A Week With the iPhone XR: What Is It Like to Use After Apple Compromised on Price?

Using the XR feels more like a stripped-down iPhone X than an iPhone 8

The iPhone XR is Apple's most important product this year, even though Apple didn't want it to feel that way.

It came on last at Apple's September event, and not as the classic "One More Thing." By the time it went on sale, the XR trailed the pricier iPhone XS by five weeks, from pre-orders to shipping.

But the iPhone XR is the product that will actually decide how Apple's trillion-dollar market cap performs over the next year.

The XR is Apple's attempt to bring the iPhone X's design down to a "normal" price. Starting at 6,499 yuan isn't cheap, but it is still much less than the XS's 8,699 to 12,799 yuan.

Next to its two siblings, the XR carries a price more people can accept. And Apple hasn't policed its prices as tightly these past two years as it once did — over the coming months, the XR will drop lower still.

The iPhone XR will determine whether Apple can win over price-sensitive users while keeping its margins high.

Its position is a hard one to balance. On one hand, the iPhone XR needs features close to the high-end models to persuade people to spend money on it; on the other, it has to tell every user plainly that this is a lesser product than the XS, so it doesn't eat into sales of the expensive line.

From the first moment I held it, the iPhone XR felt both familiar and strange.

For the past year I've used the iPhone X as my main phone, with short stints on the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone XS Max, never longer than a month at a time.

The iPhone XR carries traits from all of those phones at once, like a hybrid. The aluminum frame and glass back remind me of the iPhone 8, while every interaction from the X and the Max has been copied over — going from the X to the XR takes no learning at all.

Six days ago I switched my main phone to the iPhone XR, and across those six days the mix of familiarity and strangeness never went away.

Using the XR feels more like a stripped-down iPhone X than an iPhone 8

Last year the iPhone X set a whole new standard for Apple's phones. There was a relatively cheap new model too, the iPhone 8, but it was out of date the moment it left the factory.

A good phone needs software and hardware working in close concert, and since last year the interface and the interactions of iOS — and of the millions of apps on top of it — have been tuned only for the iPhone X, the one without a Home button. One example: the blank space apps leave at the top for the notch (that "bang" cutout). It made no sense on the iPhone 8, but with the iPhone XR here, developers naturally carried the X-optimized interface straight over.

The hardware specs also line up with the iPhone X. Take water resistance: the XR reaches IP67, close to the iPhone XS, and can sit in one meter of fresh water for up to 30 minutes. With wet hands you can still work the screen normally, something the iPhone 8 couldn't do.

The XR also uses the same A12 chip as the iPhone XS Max, which Apple calls "the smartest and most powerful chip ever in an iPhone." In everyday use, the XR runs about as smoothly as the XS Max.

Then there's the battery. Apple says the iPhone XR lasts up to 1.5 hours longer than the iPhone 8. On a normal workday for me, it runs from 8 a.m. until I get home at night with charge to spare.

And dual-SIM dual-standby: like the Max, the XR's single tray takes two physical SIM cards.

The iPhone XR also uses an Intel-made baseband, and the signal problems that drew so much criticism on the iPhone XS turned up here too — I hit two obvious bugs in six days. Once, right after a plane landed, the iPhone X showed a weak 4G signal while the iPhone XR's signal bar showed only 3G, even though both SIM cards were China Unicom. Another time, walking down the street with a companion, the iPhone X and an Android phone both had signal; only the iPhone XR in my hand had none.

But it feels lesser than the iPhone X, and that feeling starts the moment you touch it

In renders and ad spots, the iPhone XR looks all but identical to the iPhone X. But the moment you hold it, the difference shows up immediately.

The iPhone XR uses an aluminum frame with a matte finish, very much like the way the iPhone 8 was treated. The back is a piece of glass laid over the metal.

That glass isn't made the same way as the glass on the iPhone XS and XS Max, which is more mirror-like — smooth and fine enough to actually serve as a mirror. Add an equally smooth stainless-steel frame, and this year's two higher-end iPhones sit in the hand as one tight, rounded whole.

The iPhone XR has none of that unity. The frame and the front and back panels feel different from each other; you sense matte and smooth at the same time.

The iPhone XR is thicker as well, and all of this makes its first impression in the hand a mixed one, with a "plasticky" quality — a sense of cheapness. That cheapness is only relative to the iPhone X, XS and Max, of course; by feel alone, the XR tells you plainly that this is not a high-end phone worth more than ten thousand yuan.

The other part of that cheap feeling is the black bezel on the front. People were already worried about it when the new iPhones were announced in September. The iPhone XR is an LCD screen after all, not the iPhone X's OLED, and that technical limit forces it to keep a wider bezel.

Measuring roughly with a ruler, I make the iPhone XR's black border about 4mm wide, against roughly 2.5mm on the iPhone X, XS and XS Max.

The Face ID parts at the top of the iPhone XR are the same as the iPhone X's, and the same width. But because the bezel is wider, the whole notch looks larger on the XR.

