons on the Home Screen so I could have a consistent horizontal experience, but sidebars that I can swipe away so they aren't always just sitting there, eating up my screen.

Second, and more interestingly, because I'm sticking to portrait so much, the experience ends up being a only little better but also a little less convenient than the regular sized iPhone XS. I can swipe down to Reachability then down again to Control Center, but I kinda don't want to. (I mean, all that stuff should be accessible from the bottom of the screen on big phones anyway, so going back to the iOS 11 Mission Control layout still makes all the sense in the world to me — swipe up, get everything.)

So, unlike the previous few years where I've stuck almost exclusively to the bigger iPhone, this year I find myself gravitating back to the regular one more and more. We'll see how that plays out over the next few weeks, but the 5.8-inch display really doesn't feel small and the camera, this year, has zero compromises.

That Camera

I spent the first few days shooting with Smart HDR off. I wanted to see what the new sensor on the wide angle camera could do all on its own. And, while it wasn't life altering by any means, it was a solid, iterative improvement. Turning Smart HDR on, though, was a bigger deal. Smart HDR is Apple's name for the combination of neural network and image signal processing the new A12 Bionic processor can do when you unleash it on the camera system.

My criteria for judging any camera, attached to a phone or not, is whether it lets me get photos I simply never could before. With iPhone 7, the first dual-camera system, it was an easy yes. The low-light performance was so much better than iPhone 6s that I could suddenly take photo walks at night.

iPhone XS is a little like that but a lot different. Things like low-light are better but better in the way they're better every year. What's new is how much detail it's pulling out of the shadows and light. Photographer Austin Mann said it was so much he was having a hard time shooting silhouettes. And I believe it.

For me, though, it's the focus in the action shots. Whether I'm moving quickly or my subject is, I'm getting less motion blur in less places, which directly translates into more usable photos more of the time.

Where there's been some controversy is in the new pipeline. Almost everything is new this year, from some of the sensors, through the silicon, new Smart HDR, and all the artistic choices and tweaks made in the software. People who are used to the way iPhone photos used to look may not like, or may take a while to get used to the changes. People who didn't like the way iPhone photos used to look may like them more… or even less.

The biggest example is the hashtag smooth selfie complaints, where people are looking at the warmer, smoother skin tons produced on selfies and wondering if Apple is applying a secret beauty filter to the snaps.

Apple is not.

Part of it is that the noise and banding have significantly been reduced with the iPhone XS camera and Smart HDR. So, artifacts that looked like texture are gone but real skin texture doesn't seem to have been preserved in its place, the way Apple has gone out of its way to preserve rope, brick, cloud, and other textures.

Not that I want my face to look like brick and rope, but beggars can't really be choosers here, can they?

Apple also seems to have biased the white balance and tone mapping more towards warming the skin tons, which has bothered some people as well.

A lot of this stuff is really subjective but here's where I land: Since there's no beauty mode, there's no on/off switch to be added. But, I prefer the naturalness that Apple has spent years focusing on even while other companies crushed the blacks, boosted the sat, or on the opposite end, got all cold and scientific and forgot the quirks and artistry of real photography.

So, even though I know some people like the new normal, I'm really hoping Smart HDR gets iterated back towards the old natural. Because, damn, iPhone XS is still killing it on that for landscapes and action shots.

Battery life

Up front, just as I started getting this re-review ready, there've been some reports of iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and even older iPhones and iPads on the new iOS 12 release not charging when they're plugged in while in sleep mode. Inductive wireless charging, fine. Plugged in while awake, fine. Plugged in and then woken up, fine. But plugged in when the screen is off and kept off, no charge.

I haven't been able to reproduce this, not on my review units, not on the iPhone XS Max I bought, and not on any of the Tens, Eights, Sevens, or iPads of mine or my friends I could get a hold of to test.

That doesn't mean there isn't an issue, just that I couldn't reproduce or help trouble shoot it, which is all shades of frustrating in my line of work.

Either way, my hunch is, one, we'll see a bunch of theories from the savvy to the silly, bandied around online, like always, but two, whatever the issue, Apple will get a fix out asap.

As to battery life in general, I use my iPhone a lot. Like a lot, a lot. And the apps I use, from Twitter to Instagram to Facebook Messenger — because, kill me, I have friends who only use Facebook Messenger, to Pokémon Go are absolutely brutal on the battery. They push a ton of media, not just photos but video, they hit GPS a lot, and the screen stays lit up the whole time, of course.

So, it's nice that Apple spins dedicated encode and decode blocks into the silicon, and it definitely helps when I shoot video or watch iTunes, but social still slams everything it can, as often as it can.

That said, battery life on the XS has been good and on XS Max, great. Yeah, it's a fresh battery but I didn't do a clean install. I kept all the cruft of the last year or two when I restored from backup.

Normally, I top up throughout the day. I have a charge pad next to my desk and a cable in my car. But I've deliberately not done that a few times over the last few weeks and XS managed to last into the night and XS Max overnight and into the next day on the several occasions I didn't really get to go to sleep.

To be continued

There's a lot more to iPhone XS and Max, including everything that's going on with AR and Shortcuts and I'll have a lot more to say about that in the coming weeks and months. These are living reviews for me and my hope is everyone learns at least something new every time. That includes me.

It feels like every time a new iPhone launches or a new version of iOS comes out, some percentage of people who had issues with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or cellular networking get their problems solved, and some percentage who didn't start having issues for the first time. That's probably a reflection of just how complex modern radios and carriers are, and all of our setups that go along with them.

But, as we move to mesh networks, Gigabit LTE and 5G, Bluetooth 5.0 and AirPlay 2, these systems can't just keep getting faster and more complicated. They need to get easier and more absolutely, point final, more reliable.

Latest cases in point - complaints around iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max wireless networking.

Cellular set-backs

For cellular, it seems like primarily Verizon customers in the U.S. are seeing fewer bars in fringe places — those areas where getting and keeping a signal is already a challenge.

The prevailing theory is that Apple has gone all-in on Intel modems this year where previously they used a mix of Qualcomm modems for legacy CDMA carriers, namely Verizon and Sprint, and Intel for GSM carriers, namely AT&T, T-Mobile, and most of the rest of the world.

Infineon, the original iPhone modem supplier, was bought by Intel in 2011 and, since then, Intel has desperately been trying to become competitive with Qualcomm, including and especially for Apple's business.

I guess they figure if they can't get their x86 chips anywhere near Apple's A-Series or the iPhone, their modems are better than nothing…

The problem is, Qualcomm is near predatory in its business practices. So much so, it's been investigated by multiple jurisdictions. You see, Qualcomm's business isn't really chips. It's patents. And while, most of the time, if you want your patents to become part of an international standard, you have to agree to license those patents under FRAND — fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory — terms, Qualcomm has managed to keep a lot of key wireless patents at a premium.

It's Qualcomm's contention that radios are so valuable, device makers including but not limited to Apple, should pay not just for the parts but a percentage of revenue — some say retail, not just wholesale — for the privilege of using them.

I mean, good for Qualcomm. You go. Get yours. It's ultimately short-sighted and unsustainable — cameras and other components are arguably just as important these days, imagine if 9 different vendors all wanted 20% of retail each… let the patent lawyers do the math on that — but it makes both courts and customers cranky in the extreme.

It's led to vicious legal battles between Qualcomm and, among others, Apple. In this specific case, with Apple accusing Qualcomm of price gouging and Qualcomm accusing Apple of, and I kid you not, ratting them out to the feds and sharing trade secrets with Intel.

Now, all of that is Apple's and Qualcomm's problem. None of it should affect us in any way. But, since Apple wants nothing to do with Qualcomm right now, it looks like everyone is getting Intel modems instead.

Apple went so far as to destroy the x-axis symmetry on iPhone XS and iPhone XS plus in a way we haven't seen since the days of the headphone jack in order to add extra antenna for 4x4 MIMO in order to provide the best, most flexible reception possible.

If you were on AT&T or T-Mobile, the good news is the new antenna in iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max should work even better for you.

Of course, a lot can depend on your precise position relative to the tower and everything from your case to your walls to the weather in between, because radio science is still terrible and demands sacrifices for every gain.

If you were on Verizon or Sprint, switching to a new modem might be causing you some pain. My strong hunch is Apple and the carriers will be pushing out updates in the near future that, based on all the data they've seen to date, fine-tunes everything and fixes the vast majority of problems.

In the meantime, if nothing is working for you and it's driving you out of your frequency-ed mind, here are a few things you can try:

• Toggle Airplane mode on-and-off, just to get the radio to re-connect and hopefully grab a better signal.
• Toggle LTE on-and-off in Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options, if you don't want to lose your connection but want to try for a better LTE connection, or even stick with 3G in an area where LTE just won't work.

If you don't mind escalating:

• Go to Settings > General > Reset and reset network settings. It's a bit of a pain but it can give your new modem a clean new start.

And, the nuclear option:

• Wipe everything and set up as a new iPhone. That's an incredible pain in the apps, even in the era where almost everything just syncs back, but it can knock out problems like nothing else can.

