iPhone XS v/s iPhone X: Is it worth an upgrade?

iPhone XS v/s iPhone X: Is it worth an upgrade?

Hardik Gandhi   September 13, 2018

As the successor to last year's tenth-anniversary edition iPhone X, Apple has launched the iPhone XS.
The new iPhone retains the edge-to-edge design of its predecessor but comes with an improved display and under the hood upgrades.
And given the iPhone XS is priced at $999, the same as iPhone X, the question is if it is worth the upgrade.
Here's a specifications-wise comparison.

In context: Apple iPhone XS v/s iPhone X: The differences

13 Sep 2018iPhone XS v/s iPhone X: Is it worth an upgrade?

As the successor to last year's tenth-anniversary edition iPhone X, Apple has launched the iPhone XS.
The new iPhone retains the edge-to-edge design of its predecessor but comes with an improved display and under the hood upgrades.
And given the iPhone XS is priced at $999, the same as iPhone X, the question is if it is worth the upgrade.
Here's a specifications-wise comparison.


Design At a glance

In terms of design, there's nothing new on the iPhone XS. So, you still have an edge-to-edge display with a notch that houses the front camera and Face ID module.

On the back, there's a dual camera setup and glass panel that enables wireless charging.

However, iPhone XS is now IP68 rated (iPhone X is IP67 rated) and is covered in a tougher glass.
All about the screen
DisplayAll about the screen

The iPhone XS has same 5.8-inch OLED Super Retina display with 458ppi of pixel density and 2,436x1,125 resolution.

However, Apple says the new display now offers 60% greater dynamic range of colors than its predecessor.

Further, the iPhone XS display also gets support for HDR 10, Dolby Vision, 120Hz touch sensitive, and the less-talked-about 3D Touch which debuted with the iPhone 6S.




Camera

For the shutterbugs and selfie lovers

In terms of camera, like the iPhone X, its successor sports a 12MP (f/1.8) wide-angle camera with OIS, 1.4-micron pixels, paired with a 12MP (f/2.4) telephoto lens with OIS and 2x optical zoom.

However, Apple has offered a faster sensor, a new image processing chipset that offers Smart HDR.

Up front, iPhone XS has the same 7MP TruDepth RGB camera with f/2.2 aperture.




Internals
All the important stuff

The most important upgrade is the new 7nm A12 Bionic chip which has a 6-core CPU, and a 4-core GPU.

The chipset comes paired with a new Apple-designed Neural Engine which can perform 5 trillion operations per second (600 billion operations on the older iteration).

Further, the new processor is 15% percent faster and 40% more power-efficient than the A11 chipset on iPhone X.






Sensors & Software

Lifeblood of your smartphone

In terms of software, there's the standard set of sensors you expect on a flagship smartphone.

Further, Apple's Face ID which debuted with the iPhone X, has now improved, thanks to the new Neutral Engine.

In terms of software, the iPhone XS will run iOS 12 out-of-the-box while iPhone X will get it as an OTA, starting September 17.

Battery & Connectivity

Staying connected

In terms of battery, Apple has said the iPhone XS will last half an hour more than iPhone X which packs a 2,716mAh battery.

Further, all connectivity options remain the same as seen on the iPhone X except for two major changes - Gigabit LTE that offers up to 1Gbps speed on 4G and support for dual SIMs (eSIM+Physical SIM).
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    There's also a taller 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max
    Alongside the iPhone XS, Apple has also introduced a new 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max. The bigger iPhone packs the exact same specs as the iPhone XS but comes with a higher 2688x1242 resolution, and is claimed to last 60 minutes more than its smaller sibling.



Our result
How things stack up!

The iPhone XS is surely the most advanced iPhone yet. There's a new A12 chipset that will offer improved performance, better image processing, and graphical rendering.

However, starting at $999, like its predecessor, the new iPhone isn't much of an upgrade over the iPhone X.

That said, if you're on an iPhone 8 or older, the leap to iPhone XS will be worth it.




    Pricing and Availability
    The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max will be offered in 64GB/256GB/512GB storage configurations with prices starting at $999 and $1099, respectively. These iPhones will become available starting September 28 in India.