Nobody can look at the iPhone XR for the first time without seeing that broad black border. It's easier to get used to than I expected, though — after a day or two the black border stopped troubling me much, and I no longer noticed it every minute.

We only pay attention to what's on the screen, after all, and the content itself isn't affected by the border. The eye focuses on its own, and automatically ignores what sits at the edge of your vision.

The iPhone XR is different in how it handles color, too. It comes in six colors this time — black, white, coral, red, yellow and blue. Judging by the white unit I got, the happy surprise is that the white on the back is purer, more complete. Apple hasn't had a solid-color back in a long time; next to the iPhone XR, the iPhone 8's white looks like it has some gray mixed in, and the iPhone X's white is duller still.

All these differences in feel assume you use the phone bare. If you're used to putting a case on, the iPhone XR's cheapness may end right there.

6.1 inches may be the best size for a full-screen iPhone

Speaking of cases: most of the time I keep an official Apple silicone or leather case on my iPhone X, which made the move to the iPhone XR very smooth.

A bare iPhone XR is about as wide as an iPhone X in a case, so it felt familiar in the hand. At 194 grams, its weight is close to the iPhone X's too. For comparison, the iPhone XS Max is 208g and drags noticeably more.

As we said in our earlier review of the iPhone Max, that 6.5-inch screen is a bit too large — one thumb simply cannot reach past the top third of it, so most of the time I used both hands.

The iPhone XR, by contrast, I used one-handed almost throughout — palm holding the back, thumb just able to reach the farthest app icon.

Sitting between the iPhone XS and XS Max, the iPhone XR is a size that suits a full screen better. There were moments when I couldn't even tell whether I was holding the X or the XR, especially at night, when all you see is the screen itself and the graininess of the display fades once you hold it farther away.

The iPhone XR's screen is less sharp than the old Plus models, and resolution isn't its only gap with the XS

The screen may be where the iPhone XR compromises most.

To its credit, the iPhone XR uses the most advanced LCD screen Apple has made, which Apple calls Liquid Retina. It brings a few technical breakthroughs — anti-aliasing, for instance, which lets an LCD produce curved edges.

In color calibration, the iPhone XR's LCD doesn't look much different from the XS line's OLED. But these are two screens that work in different ways: LCD pixels need a backlight behind them, while OLED pixels light themselves.

With True Tone switched off, the iPhone XR's screen is more vivid than the iPhone 8 Plus's, and it has none of that "looking through a pane of glass" feeling of the iPhone 7 and earlier LCD screens.

It is also gentler than the iPhone X. One common complaint about the iPhone X is that its screen is too bright, especially at night — even at the lowest brightness it can sting. I usually turn on "Reduce White Point" in accessibility to make it easier on the eyes.

Even so, after six days I still hadn't gotten used to the iPhone XR's low resolution, and every time I pulled out the iPhone X I keep as a backup, the difference felt huge.

When text is packed tightly on the screen — reading a book, or a WeChat conversation — you can plainly tell it is blurrier and grainier, and takes more effort to read. App icons and other graphic elements show jagged edges visible to the naked eye.

This comes down to low pixel density. The iPhone XR measures 326ppi, the same as the iPhone 8, iPhone 7 and iPhone SE line. The iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 8 Plus reach 401ppi, and side by side they really are sharper than the iPhone XR.

In other words: the iPhone XR — over 6,000 yuan, a 6.1-inch screen, released in 2018 — has the pixel density of old iPhones with screens of 4.7 inches or less.

If you move from an iPhone 8 Plus to an iPhone XR, it may take a while to adjust. Someone like me, coming from the iPhone X, finds it harder still.

But if you're on an iPhone 8, an iPhone 7 or something older and are used to a 326ppi screen, you probably won't feel it as strongly as I do.

Apple's head of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, answered questions about the iPhone XR's resolution by saying, "If you can't see the pixels, then in some sense the resolution doesn't matter that much." He's right up to a point: at the right distance the graininess is not insurmountable. Sitting at a desk with your arm hanging naturally, holding the iPhone XR up to look at it, or glancing at it while walking, the naked eye can't really pick the graininess out. But pick the phone up before you get out of bed, with the screen right in front of your eyes, and you feel the difference.

If the pixel problem can be overcome, the bigger compromise is the screen's response lag. The iPhone XR has a 120Hz touch-sampling rate too, but it doesn't track your finger as closely or move as smoothly as the iPhone X. It shows up most when you swipe icons or the multitasking view — you can sense that it isn't quite keeping up.

That is a technical limit of LCD itself. A pixel needs time to switch from one color to another, which is called "gray-to-gray response time"; the shorter it is, the smoother the screen, and the longer it is, the more you get lag, or even "ghosting."

Older iPhones without full screens had nowhere near as many gesture-based interactions as the ones after the iPhone X, so they avoided a lot of the swiping animations. Now that the LCD-screened iPhone XR has to handle all those gestures, the lag is magnified.