And I should note, wacky as it may sound, doing a restore over iTunes from your PC could help where on-device can't.

Wi-Fi woes

Same with the WI-Fi, which mostly seems to be suffering from an over-eagerness to jump on 2.4 Ghz networks instead of the generally more reliable 5 Ghz networks. If that's happening to you, and you don't need the 2.4 GHz part of your network, you can typically toggle it off in your router settings and force your iPhone to do the right thing — at least when it's on a network you control. If you need 2.4 Ghz for legacy devices or you're on networks you can't control, you can try some of the same trouble shooting steps I outlined above, starting with:

• Go to Settings > Wi-Fi, and simply forgetting the network and adding it back

Then escalating up to resetting the network settings or doing a clean install, painful as it is.

Again, we go through this with every new phone and every new update, so it's nothing new. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating. It makes it even more.

Why we can't just get machine learning algorithms that chew through massive crowd-sourced data sets to constantly real-time tune all of our wireless connections, all of the time, I don't know. But I want them. Almost enough that I don't really care if it kicks off Skynet.

Update everything

These problems likely only affect a small percentage of people. But, at iPhone scale, there's really no such thing. Every percentage is huge.

If you're one of those people and if any of the suggestions I made helped mitigate or fix the issue for you, or if something else did instead. And if you're not having any problems, let me know how your iPhone XS or iPhone XS signal is doing and if it is faster and in more places.

There's been some confusion over the last few days about iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR specs. Part of that is Apple's fault because, unlike screen density and storage capacity, they don't list RAM and battery capacity. And part of it is the fault of broken-internet, which, like broken telephone, passes along information often without context or clarity, resulting in it getting warped and distorted in a way that's significantly less than helpful.

Don't want to read? Watch the video version and subscribe for more!

So, let's dig into it.

Memory

I've covered the difference between Apple and Android processors — systems-on-a-chip or SoC — before. TL;DR: Apple has the advantage of serving only one customer: Apple, and using only one processor: Apple. Qualcomm has to make chips that see to the needs of a wide range of vendors and Samsung typically bifurcates it's chips between Qualcomm and it's own Exynos.

What does this have to do with RAM? The SoC includes the RAM. It's like a RAM sandwich. It has to feed the needs of all the software running on it. But, like many things in silicon, it's not about quantity, it's about efficiency.

Because iOS is native code, not interpreted, and because it doesn't have to worry about things like garbage collecting that code, since, after a brief flirtation with it, it switched to the much more efficient automatic reference counting, it simply doesn't consume as many resources.

Now, there's always a case to be made for more RAM. Every time I switch apps only to come back and have Instagram or my Safari tabs reload, I very much want to argue that very case.

But, RAM also comes at a cost. It and the processes that run in it, consume power, which lowers battery life. There's a lot apps can do to lower their memory footprint as well. Especially under iOS 12, where Apple spent a year having the frameworks engineers optimize the crap out of pretty much everything, and for that very reason.

So, yeah, it would be nice if Apple included 4G of RAM for iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max in the keynote, on the tech specs page, and on the box. But then they'd have to explain why it's a lower number than some Android phones have on their tech spec pages and boxes. And while people seem to understand that just because a Ferrari has fewer tires than a Mac, it can still go faster and handle better, because it's not hauling a trailer behind it, processor performance isn't anywhere nearly as mainstream.

Which may be why it needs more explaining?

Battery

Power — surprise surprise — is also all about efficiency. Look no further than one of my favorite accessories of the past few years: The iPhone Smart Battery Case. It launched in December without the benefit of a Phil Schiller keynote pitch and without much of any kind of context from Apple. That led to busy reviewers looking at it, doing a quick back-of-the-napkin price to capacity comparison, saying OMG THAT HUMP as many times as they could, and then dismissing it as ugly and expensive.

Now, it was obviously both those things. But it was also the best damn battery case you could buy. And most people missed it because they were looking at capacity not efficiency. Because the hump got the battery mass away from the antennas, it didn't block any signal. In fact, it was designed to boost the signal. That meant, unlike all previous cases, the radios in the phone didn't have to ramp up, costing significantly more power just when you were trying to save it.

Because it also kept iOS in mobile mode, instead of plugged-in mode, it also prevented expensive networking tasks from triggering, which also typically burned power in other cases just when you wanted to save it.

With iPhone XS you have a slightly smaller battery than the previous iPhone X, but you have a significantly smaller processor. The world's first 7-nanometer, as Apple made sure to tell us right up front. That saves power. You also have other efficiencies in everything from the controller to iOS 12 that result in the slightly smaller battery lasting slightly longer — about 30 min. longer.

Apple doesn't list the milliamp hours for its batteries either, and maybe it should, but it likely wants to avoid having to asterisk it and footnote the entire context I just provided.

I'd prefer if they did, but I get that 90% of people don't know or care what that number means, 2% probably really understand what it means within the complete architecture and management system of the device — and I'm certainly not one of them. And the other 8% of us would just look at it, have no clue what it really means, but just rush to get our blog posts and videos live so we can yell about it in absolute yet valueless terms to the real benefit of almost no one.

Oh, and I do think Apple should putting more battery in, not less. Apple still seems utterly convinced that weight is a primary factor for usability. That, while people might like the idea of larger batteries in the abstract, what they really want to do to is hold up their phones for increasingly long periods of time to game, watch videos, even read. And the heavier the phone is, the more annoying it is to do that in bed, on planes, in lines, in waiting rooms, where ever.

So, Apple is all about keeping or slightly improving battery life while keeping or slightly reducing weight. And that's fine in a world where, you know, Instagram, Facebook, Pokémon Go, and most streaming apps were actually well coded and didn't just fire up your GPS, screen, and data and drain your battery as fast possible.

It's for that, and the oncoming age of 5G, augmented reality, and artificially intelligent… everything, that I think Apple should keep on holding the line… just make that line slightly higher.

And put out a next-generation of smart battery cases already, dammit.

Screens

iPhone XR, which comes out in October, as a significantly lower screen resolution and density than iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. That's depressed some people. It depresses me too. But maybe for different reasons.

Let's go back to 2010 and iPhone 4, the first Retina Display. There's been a whole lot of work done on high density and resolution independence by Apple and others, but what Apple did with iPhone 4 was incredibly straight forward and simple: They doubled the amount of pixels in every point. Instead of @1x it was now @2x, and that was it. Sure, designers had to make @2x assets, but that wasn't a huge hurdle.

To understand the difference, imagine a point on a display. On the original iPhone up to iPhone 3GS, that point was drawn with a single pixel. On iPhone 4, that dot was drawn with 4 pixels. It didn't make a huge different for dots or squares, but for angles and curves, you could produce fidelity that was, literally, twice as good.

So good that, when you looked at them from typical viewing distances, the pixels disappeared and all you could see were clean angles and curves.

That's because Retina — or HiDPI — is a function not just of resolution and size, but distance. It's the same reason a 4K TV doesn't look much different than a 1080p TV of equal size if you're sitting more than 10 feet away. Increase the size or decrease the distance, then you start to see the difference.

Now, displays are expensive. Not just in terms of the cost for the part itself, but the power it takes to light it up and push its pixels around. Unless you need density for a specific use-case, like a VR headset where the distance is so close you need the resolution to be as high as technologically possible — 4K per eye, please! — you're just wasting power with any pixel most people can't discern at a normal viewing distance.

With iPhone 6 plus, Apple went to @3x internally. That means every point went from a 2x2 pixel grid to a 3x3 pixel grid. But, Apple only went to 1080p for the display. So, they used a scaler to take that @3x image and squeeze it down onto that 1080p display. Some people, the ones who were particularly sensitive, could see the scaling and the flicker it caused for single pixel lines. For most, it was fine.

For iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR, Apple is doing two very different things. For iPhone XS Max, Apple is letting @3x be @3x. The result is a 2688-by-1242-pixel resolution at 458 ppi. For iPhone XR, Apple is letting @2x stay @2x. That results in a 1792-by-828-pixel resolution at 326 ppi.

iPhone XS Max is literally the iPhone XS Super retina display with more pixels to fit a physically larger screen and iPhone XR is literally the iPhone 4/5/6/7/8 regular Retina display with more pixels to fit a physically larger screen.

So, you don't get the density of the Plus but you don't have to deal with the scaling either. Personally, I prefer the scaling, but I'm not the only person in the world and I don't every time get what I want.

Does this affect apps? No, not at all. Remember, points stay constant regardless of pixels. And app developers have all sorts of tools now, including size classes and auto-layout. So, @2x vs. @3x is meaningless for any of that.

Same with YouTube or any other video. Yes, you won't get pixel accurate 1080p video on an iPhone XR the way you would an iPhone Plus. Well, you wouldn't get it anyway because it's not 16:9 the way the Plus was, but pillar-boxing not withstanding, you will get either scaled up 720p or scaled down 1080p. (Any video service could choose to send either to an iPhone XR — 1080p would simply use more bandwidth but give you better interpolation.)

