XLwin - iPhone Xr
You have a chance to win free iphone XR
That’s the price difference between
the new iPhone XR and Apple’s top-of-the-line iPhone XS. It’s the price
difference between the XR’s 6.1-inch “Liquid Retina” LCD screen and the
5.8-inch OLED screen on the XS. Apart from the display, the XR and XS are far
more similar than not: they share the same A12 Bionic processors, main cameras
with Smart HDR, iOS 12, gesture controls, wireless charging capabilities, and
even the forthcoming dual-SIM support.
There are some other subtle
differences as well: the XR has a single rear camera, while the XS has a second
telephoto lens. The XR is offered in just one somewhat large size, while the XS
comes in smaller and larger variants. And the XR is made of aluminum instead of
stainless steel, which allows it to come in a wide variety of colors, ranging
from white, black, blue, coral, yellow, and red.
Those differences are interesting
and worth pulling apart, but really, the simplest way to think about the iPhone
XR is that it offers virtually the same experience as the iPhone XS for $250
less, but you’ll be looking at a slightly worse display.
That’s not to say it matches the
quality of previous iPhone LCDs. The iPhone XR LCD definitely shifts a little
pink and drops brightness quickly when you look at it off-axis, which often
leads to a bit of a shimmery effect when you move the phone around. I noticed
that shimmer right away, but I had to point it out to other people for them to
see it. (It’s one of those things you might not notice at first, but you can’t
un-see it.) Apple told me the XR display should match previous iPhone LCDs in
terms of performance, but side by side with an iPhone 8 Plus, the off-axis
shifts are definitely more pronounced.
iPhone XR off-axis display brightness and
color shifting
You will also definitely notice the
huge bezel around the entire display, which flows into the notch. As with
Apple’s other X-series phones, the notch houses the Face ID system and the
front-facing camera and generally fades from notice after just a few hours of
regular use. But the bezel... well, you’re going to notice that bezel every
time you see an iPhone X or XS anywhere near an XR. It’s very large, and it
definitely makes the iPhone XR seem less premium than the iPhone XS.
Lighting port off center on the iPhone XR
To be clear, the bezel is there for
a reason: it houses the LCD backlight. Apple did a lot of custom engineering to
pack a dense array of LED backlights into that bezel, and it tucked the display
controller up under the display to eliminate the need for an unsightly chin,
which virtually no other phone manufacturer has been able to avoid. The
trade-off? Well, the bezel, and a Lightning port that’s vertically off-center
on the bottom.
Apple’s also done some extremely
detailed work to make the rounded corners of the LCD perfectly match the
corners of the phone itself, which is work I desperately wish other companies
would do. (Most other phones with rounded corners have mismatched radii, and
the Pixel 3 XL has different corner radii at the top and bottom, which, to me,
looks far worse than any chunky bezel.)
THE IPHONE XR DOESN’T HAVE A CHIN,
BUT THE TRADE-OFF IS THAT BEZEL
It’s somewhat easier to round the
corners of an OLED panel: each pixel is its own light source, so you can turn
them off individually around the curve to smooth it out. You can’t do that with
an LCD panel because there’s just one single backlight for the entire display,
which will shine through the black pixels along the edge. So Apple built little
apertures for the pixels around the corners of the XR display to mask some of
the light coming through, on top of antialiasing the curve in software. It’s a
neat example of Apple’s attention to detail.
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