Source



 

No Cutting Corners on the iPhone X

No Cutting Corners on the iPhone X

Hardik Gandhi   January 24, 2018

When the iPhone X launched, a lot of designers were put off about the screen shape. Those complaints have mostly died down, but I haven’t seen much design-nerd talk about cool corner treatment details. Fortunately, deep nerd shit is my specialty.

iPhone X screen shape

What’s Your Angle?

When you’re starting a design like this, the obvious, and comically cheaper option is to make all corners square. Machines exist and/or are calibrated to make those screens, so keeping edges squared requires fewer manufacturing changes and less talent along the pathway to production.

Everyone knows how to make a right angle — designers don’t have to do math, engineers need fewer calculations, the people making the machine are clear on what to do.

And yet, let’s examine how crappy all-square corners would look:

I’m a pixelated bear cub. Rawr.

Once Apple knew they wanted to take advantage of new full-screen technology, that gave them the opportunity to alter screen shape because they would need to address the manufacturing process anyway. Presumably, the expense was mostly built in.

Still, there were lots of ugly ways to do this:

Meh.

This is where they landed:

That’s better.

Screen Corners

Here’s where the nerd part comes in, iPhone X rounded screen corners don’t use the classic rounding method where you move in a straight line and then arc using a single quadrant of a circle. Instead, the math is a bit more complicated. Commonly called a squircle, the slope starts sooner, but is more gentle.

The difference is real subtle, even in gif-form, but here we go:

Difference between common rounded rectangle maths and Apple maths.

Apple has been doing this to the corners of laptops and iMacs for years, but this type of rounding didn’t penetrate iOS until version 7. This shape has classically been difficult to achieve, because it wasn’t available in 2D design editors, though that’s starting to change. Read about it more detail here.

The Notch

Now let’s talk about the notch itself. The left and right sides have two rounded corners. Because of the curve falloff, one curve doesn’t complete before the next one starts — they blend seamlessly into each other. As a result, no tangent line on this edge actually hits a perfect vertical.

Ooo. Fancy.

Come Correct

iPhone X templates I’ve seen out there don’t 100 percent duplicate the official shape, probably because it was either too hard to make or they haven’t noticed. This is why it’s good practice to use official assets from Apple, found in the design resources section of the developer site for creating icons and mockups.

Future iterations of this design will surely alter these sizes, so it will be interesting to compare how hardware sensor evolution impacts design shifts.

Overall, these decisions seem minor, but from a design viewpoint they’re fairly opinionated. Even when designers are willing to spend social capital to push these ideas, most organizations won’t put resources behind them.

Rounding the Bend

One of the things I love about indie apps is their ability to be opinionated. It’s nearly impossible to ship strong viewpoints from larger companies where there are fifty people in a room examining angles. So it’s cool to see Apple still has the ability to take a strong stance in this way.

Sweating thousands of minor details is what separates Apple from other companies. Their ability to do that is hard-won, but damn it’s pretty to watch.

The iPhone is Dead

The iPhone is Dead

Hardik Gandhi   January 24, 2018

I’ve switched back-and-forth between iPhone and Android in the past and I’ve always felt the iPhone edged out any Android phone, but not any more.

I switched to a Galaxy S8 months ago and I don’t see myself going back to iPhone, even the X. The iPhone is dead to me. Here’s why.

iPhones don’t age well

On my iPhone 6+, most apps crash on first open. Apps freeze for 5–10 seconds whenever launched or switched to. I lose 3–4%/min on my battery and Apple Support insists that my battery is perfectly healthy. I went through “apps using significant power” and uninstalled most of them.

On top of all of this, it was recently discovered that Apple is intentionally degrading the user experience based on your battery quality. Yes, they’re releasing a software update to give transparency to users and reducing the cost of a battery replacement (which is on a months-long backlog — more on Apple support later), but it feels like planned obsolescence and they’re just trying to avoid losing a class-action lawsuit.

The video app is busted. Many times I record a video and all I see is a zero-second-long black frame saved. I’ve given up on taking photos because the camera app takes forever to start up and has seconds of shutter lag.

This phone worked just fine three years ago. The minimal benefits of the previous iOS updates are far outweighed by the horrible user experience it’s created.

I have the original Moto X (from 2013) and it still runs buttery smooth.