You'll have the same issue on an iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max, just stepped up. They're both bigger than 1080p but not big enough for 4K, so you'll get upscaled 1080p video or, maybe, downscaled 4K.

Will you notice the difference? Again, with the exception of VR headset use, not really, and those want 4K, probably closer to 8K per eye, and no phone display is anywhere near that.

The far, far bigger deal with iPhone XR is that it doesn't support HDR — because it's LCD and not OLED. Apple worked another engineering miracle making an LCD display without bezels that could stand up next to the iPhone X and iPhone XS displays — and I've used them all, and it really does — but LCD simply can't do HDR.

And it's High dynamic range, not high density, that really is the state of the art of video these days.

Specsational

I get that a lot of people are really passionate about specs and that it's often emotional, not logical arguments that take over. becasue feelings, not facts, right? But all of these discussions benefit immensely from a little reason and a lot of logic.

It's easy to grab a number, get your rage on, write a magazine article, knock out a blog post, or film a video. And if you say "Apple fanboys might disagree", it's also easy to insulate yourself from rational, logical, factual retort. Because anyone who disagrees with your hottest of hot takes has to be a fanboy, right? Wrong. So allow me to retort.

People interested in these products deserve information. Absolutely. But they deserve and should demand that information in context. What it is is easy. What it really means is hard. But that's the job.

The iPhone XS Max has the best display in the history of best displays. I don't mean that to sound blasé or sarcastic. Apple's teams, from silicon to industrial design to display technologies did a tremendous job on it.

There's just something hinky about how these shootouts appear, and switch between Apple and Samsung, every quarter. It's why I've always preferred AnandTech's display tests. Sadly, though, they don't seem to get those out regularly, if at all, any more.

From DisplayMate:

Subjectively, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have unbelievably good looking and, to my eye, color accurate displays. Objectively, I wish there were many more places that performed rigorous display testing.

Either way, DisplayMate's is worth a glance.

With the new iPhone XS and XS Max, Apple is finally allowing customers to have two phone numbers on one device thanks to Dual SIM support.

But what is Dual SIM, and will you be able to get it with your carrier here in the U.S.? Let's find out.

• What is Dual SIM?
• What carries in the United States support Dual SIM?

What is Dual SIM

So you may or may not have heard of Dual SIM until now. The technology has been available for a while, but this is the first time that Apple has supported it.

With the iPhone XS and XS Max, you'll have your Nano SIM — which has been the standard since the iPhone 4 — as well as a digital eSIM that requires no physical swapping of SIM cards to use. This is great when you decide to switch carriers, plans, or even jobs.

With Dual SIM, you're able to have two different phone numbers on up to two different networks on a single smartphone. While you may think that someone who uses this might have something to hide, many people have two lines for personal and work use.

When you use a Dual SIM device, you're able to see what number is receiving the incoming call. This means if you have a number for work, you'll know not to pick up a call while you're on vacation, for example, because who wants that?

Another use case for Dual SIM is the ability to keep your regular number while traveling out of the country, and you can grab a cheap prepaid SIM from a local carrier for calls and data.

What carriers in the U.S support eSIM?

Currently, there are only three major U.S carriers that will support eSIM when the iPhone Xs and Xs Max launch this Friday. Those carriers are:

• AT&T
• Verizon Wireless
• T-Mobile USA

If you have Sprint, or other smaller carriers, then it appears you're out of luck at the moment. However, Sprint does intend to have support for it in the near future, though how soon that will be is unknown.

For those planning on making use of Dual SIM capability, Apple has published a step-by-step guide on how to set up a cellular plan through the eSIM on their website.

Are you going to make use of Dual SIM support?

We'd imagine many of you may use this to eliminate the need to carry two devices for work and personal use. It's just so convenient! Are you planning on getting a second number to use with your single iPhone XS or XS Max? Let us know in the comments!

Your most straightforward option for getting an unlocked iPhone XS is to purchase a SIM-free model directly from Apple, either online or in an Apple Retail Store. The SIM-free model comes unlocked and is compatible with any major U.S. carrier.

Unlike the iPhone X last year, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max come with the SIM-free option out of the gate, so you won't even have to take advantage of any deals or jump through any hoops. You can just buy your phone directly from Apple, and you'll be set.

Keep in mind that you'll be paying the full price for your iPhone Xs up front, which starts at $999 for the 64GB model, while the 256GB model comes in at $1,149, and the 512GB version at $1,349. Those prices are even higher for the iPhone Xs Max, which as the name implies is a much bigger phone. If you can swing these prices, go ahead and do it. However, if you're looking for a solution that's a little more…financially manageable, there are some other options of which you should be aware.

Apple's own iPhone Upgrade Program offers customers an unlocked phone no matter which carrier they use. You pay in monthly installments and are eligible for one iPhone upgrade per year after 12 payments. The program also includes the AppleCare+ protection program in its cost, with a $4.17 per month add-on available for AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss. iPhone Upgrade Program payments for the iPhone Xs start at $49.91 for the 64GB model, while the iPhone Xs Max's payments start at $54.08 per month for the same storage capacity.

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customers can enroll in the program online and in the Apple Store app. In fact, if you use the Apple Store app right now and plan to use the iPhone Upgrade Program, you can get pre-approval on your desired model.

Note that because this is a financing plan based on installment payments, Apple and its partner, Citizens One, will need to perform a credit check in order to determine your eligibility for the program.

If you buy your iPhone Xs or iPhone Xs Max through Verizon, that device should be SIM unlocked at the time of purchase. The carrier says that it's policy not to lock their LTE-enabled phones, with a couple of statements on the subject:

So whether you buy your iPhone on a Verizon installment plan or pay for it all up front, you can just pull the Verizon SIM card out of the phone and insert another one.

Just remember that if you bought your iPhone from Verizon on an installment plan, then later want to switch to another carrier, you'll need to pay off the remaining cost of your phone before you do so.

While we're primarily focusing on buying an unlocked iPhone, I wanted to mention the unlocking situation with other U.S. carriers.

First, a note on these carriers. While each one does allow you to unlock your iPhone, you should note that you'll need to a wait a bit before doing so. AT&T requires you to wait 14 days before unlocking your device if you've just upgraded your iPhone. T-Mobile will let you unlock your phone after 40 days, and Sprint after 50.

Somehow, probably by infinite-looping around the Apple Park Ring until it hit 88mph, Apple was able to send tomorrow's iPhone hurtling back in time almost a year. As a result, if you spent a few hundred bucks more and learned some new gestures, you've been living the last eleven months in the bezel- and Home button-free future.

But, as basically every sci-fi plot-twist ever has shown us, time travel is never without consequence. By releasing tomorrow's iPhone last year, what was Apple going to release now, today? The answer, of course, was and is — and maybe will be, temporal pardoxes are hard! — an S-type update. Because, as much as some people dislike the iterative in-betweens, nobody likes nothing.

As a result, I'm sure almost every review for the next long while is going to perseverate over a single, utterly predictable question: Whether iPhone X owners who picked up their little piece of the future last year should consider upgrading to an S-enhanced present this year.

Spoiler alert: The people who bought the iPhone X last year were either constant early adopters or eager to upgrade then so they wouldn't have to wait until now. They'll either automatically get an XS as part of one of those increasingly common annual upgrade programs or they'll just keep on keeping on until they need the next something new. They know that. Based on how iPhone XS was introduced as a new iPhone X, not an all-new iPhone, Apple knows that. It's just the rest of us nerds who have to get better at remembering it.

It's everyone else, the ones who are still undecided about this whole next-generation phone thing, who still own older iPhones or are Android curious, who maybe think the iterative in-between is really the new model done right, thanks to a year of early adopter beta tester fed fixes and improvements, who may still be undecided about upgrading. Wondering if now might finally be time to hand off or down their old iPhone or Android, and embrace not some notchy future, but the bezel-less present.

For them, the people who've spent the last year looking at that edge-to-edge display, HDR video, and fluid navigation, at Face ID, "depthy" selfies, and Animoji, and at almost every phone from almost every vendor that's tried, and largely failed, to copy it, the iPhone XS and the bigger iPhone XS Max could be compelling.

I think that's exactly the customer Apple is aiming for this year. And I've spent the last week trying to figure out if the starting-at-$999 iPhone XS and starting-at-$1099 iPhone XS Max really are the phones to do it.

See at Apple

iPhone XS in Brief

• Edge-to-edge design.
• Optically stabilized ƒ/1.8 and ƒ/2.4 dual-camera system.
• Depth-aware front-facing camera.
• Face ID biometrics.
• A big 5.8 or bigger 6.5-inch display.
• Gold!

• Classic iPhone design.
• Home button.
• Fingerprint identity biometrics.
• Lower pricing.
• Android

If you didn't like the iPhone X and its notched face, there's very little about iPhone XS that'll change your mind. If you were interested in iPhone X but weren't ready to take the risk — or front the cost — on the first iteration, then the second generation has a lot to offer. It takes everything Apple set out to do with the original and makes it better. Face ID is faster. A12 Bionic makes everything fly. Like, FLY. The cameras have adjustable blur and, thanks to Smart HDR, can capture pictures the previous generation simply never could. There's stereo recording and playback offers wider separation and richer sound. And you can even get that edge-to-edge OLED display maxed out to 6.5-inches.

