The latest generation of iPhones have been out for a couple of months now – we’ve extensively reviewed the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max shortly after their official release. Missing in the review was the lower-tiered iPhone XR – the main reason for this being Apple deciding to release this variant a month after the original XS models had become available. Today, albeit a bit late, we finally got the chance to get our hands on a unit, and investigate some of the differentiating factors of the iPhone XR – such as the LCD screen and the phone’s overall battery life.

The iPhone XR is an interesting product for Apple: It is clear that it aims to be a lower-cost alternative to the higher-end XS flagships. Yet at the same time it’s not directly an alternative to either the XS or the XS Max, and rather represents a model that squarely fits in-between its two higher-priced siblings.

Back when I first laid my hands on the iPhone XR at Apple’s launch event, one of the things noted was that I believed the iPhone XR was going to become the most popular choice among Apple’s current smartphone generation. A couple of months later, and probably with some hindsight, it seems that Apple’s decision to not release the XR at the same time as the XS and XS Max might have actually shifted a lot of users to just jump on the higher-end models, rather than to wait.

Let’s see if the iPhone XR is still a good alternative to the new XS – and in particular let’s address the elephant in the room that is the display as well as battery life differences that are specific to the XR.

Apple 2018 iPhone Specifications
		iPhone XR	iPhone XS	iPhone XS Max
SoC		Apple A12 Bionic 2 × Vortex @ 2.5GHz 4 × Tempest @ 1.59GHz
GPU		4-core "G11P" @ >~1.1GHz
DRAM		3GB LPDDR4X	4GB LPDDR4X
Display		6.1-inch LCD 1792×828 DCI-P3/True Tone	5.8-inch OLED 2436×1125 DCI-P3/True Tone 3D Touch	6.5-inch OLED 2688×1242 DCI-P3/True Tone 3D Touch
Size	Height	150.9 mm	143.6 mm	157.5 mm
	Width	75.7 mm	70.9 mm	77.4 mm
	Depth	8.3 mm	7.7 mm	7.7 mm
Weight		194 grams	177 grams	208 grams
Battery Capacity		2942mAh / 11.16Wh	2658mAh / 10.13Wh	3174mAh / 12.08Wh
Wireless Charging		Qi
Rear Cameras		12 MP 1.4µm pixels, f/1.8, OIS Wide Color Gamut Quad LED True Tone Flash Portrait Mode, Portrait Lighting, Depth Control
		none	12 MP f/2.4 Telephoto, OIS 2x Optical Zoom Portrait Mode, Portrait Lighting, Depth Control
Front Camera		7MP f/2.2 Wide Gamut, Retina Flash, Portrait Mode, Portrait Lighting, Depth Control
Storage		64 GB 128 GB 256 GB	64 GB 256 GB 512 GB	64 GB 256 GB 512 GB
I/O		Apple Lightning
Wireless (local)		802.11ac Wi-Fi with 2x2 MIMO + Bluetooth 5.0 + NFC
Cellular		Intel XMM7560 Modem UE Category 12 LTE (600Mbps)	Intel XMM7560 Modem UE Category 16 LTE (1Gbps) with 4x4 MIMO and LAA
Splash, Water, Dust Resistance		IP67 up to 1 meter, up to 30 minutes	IP68 up to 2 meters, up to 30 minutes
Dual-SIM		nano-SIM + eSIM nano-SIM + nano-SIM (China model)
Launch Price		64 GB: $749 128 GB: $799 256 GB: $899	64 GB: $999 256 GB: $1149 512 GB: $1349	64 GB: $1099 256 GB: $1249 512 GB: $1449

Starting off with the specifications, the iPhone XR has very similar hardware to the iPhone XSes: At the heart all the models, we find Apple’s latest A12 SoC. The A12 made huge impressions by delivering some outstanding performance and power efficiency – showcasing some incredible figures that are near those posted by some of the best desktop PCs. An especially big leap in this generation was Apple’s new GPU, which combined with the new 7nm process node has made for some impressive improvements in terms of power efficiency.

In terms of differences in the internal hardware capabilities, the only high-level divergence to jump out is the fact that the iPhone XR comes with 1GB less DRAM than the 4GB XS variants. For general use-cases, I haven’t noticed a meaningful difference between the models in this regard and I don’t see it as an issue.