AppleCare and Apple support are incompetent

This isn’t related to my previous iPhone, but it illustrates the lack of quality of Apple.

Recently, a bottom rubber foot on my MacBook came off. It was still under AppleCare so I took it into the store, my first time to the Apple Genius Bar. They told me that AppleCare wouldn’t cover the replacement because it was cosmetic. How the rubber foot isn’t part of the laptops utility is astonishing. When you typed on it, it would wobble. To fix it, the entire bottom chassis had to be replaced, which would cost $250.

I told the Apple rep that I was surprised and I’d call Apple Care later. I asked him to file a ticket for tracking and he replied that he had.

Later, I called Apple Care and they assured me that the replacement was covered. They also said they didn’t find a ticket in the system from the Apple rep that I had spoken to earlier. They told me I would have to go back into the store to get a rep to look at the physical laptop again and verify the foot was missing. Frustrated, I asked them to call the original store I had visited to confirm. They agreed and and eventually confirmed it.

Before this, I had asked them to send the part to an Apple store that was closer to my house and not the original Apple store that I had visited. A week later, I received a call confirming the part had arrived at the store furthest away. Surprised, I asked them to send it to the other store (which was ~15 miles away). They said that they’d have to send it back to the warehouse and then the other store would have to order the part.

A week later, the other store finally receives the part. I visited the store, they took my laptop, and I waited a couple of hours to replace the bottom. The rep came back with the laptop telling me that it’s ready. I inspected the bottom and the rubber foot was still missing. Confused, he sent the laptop back. The rep returned five minutes later with a new chassis, fixing the rubber foot. So not only had they some how not repaired the bottom originally, in reality it only takes a tech five minutes to repair it, not hours.

The cascading incompetence at Apple support was mind blowing.

Related to the battery issue above, if you try to replace your battery you’re facing months-long delays. On top of that, you have to mail your phone in or take it into a store, with both options facing the risk that you’re without a phone for as much as a week. Who can really live without their phone that long? Is this incompetence or intentionally meant to drive people away from replacing their batteries?

iPhone’s hardware design feels dated

Even the iPhone X feels dated compared to the S8. This is much more of a personal opinion, but the S8 feels damn sexy in your hand. When I watch a movie, the true blacks of the OLED screen just blend in to the body. It feels like a bezel-less phone from a science fiction movie. Whereas the iPhone’s design still separates the screen from the chassis with bezels.

More objectively, even thought it was released after the S8, the screen on the iPhone X isn’t as good. It’s lower resolution and it has more bezel.

Here are the specs: Galaxy S8–5.8-inch Super AMOLED, 2960 x 1440 pixels (570 ppi pixel density), 1000 nits, 83.6% screen-to-body ratio vs iPhone X — 5.8-inch 18.5:9 True Tone OLED, 2436 x 1125 pixels (458 ppi), 625 nits, 82.9%, screen-to-body ratio.

Plus, iPhone X has that notch. As a developer I abhor it. As a user it’s annoying to have wasted space when, for example, I’m browsing the web.

Price

Not only is S8 a better phone than iPhone X, it’s significantly cheaper. I just bought my S8 and a 256GB SD card for less than $700. The equivalent iPhone X would have cost me $1,252, plus another $10 for a dongle to use my headphones. That’s nearly the price of two S8s.

Android and S8 has better features

Where to start? Here’s an incomplete list in no particular order.

• LastPass auto-fill. Sure, this is an app feature, but it’s impossible to build on iPhone. This felt like a game changer when I switched, shaving a ton of time setting up my phone.
• NFC for two-factor auth. You can use a Yubikey on an iPhone but it requires a dongle (like everything else these days).
• SD card slot. I ran out of space on my previous iPhone and had no way to deal with it other than buy a new phone or delete apps.
• Trusted locations for unlock. It’s a huge time saver to not have to constantly unlock my phone at home or in the office.
• Samsung Pay works on any credit card reader, Apple Pay doesn’t, which hamstrings its use case massively.
• The notifications are better. Interactions are great, they actually work, and the overall design is better.
• I don’t have to buy a dongle for my headphones.
• Androids unlocking mechanisms are generally faster than iPhone X’s facial recognition. And there are more options. And the fingerprint scanner feels better on the back.
• More battery saving options.
• GearVR.
• Built-in call spam detection. Call spam has been ramping up in the United States so this is very welcome.
• A free hardware button. Yes, that side hardware button on the S8 that’s dedicated to Bixby sucks at first. However, with BXActions, you can make it do whatever you want, like triggering the flashlight. Now I wish every phone had an extra hardware button.
• Google backs up your data. I’m thrilled not to have to use iTunes any more (which deserves a completely different post) or be forced to pay for iCloud.
• An option to keep the phone on if you’re looking at it.