As total packages go, it's not something most current iPhone X owners should strongly consider, but if you're still running an older iPhone or Android, it is something you might seriously want to consider ditching your Home (or back) button for.

Rather than recapitulate old features on new phones, I generally point people back to my previous reviews. That's especially important for "S" years like this one, where so many of the features critical to the XS and XS Max, including the OLED display and the True Depth camera system, debuted with last year's model.

• iPhone X (2017) Review

iPhone XS Unboxing

At this point it's just weird that Apple is still including a 5-watt USB-A charger in the box. Sure, technically wired and slow is the best way to charge your iPhone but, for most people, most of the time, the tiny fraction of battery life you lose charging fast and hot — especially in the age of aggressive charge management — simply isn't worth the loss of convenience.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn3sQWqg_Rq/?taken-by=reneritchie

It's also three years post UBC on MacBooks and Apple still isn't including a USB-C cable in the box, not even a USB-A to USB-C adaptor. In fact, the 3.5mm to Lightning adaptor, which Apple included in the iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X boxes is gone now. So, we're expected to have switched completely over to Lightning for audio but not USB-C for data or charging? I know Apple has all the numbers to make the best choices for its existing customer base but over-serving that customer base is seldom the wrong decision and it's usually the type of decision we expect from Apple.

How much does it cost to chamfer an edge or get the precisely right depth and layering to a finish? Apple spends a fortune seeing to every conceivable design detail on the phones themselves but then don't continue that commitment through the to the accessory experience.

It's baffling, at least to me, and something I hope Apple executives reconsider going forward.

iPhone XS Max

The biggest news about iPhone XS is literally the biggest news: A 6.5-inch version Apple is calling "Max". It looks like iPhone 8 Plus with a shave and a haircut. Seriously, you need to see it to believe it.

Now, confession time — I've been having some trouble easing into that name. Max. Seeing and hearing Apple use it isn't "your parents reading from Urban Dictionary" weird but it's close. Aside from sounding like Macs, it comes off as more than a little over-the-top. Like "MAX EXCITE!" (Which, Ironically, is a phrase I personally use far too often...)

But maybe that's exactly what Apple's going for here? Either way, but this time next year — hell, by this time next month — I doubt any of us will even think about it anymore. Not so sure? Just ask "iPad".

I get why Apple didn't stick with "Plus". In previous years, "Plus" versions weren't just bigger, they were better. Notably, they had higher screen densities, superior cameras including, for the last few years, dual camera systems, and more memory.

That's not the case with "Max". This year, aside from the physical size, both models are identical. Same 458 pixels-per-inch (ppi), same dual camera systems, and — sweet Christmas! — even the same 4GB of memory.

iPhone XS Max is simply a bigger iPhone XS.

Because Max is bigger, Apple can squeeze in more pixels — 2688x1242 instead of 2436x1125. If my math is right, that's more than a standard Retina iPad like iPad mini or the 9.7-inch iPad. Also: A larger battery to help power all those extra pixels. But that's it. That's all.

Differentiating based solely on size is something Apple has done, off and on, with the iPad lineup as well. It started with iPad Air and iPad mini 4 and happened again most recently with the second-generation iPad Pro 12.9 and the debut iPad Pro 10.5. I'm not sure how it'll affect Apple's average sales price (ASP), which has been trending higher thanks to the enticingly exclusive features of the highest-end models. But, having the same features in both flagships is absolutely better for customers.

Of course, size itself can be seen as an exclusive feature. For some, the more expansive, more legible (now including the much-anticipated return of Display Zoom), more pixel-full 6.5-inch XS Max will be well worth the extra $100 Apple's asking for it. Others, though, will see the more compact, more pocketable, more one-hand-able 5.8-inch XS as the sweet spot, save themselves a hundred bucks, and smile so wide while doing it.

Personally, I've gravitated towards the bigger iPhone ever since Apple introduced it. Other than my Apple Watch, my iPhone is the one device I have with me everywhere and I can use anywhere, and I want to be able to do as much as I possibly can with it. That's including both the display size and the camera.

For the last year, though, I've been on the 5.8-inch iPhone X because it was so much screen in so little a package. Now that the cameras are no longer a distinguishing factor, will I stick with that size or will I escalate up to 6.5?

Big phone vs. tiny tablet is something I've joked about in my reviews for years. But this is no joke. At 6.5-inches, it's like iPhone X had a baby with iPad mini.

That's especially true in landscape, where, like Plus-sized iPhones before it, you get the iPad-style split view layout in apps… even though you still miss out on the functional difference in aspect ratio and on key features like side-by-side apps and Picture-in-Picture. (At this point along the phone maturity curve, those no longer feel like crammed-in complexities. They feel like missing functionality.)

Holding the XS Max, it feels about the same to me as the previous Plus models. It's just a tad slimmer, but not that I notice. That edge-to-edge screen, though… that you can't miss.

Most of us will need to swipe down for Reachablity to get to the top half and tap into the one-sided keyboard to type one-handed (or just give up and treat it as a two-handed device). But what you get for putting up with the bigger dimensions are those bigger dimensions. And it can be a hell of a reward.

I'm guessing I'll end up landing on Max. Still, I'm going to jump between both for a month and really make sure. Stay tuned.

Wait, what? A design section? For a phone that's almost visually indistinguishable from the previous years? Isn't that like having a design section in a Porsche 911, Leica M-series, or Rolex Submariner review? Whatever. While iPhone XS looks almost visually indistinguishable from iPhone X, there are some important distinctions both in how it looks and how it works.

The most obvious in the new gold finish. After sticking with it on iPhone 8 but not pushing it to iPhone X last year, this year's iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max both come not only in silver/white and space gray, but gold. It's not the Champagne or Rose of 6s or 7, and not even the blush of 8, it's something new. Like the new steel gold Apple Watch that it so perfectly, intentionally matches, it's deeper to my eye, still rich but not at all ostentatious. A splash of pink, a touch of brown. It's still bling, just not as fussy about it. I like it. A lot.

Since you can't anodize stainless steel, Apple brought the gold back using physical vapor deposition. Theoretically, it makes the surface tougher and more resistant to abrasions. Diamond-like carbon (DLC), which Apple famously uses to make the Black Steel Apple Watch into something akin to adamantium, is a form of PVD. We'll have to wait and see how this, different, gold version holds up.

The bands are still beyond surgical grade stainless steel and the front and back are still glass, but even stronger glass than the already even stronger glass Apple and Corning cooperated on last year.

Chemistry is typically demands a trade off: The better a glass formulation resists scratches the easier it is to crack. The better it resists cracks, the easier it is to scratch. My iPhone X survived many a drop but it did pick up more than its fair share of battle damage.

This year, Apple says it's found a way to improve both. Take that, Chemistry. Still, Apple and Corning worked miracles notwithstanding, I'm eager to see how the XS holds up over time.

The display is still edge-to-rounded-edge OLED, video still Dolby Vision and HDR 10 compatible. Photos, though, including the fancy new Smart HDR ones I'll get to in a bit, get an even higher dynamic range. 60% according to Apple.

A short but necessary rant about the display: A year later and a lot of people who really should know better still insist on calling the OLED iPhone a "Samsung display" and crediting pretty much everything about it to Samsung. That's as much bullshit now as it was then. (Maybe even more, if rumors of dual sourcing turn out to be true.) Sure, Samsung manufactured the OLED panels using its PenTile process, but it did so to Apple's order and specifications. Calling them Samsung displays, regardless of how clever that may make some feel, is like calling the A11 or A12 Bionic a "TSMC chipset or the iPhone itself a "Foxconn Phone".

Regardless of who makes it, Apple designed it and implemented it. Apple fit it to the curves of the new casing, engineered the silicon to drive it, developed the anti-aliasing and the color-shift and burn-in mitigations, and has each one individually color-calibrated at the factory. And Apple folded it back on itself so it could get rid of the chin on the bottom of the phone, something that, a year later, almost no other vendor has been able to afford or engineer.

Good sourcing is definitely a requirement but it's far from the only one. OLED on the iPhone is something everyone from the Platform Technology to Industrial Design to Display teams deserve a ton of credit for — or, if you hate the way it turned out, all the blame.

The speakers are better on iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max as well. No, they're not Dolby ATMOS, because physics. But they are wide stereo now. I'm the opposite of an audiophile so iPhone speakers have sounded fine to me for years now, but people with much better ears than mine tell me these sound even better. I do notice much better separation from both channels and, in movies, can clearly hear Monster Trucks and Quinjets zooming from one side to the other, even as dialog somehow manages to stay eerily centered.

Like iPad Pro, if you spin your iPhone 180º while watching, the audio will spin with it. That keeps left on the left, and right on the right. (If you spin the portrait orientation, all bets are off and everything just sounds kind of centered and judgy because portrait video still isn't a thing to everyone.)