Other internal hardware difference that can’t be seen are on the connectivity side. The iPhone XR offers the same maximum cellular connectivity speeds as on the iPhone 8, with LTE speeds topping out at Category 12 rather than the Category 16 speeds the underlying modem is capable of. The reason for the change here is due to the lack of 4x4 MIMO on the iPhone XR – this difference can actually been seen externally, as the XR lacks the two new antenna segments that were introduced with the iPhone XSes.

From a design perspective, the iPhone XR’s back is a bit more similar to the iPhone 8 than it is the iPhone XS. The big change here from the iPhone XS models is the obvious lack of a second telephoto camera module. The main camera sensor is still the same 12MP module as found on the new XS – this means an improved and larger sensor with 1.4µm pixels, an f/1.8 aperture lens as well as OIS. Going into this review we weren't really expecting the iPhone XR's rear camera to perform any differently than the regular XS, and our camera testing has confirmed as much.

XS, XR

XS Max, XR

It's on the front of the phone where we find the most obvious differences relative to the XS models: The iPhone XR comes with a lower resolution LCD panel rather than the OLED displays employed by the XS. Over the last few months the LCD display on the XR has been quite a focal point of many discussions – mainly arguing about Apple’s choice of going with a quite lower pixel density than what we would have expected for a 2018 iPhone. We’ll be revisiting the display panel’s performance later in the article as we literally take a closer look at the panel as well as its calibration.

If for some users the difference between the LCD and OLED panels are hard to distinguish, another telling aspect of the iPhone XR over the XS models is its thicker bezels on all sides. When Apple launched the XR I was quite surprised at this design choice. The reasoning for it is that Apple wanted to keep a symmetric design on all sides – and with the LCD panel of the XR it seems that Apple wasn’t able to get a quite as thin a display controller lip as on the OLED panels of the iPhone X and XS. The difference is immediately visible and personally I don’t find it very endearing for the phone, as the new bezels are actually thicker than any past iPhone. The comparison to some recent Android phones is even less favourable for the XR, as some have side bezels of less than half the size, even those with LCD panels.

XS, XR, XS Max
XS, XR, XS Max

Another point of discussion is the size of the iPhone XR. The phone falls in the middle in terms of size, in-between the smaller XS and the bigger XS Max. Apple here had to find a balance to satisfy the majority of users while avoiding a total of four phone variants. I think the XR’s size falls in a very good middle-ground that is becoming more and more popular with handset vendors.

While the XR’s 75.7mm width is also within this “sweet-spot”, its in-hand feel does not directly match the experience that I’m accustomed to for phones of this form-factor. The reason for this is that the iPhone XR comes in at 8.3mm, around 8% thicker than the iPhone XS and XS Max. While this might not sound like much, on a subjective level I find that it make a big difference to me. And even though, for example, the XS Max is a wider phone at 77.4mm (above my preferred size), I do like it more than the XR, as I feel it to be easier to hold. It’s to be noted that Android phones similar in width to the XR are almost all more ergonomic to hold – this is due to sloped sides on the back essentially becoming a norm amongst most manufacturers.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about the design of the iPhone XR. On one hand, it’s absolutely something you can get used to, and there are users out there who subjectively prefer a symmetric bezel design over thinner side-bezels. The one thing that surprised me more than I anticipated is that I didn’t like the ergonomics of the XR as much. I feel that the phone would have at least benefitted from a lower weight – again here at 194g it’s very much on the heavier side of the scale compared to similarly-sized phones. With all of that said, the one design choice of the XR that I actually prefer is that it still has brushed aluminium sides as opposed to the polished/glossy steel on the XS models, this allows the XR to have notably better grip and is more akin to what we find in older iPhone models.

System Performance

System performance of the iPhone XR isn’t something that we expect to differ from the higher-end XS models. Here Apple employs the same SoC at the same clocks, and fundamentally there isn’t any technical reason for the phone to perform differently in every-day tasks. It’s to be noted that our iPhone XS review models were of the biggest storage capacities – both at 512GB, while the iPhone XR model tested today is a 64GB variant. I’m still working on getting our mobile NAND testing suite modernized, but I do expect a difference in speeds here as the bigger storage variants allow for better NAND die parallelism on the part of the storage controller.

Our iOS system benchmarking suite is limited to in-browser tests, nevertheless let’s take a look:

As expected, the iPhone XR performs within the margins of error for the iPhone XS. Which means it’s at the very top for mobile performance, currently outperforming every other device, and we’re not expecting this to change anytime soon for 2019 (at least until Apple's A13).