iOS is suffocating

On Android, you can install apps that automatically update your wallpaper, change your entire app launcher (I’m using Evie) including a dedicated search bar, start Google Now by swiping up, handle your SMS. Also custom phone dialers, Facebook Messenger chat heads, Samsung Edge (surprisingly I like this feature). You can even download apps outside of the app store.

Did I mention that Google Photos actually always syncs in the background? Versus the iPhone, where you need to open it every 10 minutes to make sure it’s syncing. Custom keyboards are reliable, whereas on iOS they still crash randomly.

iOS doesn’t offer any of this because they restrict what developers can build.

Even if you eliminate all of the “power user” features above, I think the S8, and Android broadly, is a better choice for the average user.

Siri is still next to useless

Google is just hands down better at search, including things that you would imagine Siri would be good at by now, like dictation. I think everyone already agrees with this point, so moving on.

Apple doesn’t feel like Apple

Apple has generally been a fast-follow copier, perfecting features that that have already been released. Lately they’ve just felt like a slow follower that has the same or fewer features.

For example, Samsung devices have had wireless charging for a while now and Apple is just catching up with the same feature set. The charging speed is the same.

Samsung is also experimenting with fascinating things like VR and DeX. Are they perfect? No. But I also don’t believe that Apple is capable of swooping in and perfecting them now.

Apple’s “new and innovative features” aren’t impressive either. Animoji could be done with a standard camera, but they’re locked the the iPhone X. It’s pure marketing to sell more Xs. I’ve had force touch for years now and have never used it. And the list goes on.

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The True Reason You Want The iPhone X But can’t admit

The True Reason You Want The iPhone X But can’t admit

Hardik Gandhi   January 17, 2018

The world is on the brink.

Evil kills good people with mass shootings, tensions with North Korea increase daily, and actors abuse actors as sexual playthings.

Yet despite the torture of humanity, thousands of people complain about the iPhone X’s notch.

Not me. I enjoyed the iPhone tittle tattle. In the run up to the iPhone X’s release I salivated over articles on the X’s lush colours, OLED screen, Face ID, super-duper performance, glass construction, wireless charging, bionic chips. Oh, how I could go on.

I read political stories too but only to feel more adult.

On October 27th I sat by the iMac and waited until 08:00 am to pre-order the iPhone X — like millions of other people — I hit refresh repeatedly.

What is it about the iPhone X that drives me to pre-order, and because I expected a 10th anniversary phone, join the Apple Upgrade Programme?

Is it madness?

More money than sense?

Am I still 13½ years old?

(Those were rhetorical questions).

The answer might be clever marketing because after two months with the iPhone X, I’ve done nothing the one-year-old 7 Plus wasn’t capable of.

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Close Encounters of the Apple Kind

My first encounter with Apple — the iPod Classic — was a difficult decision. A friend recommended the Creative Zen MP3 player, but it was near obsolete so I opted for the iPod and the addiction began.

Perhaps if I’d opted for the Zen, I’d be using an Android phone today.

A few years passed and BBC News featured a new phone called iPhone. But I gazed at my silver Sony Ericsson and wondered what more you’d want in a phone?

And the cost 11 years ago? I would never pay £30 a month for a carrier contract. However after coffee with friends, who all had an iPhone, coupled with an illness in the family to emphasise the impermanence of life, I went iPhone.

One iTunes library, four iPhones, two iPads, one iMac and a MacBook Pro later, I’m beyond redemption.

But brand loyalty can’t be why I ‘rented’ the iPhone X. I could have kept the 7 Plus.

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El Notch, Yosemite

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Go Figure 8

I tried to resist the X and considered the smaller iPhone 8. The size was perfect, but the camera would be a step down.