The bottom of the phone is now asymmetrical across the x-axis. Z- is still fine, but Apple had to add an extra antenna to the top and bottom to enable 4x4 multi-in multi-out (MIMO) and that came at the cost of matching grills.

Yes, I can't unsee it. And I'm guessing it makes Jony Ive's eye twitch just thinking about it. But it doubles the effective ways iPhone XS can lock onto and keep a carrier signal, so I guess we'll just have to all put up with it for a while. Drowning our sorrows in Gigabit LTE, License Assisted Access (LAA — carrier aggregated unlicensed spectrum at 5 GHz), and Dual SIM support.

Dual-SIM support is shipping later this fall. In most places, it'll uses one nanoSIM and one built-in eSIM. In China, it'll use two nanoSIM. It basically means you can have two different numbers active on two different carriers at the same time and switch between them whenever you want or need to.

It works just fine with a paired Apple Watch, though if you go out running without your iPhone, you'll have to pre-select which carrier you're going to do out running with.

Particulate and liquid ingress protection — basically dust and water resistance — are even better now, rising to IP68, which, according to Apple's vendor set claims, means an iPhone XS that gets dropped in the drink can now survive at up to 2 meters for up to 30 min. Again, don't confuse this for swim or dive proofing, or for making it safe to use as an underwater camera. It's still so not. But, if you spill your favorite beverage on it, get caught in the rain, splashed on, or knock it into the bathtub or pool, chances are very good that, if you fish it out and clean it off quickly, it'll be just fine.

Inside, there's a new, tighter coil that makes the inductive charging system more efficient. It doesn't draw any additional power, it just uses the same power better. (And, like with processors, efficiency translates directly to speed.)

Apple also says the new design won't be as fussy about where exactly you place it on the inductive pad. That's great. Going wireless quickly loses appeal when you wake up next to a dead iPhone tipped just slightly off its sweet spot.

Battery chemistry still hasn't seen any significant technological improvements but Apple keeps improving all the technology around Lithium-Ion to eek out as much as it possibly can. iPhone XS is no exception. Apple says it gets slightly longer battery life than the X. I've been using both, side-by-side, for the last week and largely under the most brutal conditions imaginable: Roaming on AT&T.

Even though the battery on the XS is a year newer and far less abused, it still hung on impressively better. Enough that, despite the radios burning up in a desperate attempt to keep a signal, I could almost make it through a day. For the brief period of time that I was home, I aced the day no problem.

I'll have to do more tests, especially with the bigger battery on the bigger iPhone XS Max, but I'm hopeful that we've finally turned the corner from phones designed for light web browsing and mail reading to phones that can handle the constant screen, GPS, and data of our now social and gaming focused lives.

iPhone XS Bionic

A funny thing happened when Apple shipped the first 64-bit chipset on mobile in the iPhone 5S: It instantly catapulted to the head of the silicon pack. And the platform technologies team hasn't slowed down since. Not with the fusion high efficiency/high performance cores in iPhone 7, not with the neural engine in iPhone 8 and iPhone X, and not with the second generation Bionic in iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.

I've already explained a ton about why and how Apple is winning mobile silicon, but here's the TL;DR in pop-culture terms: If the old Bionic was the Six Million Dollar Man, the new Bionic is Iron Man (post-Extremis, of course.) And that keeps happening, in different but important ways, generation after generation.

It's 7nm now. Processes have become more marketing terms now than absolute measures, but this is the first commercial chip to ship at that tiny, tiny scale. Like forget Ant-Man shot in narrow depth of field tiny and think knocking on the door of the Quantum Realm tiny. That tiny.

Basically, it means is Apple can pack even more transistors into an even smaller die. Because performance is inextricably linked to efficiency, 7mn improves both.

The CPU is still 6-core fusion system, with two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores that can all be used together to really rock your socks off if and when needed. Those performance cores are now up to 15% faster and 40% more energy efficient. Those efficiency cores are up to 50% more efficient. In an industry where the explosive growth of mobile processing power has seemed like a hockey stick for years, those numbers might seem more modest. Like drum sticks. But, year after year, the gains are still adding up. (Apple's custom performance controller is still the secret sauce here . It's what coordinates all the tasks across to and across the cores.)

For the GPU, Apple's second fully custom design, the number of cores have gone up from 3 to 4. Tessellation and multilayer rendering and lossless memory compression have been folded in to, along with Metal 2 support, give it a 50% bump over last year's. Oh, that's where the hockey stick went… Basically, games, video editing, photo filters, and all other graphically intensive tasks may be more intensive than ever, but they don't feel that way any more. At all.

The biggest news is the Neural Engine. It's sky-rocketed from 2 cores to 8 cores, with multiprecision support, capable of 5-trillion calculations a second, and that makes it able to accelerate Apple's Core ML machine learning frameworks up to 9x — nine times! — faster at up to 1/10th the power than last year. It's also got smart compute which lets it decide, on the fly, whether any given task is better off being run on the CPU, GPU, or Neural Engine.

Forget hockey stick, that's rocket launch. (I'd call it ridiculous but in the time it takes me to type that, Bionic would have performed 15 trillion calculations and come up with 616 better words for it — and a second plan to beat Thanos.)

The Neural Engine Core recognizes frequent patterns, tries to proactively predict behavior, and learns what you do so it can help you do it. Faster and more easily, like JARVIS. So much faster, this year's Bionic can do a lot of Machine Learning tasks in real time. That lets you spin up AR experiences and map out the staging surface in a way that feels positively snappy. It also helps with Photo searches, applying intelligent filtering in apps, and more.

Face ID biometric authentication benefits not only from the more advanced Neural Engines, but faster algorithms and a faster Secure Enclave as well. Previously, when it worked, Face ID was so seamless it felt almost as though it was passive. Now it feels almost like it's not even there. (Combined with iOS 12's swipe-up-to-retry, I can't even remember the last time it failed on me.)

The new Neural Network also works with the new Image Signal Processor to make taking and editing pictures and video better than ever. That includes not only moving Portrait Mode from a custom but consistent disc blur effect to what's basically a full-on computational lens model that ingests and understand what's in a scene, and then applies a dynamic effect that can distort as it get further from center, or layer as different light sources come together.

It's like moving from photo filter to 3D render, in real time, and it gives both iPhone cameras, front and back, a real character.

Because of that, you can even change the depth effect. Currently in post, later this year in the live view, you can literally step it from f/1.4 to f/16 and watch as the computational lens model steps with it. It's still not the same as shooting with a dedicated camera and big hunk of glass, but it's so good you'll be wanting to reach for that camera and glass even less often. And that seems to be the driving goal of Apple's ISP and Neural Engine teams.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn4RbHdgJMn/?taken-by=reneritchie

There's a bunch of other cool stuff in A12 as well, including HEVC encoders and decoders to speed up 4K HDR and an audio subsystem. There's even a new, fast storage controller than can address up to 512GB of solid state chips.

So, yup, in addition to the aforementioned 4GB of memory, iPhone XS can come with up to 512GB of storage now as well.

Ultimately, though, A12 Bionic is what makes iPhone XS and iPhone XS what they are. Gold is great. New cameras are always better. But it's the silicon that currently makes Apple unmatchable.

iPhone XS Camera

If it feels like I've already covered a lot of the camera stuff in the silicon section, that's just the reality of modern computational photography. It's the bits that let us transcend the atoms. The artificial intelligence that propels us beyond physics. The… you get the idea.

What I like about Apple, though, is that it's not so reliant on the computational stuff that it forgets about the photography. There are single-camera systems, without the benefit of Apple's True Depth, but with really good glass and algorithms behind them that can segmentation mask and disc blur the hell out of photos. So much so, many people prefer them to systems like Apple's that, via dual cameras or dot projectors manage to capture real depth data to combine with segmentation masking.

I like having both because, as I think will become clearer over a short period of time, real depth sensing isn't just a one Portrait Mode trick pony.

The new dual camera system on the back has the same telephoto capabilities as last year. The wide angle, though, has a new sensor with both bigger — 1.4um — and deeper pixels. Bigger pixels drink in more light to perform better in the dark. Deeper pixels prevent cross-talk and make for a clearer image.

The amount of Focus Pixels has been doubled, so auto focus is now twice as fast. So fast, you almost forget you can change the focus if you need to because you so seldom need to.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn4i5PqgP-p/?taken-by=reneritchie

The True Tone flash (not to be confused with the True Tone display, because confusing) now has advanced flicker detection so, even if you have to resort to the flash, you still maintain better white balance and color accuracy.

The True Depth camera on the front also has a new sensor that's twice as fast for blisteringly quick selfies.

A lot of the stuff is just plain better too, from the segmentation masking, to the Portrait Lighting effects, to the algorithms that detect and preserve real-world textures even in the face of compression schemes. It's incremental but it's noticeable in everything from the edges to the expanses.

On both the back camera system and True Depth, in addition to all the fancy stuff Apple's ISP has been doing for years, in combination with the Neural Engine, it's now fast and intelligent enough to do what Apple is calling Smart HDR.

Traditional HDR takes a normal photo, a slightly overexposed photo to grab shadow detail, and a slightly underexposed photo to preserve highlights, merges them together, and locally tone maps them to product the best image possible.