Dropping 3D Touch is another compromise on the display side. The iPhone XR no longer offers it — though by now 3D Touch was no longer a high-priority part of the interaction anyway. Apart from turning on the flashlight from the lock screen, or pulling up Alipay's QR code, it had no other real use.

The iPhone XR replaces the hard press with a long press on the screen, reproducing some of what 3D Touch did: long-press the flashlight button on the lock screen to turn it on, long-press a Control Center module to open its second-level menu. Apple also added haptic feedback, so a long press gives you the same tactile effect as 3D Touch.

Losing a lens doesn't matter much, except in Portrait mode

The iPhone XR's camera has both pluses and minuses.

There is only one lens on the back of the iPhone XR, with the same specs as the main lens on the XS and Max: a 12-megapixel, f/1.8-aperture wide-angle camera.

The actual results are close too, especially at night, with Smart HDR on by default — clearly a big step up from the iPhone X. It pulls the highlights down and lifts the shadows, so light and dark across the frame are more balanced and the detail is clearer.

The parts inside the iPhone XR's notch are the same as the iPhone XS's, so selfies and Face ID work essentially the same way — nothing much to say there.

But Portrait mode is a bug.

Portrait mode, ever since the iPhone 7 Plus, has worked by shooting with a second telephoto lens. The two cameras measure distance together, work out the subject, and combine that with an algorithm to blur the background.

The XR has only one lens, so its Portrait mode is driven purely by algorithm. Which means it has to recognize a human face before it can shoot the portrait effect. Objects, cats and dogs, food — none of them can be shot in Portrait mode; with no face in the viewfinder, Portrait mode won't turn on at all.

I tried it: the iPhone can recognize and shoot a portrait from a 90-degree profile, but not the back of a head. There has to be a face in the frame.

So the results from Portrait mode are not ideal. White balance and sharpness are better, since the shot comes from the main lens, but the edges throughout are handled badly, and the result looks like a crude cutout.

For night shooting we also compared the Huawei P20 and Samsung S9. Huawei's night mode was the best of the group, followed by the iPhone XS/XS Max/XR, with the Samsung S9 and iPhone X worst.

The iPhone XR is the result of compromise and balance, and this year the iPhone will lean on it for growth

"If we want to use the XS and XS Max to raise the boundary of high-end products and bring the best product, then how do we also bring a more affordable product to more consumers, so that the iPhone's overall audience gets broader?" Apple's head of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, told Engadget in a recent interview, describing how Apple positions the iPhone XR: "How do we make choices so the new phone doesn't fall short, but people get it in their hands and say, 'Oh, I have the best iPhone too'?"

Translated: "the best iPhone at a given price."

From our six days with it, Apple has basically pulled that off. You can plainly tell this is a new phone with this year's new features, not an iPhone SE situation where a cheaper price buys you only last generation's specs.

If you're used to a case, most of what makes it look lesser than the XS gets hidden away. The XR even has dual-SIM dual-standby, something the XS does not.

After a few days with the iPhone XR, I found myself weighing the distance between it and the other models. The XS Max is clearly more appealing; if you want a better experience, there is of course a more expensive choice waiting.

Set against Apple's previous attempts, the iPhone XR is without question a better "entry-level" phone. But the low price is an illusion — a starting price above 6,000 yuan is in fact what the most expensive Plus models used to cost.

By making that the price of entry, Apple keeps two separate product lines at two price levels and keeps its overall selling price climbing. Analysts expect XR sales to keep pushing Apple's results up, with the XR accounting for 70% of new iPhone sales this year.

Apple expected as much and stocked accordingly: even orders placed by the evening of the first pre-order day still arrived on day one, and today the wait is only one to two weeks. Reports earlier said Apple had raised its supply orders.

Apple has handled its product line more evenly this year than in years past, no longer as awkward as the 5c/SE/8 mess. But if not for the pursuit of high margins, the XR might not need to exist at all.

As the biggest change to an Apple product since the iPhone 4, the iPhone X used all kinds of new technology, and a higher cost was to be expected. A year on, though, its manufacturing cost has to have come down. A less extravagant price for the XS was not out of the question.

Apple chose instead to keep its line above 8,000 yuan — the iPhone X had already proved how much the users who care most are willing to pay for the best product. Then it uses the XR to go after a bigger user base.

Even with the XS priced high, Wall Street still thinks the XR is too cheap. Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall argues the 64GB iPhone XR should be priced at US$849, US$100 above Apple's current price. His reasoning: the iPhone XR will cannibalize sales of the high-end models and pull down the iPhone's average selling price.

Apple's products keep getting more expensive, but the decline of its non-iPhone lines has dropped the whole company's margin over the past two years to its lowest point since 2010. The iPhone X, starting at 8,388 yuan, only helped Apple stop that margin slide — and that was with the lift from a new shape, a full screen, face recognition and other new technology.

At bottom this is still a question of innovation in the smartphone business. Phones that are fast enough and change in no fundamental way find it harder and harder to get people to replace them for any reason other than damage or loss. People buy less often, and if margins are to stay high, prices are not going back to what they were.

Cover and in-line images shot by the author.