The 8 is cheaper on the upgrade programme. £18 less than the X or £12 less for the Plus. But the iPhone 8 Plus offers little that’s new since it’s the 7 Plus in glass.

Wireless charging?

There’s no such thing. The charger mat still needs plugged in.

The iPhone 8 is a decoy phone — the iPhone 7s.

But iPhone 8 can’t be why I fell for the X. My 7 Plus was still a premium phone without a scratch.

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Drip, Drip, Drip

When I was a child, I got excited about Christmas from around September.

For Apple’s 10th anniversary iPhone my anticipation began one year before release. No sooner was the 7 Plus in my hand, the tech press speculated on the next iPhone.

The whole market place was primed by the media and whipped into a frenzy.

Rumours, from people familiar with the situation, leaked as usual but with one difference.

2017 saw the leaking of price. Customers needed to be acclimatised to the first £1000 phone so when it became official, the shock factor would be lost.

You’ve been primed.

In marketing terms, priming is the preparation of subconscious consumer behaviour through the subtle use of information. The new X for example, was secret, but there was just enough sexy news to whet your appetite.

The X was everywhere and nowhere.

But stories about a non-existent phone cannot be the reason I wanted one. There are stories about HomePods, cellular watches and iPad Pros and I want none of those (fingers crossed).

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Apple Framed the X as The Future… Today

After a succession of similar iPhones, the X promised reinvention.

The X’s keynote described the product as the future and you can hold it in your hand.

The message was misleading. Edge to edge displays, wireless charging, OLED screens and facial recognition, have been available on other phones for years.

But know this, the X looks beautiful, when switched on. When off, it looks like the Blackberry Leap. The build quality is superb though.

It’s a wonder of marketing. You can feel unique using a product when millions upon millions of people across the world have the product too.

But an OLED screen and facial recognition can’t be reasons to spend £56 a month. The 7 Plus screen is fabulous and fingerprint ID seamless.

If having the future isn’t enough to make you buy, there’s always fear.

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Scarcity

Scarcity and fear of missing out (FOMO) come into play.

If one thing puts the fear of God into consumers, it’s the wait to get what they want.

When I was a small boy, my favourite superhero was Spider-man. I begged Mum to buy me a Spider-man figure. At the toyshop we discovered it would be weeks before Spider-man would be back in stock.

So what did I do? I settled for the Human Torch (one of the Fantastic Four). I regretted it soon after and my impatience meant I didn’t get Spider-man, ever.

When impatience strikes, I think Spider-man.

Drip feeding consumers with stories of scarcity and production line problems fan the flames of fear, the fear of missing out.

I knew the X’s production would be fine and prepared to wait. Supply problem stories come out before every iPhone launch. In terms of missing out, of all features, only Face ID and Animojis were absent from the 7 Plus.

So, FOMO can’t be why I wanted an iPhone X.

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Prize Value

£1000 is scary for a phone but it’s not £1000 more than we’re used to paying.

Prices have crept up for years, and be honest, if you can afford £700 or £800 for a phone, you can also afford £1000. Apple know it too.

It may be borderline out of reach but it’s also borderline within reach.

A high price is one tactic marketers use to put the quality of a product in the mind of consumers.

The high price tag of the X may set it apart from competitors but cost definitely isn’t the reason to want the X.

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Here and Now and Why

My late Dad used to say there’s no such thing as a bad car. In the 1970s, cars looked good in the showroom but once you drove one and it rained, they rusted and fell apart before you got home. Cars are not like that anymore.

Like cars today, there’s no such thing as a bad phone. Most brands have caught up.

You’ll not do anything different on the X than you could do on many of the latest smart phones.

The X may not be the future, just a brilliant phone that perfects what others have already done, while leaving room for development.

Over a year I’ll pay £677 to hire Apple’s latest palm-top computer. The device I use everywhere to read, write, take pictures, research, web browse, meditate, enjoy music. Oh and make phone calls.

Why do I want one?

It’s not brand loyalty, decoys, scarcity or the features.

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In 1923 when asked by a New York Times reporter why he wanted to climb Everest, George Mallory said “Because it is there”.

I want the iPhone X for the same reason you do — because it is there.