Smart HDR goes several steps further. Once the camera is open, it starts buffering so that there's zero shutter lag when you go to take the photo. That's not new. That it can buffer 4 frames now in order to better isolate and capture motion is new. And pretty spectacular.

At the same time, it's also capturing underexposed versions of each frame to preserve highlight details. And, once you take the shot, it's capturing a long exposure as well so you can get even greater details from the shadows.

The smarts in Smart HDR then takes over, figures out the best pixels from each frame, and produces a single, idealized photo.

And it's all being done locally on A12 Bionic. Yes, you can rest easy knowing your selfies aren't being used to feed any other companies military drone recognition programs... (I kid, but not really. It's terrifying and cheap services aren't going to keep Sarah Connor alive when the T 2 Million already knows what she looks like.)

The difference is most noticeable when you're shooting dark subjects on bright backgrounds, like a face against the sun. High contrast shots, like someone sipping coffee with the morning sky out the window. Those twilight moments when you wish your camera could capture what your eyes and heart see. And those high-impact action shots where athletes — or pets or kids! — just won't stop moving.

Video benefits as well. Apple showed some demo footage that looks like something out of a Spielberg movie, only better. You know, all shadows and light trails and fog and forests. Even then, you can get more color from around the higher contrasts then previously possible.

That's been the story of iPhone photography going on years now. The new camera only ever has one job: To capture photos and videos that the previous camera simply never could.

And, year after year, it keeps on achieving it.

iPhone XS Accessories and Apps

iPhone X marked a significant design change from every iPhone that came before it. iPhone XS, blessedly, retains almost the same size and shape as iPhone X. The differences are mainly around the camera housing. It's only a millimeter or so either way, but it's enough that some of your snugger, tighter cases might not fit right. Roomier cases should be fine, but test gently to be sure.

(My Apple iPhone X Leather Case fits well enough on iPhone XS that I have no problem using it.)

Screen protectors, docks, and other accessories shouldn't be affected by that but, if in doubt, check with the manufacturer.

Of course, adjustable accessories, like mounts, charging pads, and anything that connects wirelessly over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth should work just fine.

• Best iPhone XS accessories
• Best iPhone XS cases
• Best wireless charging pads for iPhone XS
• Best screen protectors for iPhone XS
• Best car mounts for iPhone XS

Since iPhone XS runs iOS 12, it's compatible with all the millions of apps in the iPhone App Store. That includes all the apps from Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and all the games you could imagine. If you're coming from either Android or Windows Phone, you'll feel right at home.

Support does require developers to update, and a year later some, like Instagram, still seem lost in the weeds. iPhone XS Max may require additional tweaks due to its size and split view capabilities in landscape.

There's also a whole slew of augmented reality (AR) apps that are especially great on iPhone XS.

• All the ARKit apps you should download right now
• Best new apps for iPhone
• Best new games for iPhone

iPhone XS ships with iOS 12, Apple latest-generation mobile operating system. This is the world into which Apple is bringing iOS 12 for iPhone and iPad, which combines audacious new intelligence and assistance with fierce new protections for privacy and security.

It also contains foundational performance enhancements designed to make iOS software age as well as iPhone and iPad hardware; a giant leap forward in persistent, multi-person AR; proactive suggestions and voice-trigger-able workflows not just for core features but for any action in any app; much-needed improvements to notifications and the do-not-disturb system; full-on self and parental controls; fun new features for Messages like Memoji which put you not just into the emoji but into a new AR world.

• Read the iOS 12 review: Smarter, better, faster, bolder

iPhone XS Pricing and Availability

iPhone XS starts at $999 and iPhone XS Mac, $1099 for the 64GB versions in either silver, space gray, or gold. If you stream everything and keep all your stuff on the cloud, you might just be fine with that. Otherwise you'll want to check out the 256GB or all-new 512GB versions.

While those up-front prices are hitting premium laptop-levels, between Apple's Upgrade Program and new carrier leasing deals, there are a variety of options available in the U.S. to get, essentially, zero financing and low monthly payments. If you want to buy unlocked, yeah, sticker shock.

In many regions, with iPhone XS comes Apple Stores and AppleCare. For the last couple of years, Apple has been redoing the stores with better Genius support, new Creative Pros to help with non-technical support, and Apple Today as a hub for education and arts. There are all sorts of free classes, workshops, photo walks, and more. So much so, that it's impossible to accurately convey the true value of iPhone without considering the Apple Stores that come with them.

Standard Apple Care covers you against the usual issues for a year. Apple Care+, which costs a higher-than-usual $199 for iPhone XS, covers you for two years, including up to two $29 screen or $99 water/other repairs/replacements.

New this year are monthly payment options for AppleCare+ and new Theft and Loss Protection. Thanks to Find my iPhone, which you have to turn on at time of purchase, Apple can digitally verify a stolen and wiped iPhone and so doesn't need to make you jump through hoops, including filling out police reports, to get a replacement. There is, however, a $299 deductible.

If, like me, you're not always as careful with your technology as you should be, then you, like me, might extract significant value from AppleCare+ over the course of a couple years.

Since I'm both clumsy and paranoid, I always get AppleCare+ and I've made use of it enough that I consider it a reasonable investment.

Apple Store's also offer a wide range of free classes and programs to help get you started with your first iPhone and even your first creative professional career. It's part of the value you're paying for when you get an iPhone, so take advantage of it.

Apple may charge premium prices, but it also provides tremendous value in exchange, both through it's ecosystem of compatible products and services, and its support.

iPhone XS Conclusion

Eleven years ago, Apple launched the original iPhone and kicked off a decade of modern, mobile revolution. Last year, Apple launched the iPhone X, intent on kicking off the next decade. The former rode the convergence of ubiquitous cellular networking, multitouch interface, and miniaturization to become the most successful product in the history of products. As effectively limitless broadband, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence from silicon to software now begin to converge, the latter is trying to do the same. And, Apple's next step towards that future is this year's iPhone XS.

Yes, it's an S year again. After taking a break and naming last year's swan-song to bezels and home buttons the iPhone 8 instead of the iPhone 7s, Apple is back to it's number (or, I guess, numeral in this case), number (numeral) + S convention. For some, that S has come to connote a minor, insignificant, even boring iteration on the previous year's hardware. For others, that S represents a polish, perfection, and boost in performance that makes this year's hardware the one to get.

Looking back on the history of speed boosts, Siri, Touch ID, 3D Touch, and inductive charging, and it's pretty clear that when the casing becomes a known target, the various platform teams from chipset to camera, can hit really hit those internal upgrades. Hard.

That's absolutely the case with iPhone XS, which gains the world's first 7-nanometer processor with A12 Bionic, faster Face ID, wider stereo speakers, Gigabit LTE, dual-SIM, Smart HDR, adjustable background blur, stereo video recording, IP68 water resistance, a new gold finish.

And, oh yeah, an all-new 6.5-in Max model.

Unlike last year, where Apple positively strutted out iPhone X on stage — hey, if I was 2017 Tim Cook and I somehow managed to snatch 2018 Tim Cook's iPhone and launch it early, I'd have strutted as well — this year the company was far more careful. A new iPhone X, not a new iPhone.

In other words, Apple didn't position either the starting-at-$999 XS or the starting-at-$1099 XS Max as revolutionary. Given how much technology Apple pulled forward into iPhone X last year, there was simply no way it could could have, through engineering and marketing. What Apple did do was quickly and carefully position it not as what's all new but as what inevitably comes next.

I don't think Apple intends iPhone X owners to rush out and upgrade to iPhone XS, industry insiders, tech enthusiasts, and those on yearly programs, will of course do just that. Rather, I think Apple intends these new models to appeal to those who didn't yet make the leap to an all-new iPhone. Those who always avoid rev. A boards, or who stuck with Android or with the Home button, or who were simply waiting on a bigger screen.

And, I think for them, iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max are exactly the new phones they've been waiting for.

See at Apple

Apple announced three new iPhones during the September keynote, and while we may all be enticed by shiny new things, you may be debating whether or not to upgrade this year.

For the 2018 lineup of iPhones, Apple is introducing the iPhone XR, Xs, and Xs Max. That's a lot of phones to choose from, and a lot of money to spend. Here are five reasons why it's not worth it to upgrade to the iPhone Xs or Xs Max.

1. Overall cost
2. Virtually identical to the iPhone X
3. The iPhone XR is a better value
4. Very minor upgrades from last year
5. Your current phone is good enough

1. Overall cost

The biggest reason to not upgrade is the price. The top of the line iPhone Xs Max with 512GB of storage costs about $1,500. Think about that — you can buy a new computer with that kind of money!

Even if you don't opt for the top of the line Max model, the regular iPhone Xs starts at $1,000, and the model you'd probably want, the 256GB Xs, is $1,149. That's still a lot for a phone.

If you're on a budget, or don't want to finance your phone but want to upgrade, try picking up an iPhone X instead. Unfortunately, Apple has taken the iPhone X off of its website, so you'll have to find other means of obtaining it, but a used one costs around $700, which is far cheaper than a new iPhone Xs.