In our review of the iPhone XS, we dedicated a lot of analysis to the A12 and we were just impressed with the performance of the chip as well as Apple’s new CPU microarchitecture.

Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to test the newer generation SoCs from HiSilicon as well as Qualcomm, both employing Arm’s new Cortex A76 CPU cores. While both SoCs have shown fantastic gains, especially in regards to energy efficiency at peak performance, absolute CPU performance and ISO perf/W of the Android vendors are still very much lagging behind Apple’s best. As a result, these latest-generation Android SoCs are having trouble competing with even last year’s A11, never mind the A12. The new Exynos 9820 is the only other important chip for 2019 on which we don’t have data on – and I’m not expecting any miracle on Samsung’s side, which means the A12 and subsequently the iPhone XR will remain very much a top performer for the rest of the year.

GPU Performance

The A12 SoC in the iPhone XSs showcased some fantastic results with some extremely high scores. We expect the iPhone XR to perform just as well – the only unknown factor here is the thermal designs of the two phones.

The iPhone XR actually differs quite a lot in this regard to its XS siblings: The iPhone XS and XS Max employ a “sandwiched PCB” motherboard design, in which the SoC lies between two substrates. While I don’t have empirical data on this, I just have to assume that such a design is not helpful for actually dissipating heat away from the SoC to the body of the phone.

iPhone XS vs. iPhone XR PCBs (Images Courtesy iFixit)

The iPhone XR on the other hand employs more of a traditional single PCB design, such as found in past iPhone models. The SoC here is found inside an EM shield facing towards the screen assembly. I was always questioning this a design as well because theoretically there should be a slight air gap between it and the display backplane which could hinder heat transfer. Also because the SoC is facing towards the display, it also doesn’t make direct contact with the aluminium frame of the phone. As Apple’s SoC’s become ever more power hungry at their peak performance states, it is weird to see that Apple hasn’t been any more aggressive in their thermal dissipation solutions as say what we now commonly see from some higher-end Android counter-parts.

Starting off with the physics subtest, which is mainly a CPU test within a (GPU) thermally constrained scenario, we see the iPhone XR perform nearly equally to the iPhone XS, showcasing some very good sustained performance near the peak levels of the SoC.

 

The graphics subtest of 3DMark also doesn’t seem to drastically differ from the iPhone XS. This was one of the tests that caused problems for the XS variants as it would cause the phones to crash the GPU at peak performance, only able to complete the test when the phones were warmer and throttled more. I re-tested the XS and did manage to somehow complete a run at a higher peak performance state, however my iPhone XS Max still managed to crash with the same behaviour as back in October.

Moving onto the GFXBench suite, starting off with the two variants of the new Aztec sub-test, which represents a more modern 3D workloads:

 

The iPhone XR performed extremely well in these two tests, however we do note that there’s a difference in the peak performance showcased by the XR and the XS variants: It seems that Apple might be running the GPU at a slightly lower frequency here. This would match the slight difference in the peak 3DMark graphics score as well, and could be the reason why the iPhone XR didn’t crash in the same way the XS did.

 

In the Manhattan 3.1 and T-Rex offscreen tests we see similar behaviour: the peak performance of the XR is slightly lower than that of the XS phones, however the sustained scores are higher.

One of the reason we use off-screen scores in our benchmark suite is that it allows for an apples-to-apples workload comparison across all devices. While in most cases this is a good and representative scenario for what you might expect from the thermals in actual games, this actually doesn’t seem to apply for the iPhone XR:

Because of the relatively low screen resolution on the part of the XR’s display – a sub-FHD 1792×828 – I’ve had a lot of trouble actually getting workloads to push the A12's GPU to its peak frequencies in on-screen scenarios. This causes an interesting dilemma for the iPhone XR: It has absolutely abundant GPU performance that won’t be used any-time soon. As game developers on iOS will be targeting and tuning their workloads to run smoothly on the most demanding devices of a generation, it means that games will most likely be setting their baseline as the higher-end iPhone XS Max, which has to push over twice the pixel resolution. The net result is that for any given 60fps graphics workload, the iPhone XR will run cooler and with a longer battery life than what you would experience on the XS or XS Max.