2. Virtually identical to the iPhone X

Speaking of the iPhone X, when you do a side-by-side comparison of the iPhone X and the Xs models on the Apple website, the features are pretty much the same. Not to mention the fact that the X and Xs look exactly the same, so if you're wanting to show off that you have the latest iPhone, it's rather pointless (unless you get the expensive Max).

That's right — you get pretty much the same dual lens and TrueDepth cameras, video recording (very minor spec bumps), screens, and more. The only real differences are the A12 Bionic chip with improved Neural Engine in the Xs, and one more meter of water resistance.

If you don't already have the iPhone X, then sure, the Xs models can be a good upgrade from what you already have. But if you already have an iPhone X, then there's really no point in upgrading unless you just want to throw away over a thousand dollars.

3. The iPhone XR is a better value

Let's not forget that Apple also introduced the iPhone XR, which won't be available until Oct. 19. However, if you can hold out that long, then it proves to be a better value for your money.

The iPhone XR comes with most of the same features as the iPhone Xs models, but with a more reasonable price tag. The iPhone XR starts at $749, and it just sacrifices the screen (LCD Liquid Retina instead of OLED), has a single camera system, no 3D Touch, and a longer battery than the iPhone 8 Plus. Another bonus with the XR devices is the fact that they come in fun colors, including blue and red on launch.

If you want most of the Xs features but without the sticker shock of the price, then the XR is an overall better device for your wallet.

4. Very minor upgrades from last year

Pressing back on the iPhone X, honestly, the improvements Apple made for all of the new iPhones is very minor. If you have an iPhone X already, the "upgrades" are just tiny spec bumps compared to last year. The iPhone X was already an excellent phone, and these new models just don't bring enough to the table for iPhone X owners to upgrade.

However, non-iPhone X users may be able to justify getting an Xs, just because it has slightly better improvements over last year's device, and it's time to ditch that Home button. Still, you'll want to think about the overall cost, as well as our last point...

5. Your current phone is good enough

You may think your old phone's running a bit slow, and that's fine. If that's the case though, and you want to get a new device just for that reason, you may want to hold off.

That's because you should try putting iOS 12 on your current device first and see how it performs. Apple does say that each new iteration of iOS makes old phones feel snappier again, but really, iOS 12 helps. Numerous reports from people running the iOS 12 beta on older phones say that their phones feel much faster and smoother after using iOS 12. So give iOS 12 a try first before making any decisions.

Another reason to hold off on upgrading is the fact that Apple is designing their phones to last for a longer period of time. They mentioned in the keynote that they're going to stop mining the earth to make new iPhones, and this is possible because they're made to last.

Are you getting a new phone this year?

Are you upgrading to the iPhone Xs or Xs Max? Or are you waiting for the more reasonably priced iPhone XR? Or are you skipping the upgrade this year and holding out for 2019? Let us know in the comments!

Apple just announced not one, not two, but three new iPhones at the special event last Wednesday. Now you may be thinking, "my current phone is working just fine, why would I need to upgrade?" This happens every year, and you may need reasons to justify your purchase if you intend on upgrading what you have right now.

If you need some help, here's five reasons why you should upgrade to the iPhone Xs or Xs Max.

1. Better camera
2. More storage
3. Dual SIM capability
4. Improved battery life
5. Larger screens in smaller form factors

1. Better camera

With every iPhone iteration, Apple improves the cameras, and the iPhone XS is no exception. While Apple didn't bump up the megapixel specs (it remains at 12MP like the last few iPhone models), they brought a few other improvements to the dual camera system.

With the Xs and Xs Max, iPhone photographers get larger sensors, improved TrueTone flash, "Smart HDR" mode, and the new ability to edit a Portrait Mode image's depth of field after the fact.

The Smart HDR utilizes several technologies at once to bring out more highlight and shadow details in your photos. This is possible by having faster sensors, enhanced ISP, and better algorithms in the software.

Portrait Mode has been a huge game-changer since Apple introduced it back on the iPhone 7 Plus, and now you'll be able to finally edit the bokeh and depth of field on Portrait Mode images after you take them. This allows for total control over the outcome of your shots, creating even more amazing portraits. This also applies to the TrueDepth selfie camera, so you can capture perfect selfies with minimal effort.

2. More storage

With amazing camera systems that can take amazing photos and even 4K video capture, the storage capacity can fill up quickly. Fortunately, the iPhone Xs comes with larger storage, up to 512GB. Last year, the max storage capacity offered was 256GB. While that's plenty for most people, if you install a ton of games, take a lot of photos and record video often, then that space fills up fast.

If you would rather not have to worry about running out of space on your iPhone ever again, then you should get an iPhone Xs or Xs Max in 512GB. I mean, that's half a terabyte in your pocket!

3. Dual SIM capability

Do you often need to use two smartphones, perhaps one for personal and the other for work? Then the iPhone Xs' ability for dual SIM would be a reason to upgrade.

The iPhone Xs is able to have this functionality due to its new support of eSIM. However, you'll need to be in one of the 10 countries that use eSIM, and your carrier must also support it. The process of adding a secondary number to an eSIM is done by adding a plan to the eSIM, which can be a tad tricky.

While we won't cover the steps involved here, just know that if you need two numbers but just want one phone, the iPhone Xs lets you do so.

4. Improved battery life

The iPhone X battery life sat somewhere between an iPhone 8 and an 8 Plus. In terms of upgrades this year, if you want more battery life, then an iPhone Xs Max is the way to go.

With the iPhone Xs, the battery only lasts 30 minutes more than the original iPhone X. However, the iPhone Xs Max provides another hour and a half, so if you need a larger battery that'll get you through the entire day, the Max is the one you want.

5. Larger screens in smaller form factors

If you're coming from an iPhone 8 Plus, then the iPhone Xs would be a great upgrade. That's because the XS comes with a 5.8" inch OLED screen, which is larger than the 8 Plus' 5.5" screen, and it's a smaller form factor. So if you find the size of the Plus devices to be a bit unwieldy at times, then the Xs is worth upgrading to.

However, if you already have an iPhone X, but have been wanting even more screen, then the Max is for you. The massive Max provides a huge 6.5" inch OLED screen, and it's about the size of a Plus device overall. So for those who don't mind a behemoth of a phone, then the Max provides even more information and visuals at-a-glance.

Are you excited for iPhone Xs?

We can't wait to get our hands on the iPhone Xs when it's released! Are you planning to get an iPhone Xs or Xs Max? Sound off in the comments!

Apple announced a bunch of new hardware at its September event, and naturally, your wallet is itching to know how much it's going to be spending on acquiring the goodies.

U.S. pricing is always announced on stage, but for the rest of the world, there's more fact-finding involved. If you're in the UK, here's your complete guide to pricing for everything new from Apple.

iPhone Xs and Xs Max

2018 is an 's' year for Apple and so we get the Xs and the new, largest ever iPhone: the Xs Max. Here's what they both cost in British money.

In both cases, the iPhone Xs Max is a £100 premium over the smaller phone. Apple's financing plans are offered through Barclays and PayPal Credit if you're looking to spread the cost.

Pre-orders are open now with despatch times in 1-2 weeks.

iPhone XR

The age of the home button is now officially over as Apple's other new iPhone, the XR, follows the design introduced last year with the iPhone X. Here's what it costs.

• 64GB - £749
• 128 GB - £799
• 256 GB - £899

All colors cost the same and pre-orders open on October 19.

Apple Watch Series 4

Apple's latest version of the Watch will be available on September 21, with prices on par with some models of last year's Series 3.

• Series 4 with GPS only will cost from £399
• Series 4 with GPS and cellular will cost from £499 with aluminum casing and a choice of sport bands.
• Series 4 with GPS and cellular will cost from £699 with Stainless Steel casing and sport band.
• Series 3 with GPS and cellular will cost from £799 with Stainless Steel casing and Milanese Loop.

Series 4 doesn't just come in these forms, though, as usual, there's a new Nike+ model in town with its own unique attributes. Here's how the prices break down for those.

• Series 4 Nike+ with GPS only will cost from £399 with aluminum casing and Nike sport band.
• Series 4 Nike+ with GPS and cellular will cost from £499 with aluminum casing and Nike sport band.

The exclusive Hermes variant of the Apple Watch returns for Series 4. Prices start at £1,249 for the Hermes watches, increasing depending on which band you go for.

Of note is that if you're planning to buy the cellular version of the Series 3, the only carriers that will offer data for it right now are EE and Vodafone.

Discounts on existing models

As you'd expect Apple has kept on a selection of its existing products. Here's what you can get and how much on previous-gen hardware.

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus

The iPhone 6s is still kicking around and here's what you'll be paying now for one of these.

Updated Sept. 17, 2018: Updated to reflect all the 2018 announcements!

The iPhone XS is the first member of the lineup to sport an IP68 water resistance rating. This means that the iPhone XS is protected against "harmful dust," as well as submersion in more than one meter of water for up to 30 minutes. Apple says, in fact, that the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max could survive submersion in up to two meters of water for 30 minutes.