If gaming and gaming performance (and battery efficiency) is important for you, then the iPhone XR is definitely the phone to get. Not only does it deliver class-leading performance, but it also will be quite future proof in terms of performance thanks to the lower-resolution display.

Display Measurement

The display of the iPhone XR is likely its most discussed hardware feature, simply because Apple chose to diverge from the OLED screens on the XS models and instead use a more traditional LCD screen. While that in itself shouldn’t have caused too much talk, Apple also made the interesting choice to go with a relatively low-resolution 1792 x 828 panel. This represents a lower pixel density than what we would expect out of a sizable 6.1” (diagonal) display.

The following pictures are some close-up shots of the iPhone XR next to the iPhone XS – unaltered at the full resolution of my DLSR. The pictures are best compared when you open up the full resolution images.

Cropping 1:1 areas with the same icons on both phones, we have almost the same feature sizes so it allows for a good direct comparison.

When you have both phones side-by-side, it very quickly becomes evident that the iPhone XR isn’t able to compete with the sharpness of the XS models. While the LCD panel does allows for better defined right-angle edges, its definition on anything else is clearly lower than that of the iPhone XS. The most evident difference of this is on text such as the clock icon’s numbers (the icon labels aren’t a good comparison because of different font sizes); here the XS panel is just very much ahead in practical spatial resolution.

In every-day use-cases where you would browse your phone at an arm-length away, these differences are hard to notice, and it should not cause any issues for the majority of users. Though if you do like to hold your phone close to your face – as I like to do late at night in bed – then you might find it hard to get used to the less defined and blurrier text of the iPhone XR. I think the main issue I have with the iPhone XR’s display is that it’s actually somewhat of a downgrade from the iPhone 8 Plus in terms of resolution – while I understand that Apple wanted to use a more affordable panel, I do think it would have prudent to at least match the 401ppi pixel density of an iPhone 8 Plus.

While the resolution of the iPhone XR screen is a debatable topic and is something that should be decided by users by experiencing it themselves, the other aspects of the LCD panel are things that Apple definitely got right: The screen offers absolutely excellent viewing angles, even when viewed from off-axis. This is a simple characteristic that many vendors often get wrong when choosing an LCD display panel, yet Apple always manages to be on-point in this regard.

We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the XR screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using SpectraCal's CalMAN software.

SpectraCal CalMAN

SpectraCal CalMAN

At our standard 200 nits measurement point, the iPhone XR is absolutely spot-on in terms of greyscale accuracy, even though it’s just ever so slightly above a D65 white target. The colour temperature seems to vary with brightness, as at peak brightness the phone goes down to a 6500K average CCT. It’s to be noted at these levels the display has weak greens – I personally can’t perceive this just looking at the phone, but holding it side-by-side next to the XS makes it more apparent. Nevertheless, it’s not an issue in my view.

Peak brightness goes up to 694 nits on my unit – about 40 nits higher than what I’ve been able to measure on the XS and XS Max. The greyscale calibration here only seems to slightly miss one aspect: the gamma is just a bit too high, with an average of 2.28, and this seems to be skewed at higher brightness levels, where it can have a gamma of up to 2.4. We can see this in the greyscale comparison image, as we see some of the tones being slightly darker than the reference target.

SpectraCal CalMAN

Apple has full support for colour management and the display as well as the OS is able to concurrently display sRGB content alongside wider gamut Display P3 D65 images. Saturation level accuracy in both gamuts is fantastic, coming in at DeltaE2000 of 1.24 and 1.17 for sRGB and P3 targets respectively. While the results are not quite as industry-leading as on the XS, they are both great results and you’d be very hard to perceive the differences.

SpectraCal CalMAN

SpectraCal CalMAN

The Gretag MacBeth collection of commonly found color tones again showcases some good results, with a dE2000 of 1.47. The comparison image only shows a slight difference in the luminance of the tones, something that can be attributed to the higher gamma of the screen.

Overall, the iPhone XR display is a very high quality screen when it comes to its fundamentals such as brightness, contrast (for an LCD) as well as excellent viewing angles. Apple’s colour calibration, while not quite matching that of its XS siblings, is still beyond what we usually find in other smartphones and should represent absolutely no issue. And the slightly higher gamma should not be something that it perceivable in every-day use-cases.