But this is a far cry from being waterproof. If you leave your iPhone in the water long enough, that water will still eventually enter the device and start to effect the electronics in the phone, and eventually cause it to fail completely. While you might get lucky if your phone takes a dive of say, three meters, there's no guarantee, so you'll want to be careful around pools, lakes, and other bodies of water.

A lot of phones have been given the IP68 water resistance rating in the last few years, and it's the highest rating for both dust protection and water submersion available. But it's telling that there's not a rating on the IP scale that means something is completely waterproof. There are ratings for surviving jets of water and steam, but nothing to say "this thing is completely safe from water."

If you're waiting on an iPhone that has no vulnerabilities to water or other liquids, you're going to be waiting for a long time. Apple's done a pretty good job in sealing the iPhone up, but there are weak points in any system. It's possible that water could enter your phone through the Lightning port or speaker grill. The point is this: just be careful.

With the iPhone XS, Apple has done a better job in trying to keep the device safe from more than just water. On stage at the company's 2018 iPhone event, Phil Schiller noted that the phone was tested with water, orange juice, and even beer. This means that it's been tested not only against liquids, but liquids that might have a more corrosive affect than water.

Even if you bought a new iPhone a year ago, this year's model may just be too much of a good thing to pass up. If that's the case, then here's how to get rid of your old phone and upgrade to the next best thing.

How to purchase your new iPhone XS

Ready to buy your brand new iPhone? There are a few different routes to take, but the best option for buying unlocked is to buy straight from Apple's site.

• How to Buy the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max Unlocked
• Best way to buy your new iPhone
• What you need to know before buying an iPhone at the Apple Store

How to transfer data from your old iPhone to your new one

This is important if you want to keep photos, videos, messages, and more, because you'll be wiping your old iPhone before selling it or trading it in. If you want to keep the contents of your old iPhone, here's how:

How to transfer data from your old phone to your new iPhone

How to prepare your old iPhone for sale or trade-in

If you're planning on keeping your older iPhone, then skip this step. But if you are going to be getting rid of it, then there are important things to do before selling it, trading it in, or giving it away. You must sign out of absolutely everything, including iCloud, iMessage, iTunes, Find My iPhone, and any other accounts you have on there.

Then you'll want to completely reset your older iPhone, content, settings, and all. That way, you're not leaving any personal data on there, and the person you're selling it to (if that's the route you're taking) has a clean slate to work with (and can unlock the phone without a code or anything like that).

How to prepare your iPhone for sale

How to sell or trade in your old iPhone

Once your device is prepped and ready to leave your hands for good, there are a few ways to get rid of it. You could trade it in directly to Apple, sell it online, or simply give it away. You'll want to first make sure you transfer all your data to your new iPhone, and then you'll want to look at how you want to sell or trade in your old one.

How to sell your iPhone

Questions?

Let us know in the comments below!

Color is so personal. It's distinctive, sure. Each one has pros and cons, absolutely. But, when it comes to going out in classic black or blinging it up, a lot of it comes down individual taste and personal preference. Still, if you're trying to choose the perfect iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max for you, there are a few color factors you should consider.

• Distraction dangers
• Discoloration doubts
• Withstanding wear
• Slick vs. stick
• Cases closed
• Coolness concerns
• Who should get silver?
• Who should get gold?
• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Distraction dangers

With older iPhone models, when you chose the back casing color you also had to consider what was up front. Space Gray came with black but silver and gold came with white. Red, over the years, has come once with each.

And, unfortunately, some found the white faceplate distracting, especially for videos and video games.

iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max changes all this. Now, whether you choose silver, space gray, or the all-new gold, all the front plates are black. You're welcome, says the edge-to-edge design.

• You no longer need to worry about faceplate color. Whether you watch video or play video games, all new iPhone XS models are black up front and distraction free all around.

Discoloration doubts

One thing that shouldn't worry anyone anymore is the idea that the light-colored glass on the backs of the silver or gold iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max could get stained or otherwise discolored.

We've all learned to be deeply anxious when we wear white clothes or have white furniture or carpets for that very reason. Apple, though, took an extra six months to ship the white iPhone 4 and in that time the company nailed it.

The glass back on my iPhone 4 still looks as clean and crisp as the day I bought it in 2011, and all the subsequent iPhones I've bought have also have stayed every bit as bright.

• If you're worried about an iPhone with a light back staining or discoloring, or the metallic finishes fading, stop. It'll be fine.

Withstanding wear

iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have glass backs and stainless steel bands with a clear or vapor finish. Polished (silver) stainless steel can scratch. Vapor coating, like the black DLC (diamond-like) is much, much tougher. Still, all finishes can scratch over time.

On the silver iPhones, small scratches have less contrast, which makes them harder to see, depending on the lighting. Gold iPhones are somewhere in the middle. Space gray iPhones have a higher contrast, so scratches are a bit more noticeable.

Some people won't care. To them, aging is part of what makes great objects great, like an old leather bag, favorite t-shirt, or the Millennium Falcon. Others don't ever want to see any wear.

• If you hate the look of scratches, silver iPhones are your best bet.
• If you like one of the other colors more, you can learn to love the wear or get a protective case.

Cases closed

If you're the type of person who immediately locks your new iPhone XS or iPhone XS Plus up in a heavy-duty case or wallet, you might think the color doesn't matter so much. Fair enough.

Most cases will still show some of the color though, be it the Apple logo, ports, edges, or the faceplate. In other words, just because you'll be wearing a jacket doesn't mean you the clothes beneath don't matter.

Cases can absolutely be used to change up a look, but you should still be happy with the basic look. Choose a color you love, then add a case you love to complete it.

• If you want your case to "pop", a black or silver iPhone will let the accessory be the star.
• If you want your case to complement or fade away, a gold, rose gold or (Product) RED iPhone will share the stage.

Coolness concerns

Silver has a classic elegance about it, and gold gets attention. Especially iPhone XS gold, which is less intense and slightly blushing on the back, but full on bling around the edges. Space gray is equivalent to this little black shirt or dress — it goes with anything.

• If you want a classic, stick with space gray or silver.
• If you want some extra flair, go with gold.

Who should get the space gray iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max?

If you want a color that won't distract you when you game or watch video, that absolutely won't discolor, even if it does show wear and tear a little more visibly, that's closer to timeless even if it's also more reserved, then get the space gray iPhone.

It's the classic for a reason.

• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Who should get the silver iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max?

If you want a color that isn't so dark but still doesn't call a lot of attention to itself, and that doesn't show scuffs and scrapes as much, then get the silver and white iPhone is for you.

• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Who should get the gold iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max?

If you like the luxury look, aren't distracted by white borders, don't mind the middle ground when it comes to how wear and tear shows, and basically know bling is your thing, get the gold iPhone. It's almost as rosey.

• How to sell your old iPhone
• See iPhone at Apple

Still undecided?

If you're still not sure about which color you should get, jump into our iPhone forums and the best community on the web will happily help you out.

At the end of the day, the only real answer is this — get the color you like best. Nothing else matters. Just close your eyes, picture your iPhone in your hand, and pay attention to what color you're picturing. Then buy that. And if you change your mind later, you can get a case.

Once you've decided, tell me — which one are you getting?

I'll be back with much, much more on the brand new iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max, but for now, sit back, grab a snack, and watch, watch, watch!

When looking at the IP rating, the '6' and the '7' or '8' are actually two different numbers. In the rating, the first number refers to a product's protection against solid matter, while the second number deals with liquid. Under solid protection, a rating of '6' means that the product is protected against harmful dust and other particulates.

Under liquid protection, a rating of '8,' the highest available, means that the device is protected from immersion in water deeper than one meter for 30 minutes. In the case of the iPhone XS, it means two meters.

Apple has introduced new versions of the iPhone: the iPhone XS and the iPhone XR. There's also the iPhone XS Max, but in terms of IP rating, it's the same as the smaller iPhone XS. In the case of Apple's latest iPhones, the difference between the iPhone XR and iPhone XS is the matter of a meter.

The iPhone XS, with an IP68 rating, is protected from both harmful dust and submersion in water up to two meters deep for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the iPhone XR has an IP67 rating, meaning that it's protected from harmful dust, as well as submersion in water up to one meter deep for up to 30 minutes.

It's worth noting that previous iPhones, including the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X all had IP67 ratings, as did the iPhone 7. So if you own any of these phones, want to upgrade, and have found that your previous device's protection was enough for you, you might want to consider the iPhone XR, which goes up for pre-order on October 19.

If, however, you want that extra meter of protection, you'll want to check out the iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max.

When talking about this subject, it's important to note that we're actually talking about water resistance, not waterproofing. Saying something is waterproof would imply that water can't damage it or get inside it. That's simply not true for these phones. After being submerged for about 30 minutes, water can start to get into the device itself.

For most people, the difference in IP ratings probably won't be enough to sway their purchase. But if you spend a lot of time around water with your iPhone, that rating might make all the difference as to whether your iPhone survives a plunge or is forever consigned to the briny deep.