Battery Life - Excellent

For all their strengths, battery life is the one aspect where things didn’t quite pan out for the iPhone XS and XS Max. Even though Apple promised that the phones would see longer battery lifetimes in day-to-day usage, in our tests we weren’t able to replicate this. The main reason for both models not being able to match the battery life of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus is because of their significantly higher base power consumption. I’ve attributed this to the OLED display – here either the OLED panel itself or the DDIC driving the panel see a big degradation in base power consumption, amounting to an extra 150mW. This is a figure that is unavoidable and a power drain that will be present any time the screen is on – no matter the actual display brightness.

The iPhone XR avoids this issue as it uses a more conventional LCD screen:

As expected, because the XR doesn’t suffer from the same high base power consumption, this significantly helps the actual battery life results for the phone. Here we see the iPhone XR reach the highest battery runtimes of any past iPhone – almost beating some of the record holders – and is only outmatched by the more recent Mate 20 with its 33% larger battery.

The results here are a lot more in line with the iPhone 8 Plus, and better represent the overall power efficiency improvements of the A12 SoC. Compared to the iPhone XS and XS Max, the XR lasts 37% and 25% longer respectively in our test.

Overall, if battery life is something you value the most, then the iPhone XR will absolutely not disappoint.

Camera - Quick Verification

The camera on the iPhone XR is a straightforward matter: It employs the same module as on the iPhone XS and XS Max, meaning we find a new 12MP sensor with 1.4µm pixel pitches and better DTI (Deep trench isolation), as well as an f/1.8 aperture lens along with OIS in the module. The only difference is that the iPhone XR eschews having a telephoto lens – meaning the phone won’t be able to have as high a quality of zoomed in photos as its more expensive XS siblings.

We can quickly verify the picture quality results against the iPhone XS:

[ iPhone XR ] - [ iPhone XS ]

[ iPhone XR ] - [ iPhone XS ]

In both images, the results are virtually identical. This was to be expected, but it’s always good to verify!

Overall, rather than repeating myself here I'm going to refer to the camera section of the iPhone XS review, as all of my analysis there is also valid for iPhone XR – minus the telephoto module, of course.

The iPhone XS Camera Review - Historic iPhone comparisons

Similarly, for readers interested in a broader, more contemporary camera comparison, I'm going to refer to the camera comparison in our Google Pixel 3 review. It contains the most up-to-date camera comparisons across 2018 flagship phones, including results of the iPhone XS against the newest Android competition.

The Google Pixel 3 Review - Most recent full competitive camera review

Overall – the iPhone XR camera shines in the same way the iPhone XS camera did: Apple’s absolute strength here is in terms of picture consistency and the assurance that essentially every shot will come out the same in the best possible way.

Key to making this happen was that this generation’s main camera sensor saw big improvements in terms of resolving details – thanks to the bigger sensor with bigger pixels, as well as the much improved DTI (Deep trench isolation) which is able to reduce noise and improve sharpness. Apple’s new HDR system is also a big upgrade for the new iPhones, as it manages to capture a much greater dynamic range in virtually all scenarios. Low-light performance of the new iPhones is also good – although Apple doesn’t use some of the new-fangled computational photography magic that is now standard on Huawei devices, and was most recently adopted by Google’s Pixel phones.

Another aspect of the camera that is understated for the new generation of phones is an absolute huge jump in video recording quality. Here the dynamic range in video recording has seen immense jumps – and together with Apple’s first-time introduction of stereo audio recording, actually makes the new iPhones, including the XR, what I find to be the best smartphones on the market for video recording.

The lack of a telephoto lens on the XR is something that needs to be subjectively evaluated based on your experience and needs. On one hand, I do find it quite useful and a feature I would probably miss – but on the other hand it’s also not something that I find to be a deal-breaker or represent a key deciding factor when having to choose between different smartphones. It’s a feature that augments the camera experience, but one can also live without it.

Conclusion & End Remarks

The iPhone XR is an interesting phone for Apple simply because of its price positioning. Starting at $749, it’s $250 cheaper than the base iPhone XS, and $350 cheaper than the iPhone XS Max. And this is a gap that continues straight up to the max capacity 256GB models. So the big question here for most users is if the iPhone XR’s differences represent reasonable compromises for the lower price.

From a design standpoint, the iPhone XR comes in the same industrial design as the iPhone XS variants – both of which follow up on the previous generation iPhone X. The big difference here is in the bezels, which are notably larger on the iPhone XR. It does not represent any deal-breaker for the phone and it’s something that I guess most users will get used to – but my gripe is still that with a $749 price tag, the design feels more like something that would have come from a budget smartphone. Apple’s choice of insisting on a symmetric bezel design isn’t something that I personally find appealing in this implementation – but I do know some other users prefer this kind of design over asymmetric bezels (though you could argue the notch makes it asymmetric anyhow…).

The one thing that surprised me the most when using the iPhone XR is that even though it’s a smaller phone than the XS Max, it doesn’t always actually feel all that smaller. Here the increased thickness of the phone does change the in-hand feel quite a lot, and it will feel bigger than you’d expect for a phone with its 75.7mm width.

The main (and most visible) difference between the XR and its XS is inarguably the screen. Among the reasons Apple is able to offer the XR at a cheaper price point is eschewing an OLED panel in favor of a more traditional LCD. In terms of the fundamentals of the LCD in the iPhone XR, Apple continues to employ some of the best panels in the industry, and the iPhone XR is no exception to this. Brightness, contrast ratio (for an LCD), viewing angles, and colour calibration are all top-notch and will not disappoint.

The one area where I think Apple went too conservative is with the display resolution. For the majority of users this will be a subjective matter and it will depend on how they use their phones, but I personally found it among the larger compromises made, and something that would be a deciding factor for me to opt against getting the XR. For anybody else who never use their phones closer than at arm’s length or are less sensitive to the resolution difference, it should not represent any major drawback.

With that said, Apple’s choice to go with an LCD display has a very important side-effect for the iPhone XR: because it avoids the double-edged sword that is a higher-end OLED, it also avoids the technology's higher base power consumption. This increased base power consumption was the reason why the XS Max lasted a notably shorter period of time than the iPhone 8 Plus. The iPhone XR avoids this problem, and in conjunction with the fantastic A12 SoC, the phone is able to achieve Apple’s best ever battery results in our tests. Lasting 25% longer than the iPhone XS Max, this represents a major improvement in battery life and is going to make all the difference for users who value it above everything else. For those users, the cheaper iPhone XR may very well be the better choice.

The performance of the iPhone XR is very much in line with the XS – meaning you’ll be getting an industry leading experience. An important factor for users who value gaming a lot is that, as a side-effect of the lower-resolution screen, the iPhone XR gets better GPU performance and better power efficiency as the phone is only pushing 44% of the pixels of the XS Max. This means longer gaming battery runtimes in current games, and better experiences in future, more demanding games.

The camera on the iPhone XR is pretty straightforward: It’s the same fantastic experience as on the iPhone XS, with the only difference being that it lacks the telephoto lens. Apple’s strengths here are their absolutely great capture experience, which is among the most consistent of current generation smartphones, as well as class-leading picture quality that ties with the best of the competition. Low-light performance is good, but as was the case with the XS, the Android handset vendors have seen immense jumps over the last year due to their usage of computational photography and better sensors, and it’s something that Apple just currently lags behind at.

The lack of a telephoto lens is one of the more justifiable compromises for the lower prices – it’s something that I might miss, but it’s also not a deal-breaker for the phone and I could very easily live without it.

Finally, the big question is if the iPhone XR represents a good value and if it’s a viable choice for users. I think the deciding factor for most users is whether they find the design/ergonomics of the phone acceptable, as well as the display's pixel density. If so, then the iPhone XR certainly seems to represent a better value than the XS alternatives.

Wrapping things up, I find myself coming back to my final paragraph of the iPhone XS review, where I had mentioned that Apple is asking for a lot of money for their new models. At the time I thought that this was a risky pricing strategy for the company, and it seems that Apple is feeling some of the side-effects here as smartphone revenue has dropped year-over-year.

Similarly, I think the iPhone XR is also priced a tad too high, and if you’re not entrenched in the iOS ecosystem, there are better value alternatives. I count myself among those who wouldn’t buy a smartphone at this price, and certainly not if it does compromise on some features. In a way this might be the rationale of more users, and that’s probably why the iPhone XR has seen less demand than anticipated. With hindsight, I see now what I might have been wrong in thinking the XR would be the most popular model of this generation, as it’s not priced low enough to convince users to drop down from what they see as the better long-term investment of an XS variant. That is if they would buy a new iPhone at all this generation, which with the ever increasing prices, is an ever increasingly hard choice to make.