Apple announces iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max

Today Apple announced three new iPhones during their special event: the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and the iPhone XR. The iPhone XS is an upgraded version of the iPhone X, while the iPhone XS Max is its larger sibling taking over the 'Plus' line. The iPhone XR is the company's most affordable iPhone X model which will be available in an array of colors.

Design

The iPhone XS is an upgraded version of the Apple iPhone X. It retains the same design and dimensions with a 5.8 inch OLED display. However Apple has upgraded its internals, including the company's latest A12 Bionic chipset.

The iPhone XS Max comes in a larger form factor with a 6.5 inch OLED display and bigger battery. Similar to the 'Plus' iPhone models the iPhone XS Max also features some software enhancements like split view for its email and calendar apps.

 All you need to know about the iPhone XR

Both new iPhones come with polished stainless steel frames sandwiched between front and back glass panels. While they are both visually identical to last year's iPhone X, Apple has included a new gold-color to compliment the Space Gray and Silver options. Apple also claims to have used the strongest glass ever used in the construction of a smartphone on their new iPhones.

Display

Both new iPhones come with updated versions of the OLED display found on the iPHone X. While the 5.8 inch display on the iPhone XS shares the same resolution as its predecessor, the larger 6.5 inch iPhone XS Max has a 1242 x 2688 pixel resolution.

The displays feature improved high-dynamic range support, resulting in HDR10 and Dolby Vision compatibility. Even though this upgrade probably won't be apparent in most situations, the 60% higher dynamic range of the new screens will allow users to enjoy more impressive video when such content has been encoded in HDR format. This will be visible when viewing certain content on iTunes, Netflix or Amazon Prime, and HDR photos captured on these new iPhones.

Other features on these displays include a wide-color gamut, True Tone (adjusts display warmth based on ambience) and 3D Touch.

Hardware

Apple A12 Bionic Chipset

The iPhone XR is powered by the same Apple A12 Bionic chipset found on its flagships. This chip also happens to be the first 7nm chip to reach the market, featuring a six-core CPU based on Apple's Fusion architecture. The new processor is said to be 15% faster and 40% more efficient than its predecessor.

Apple has also improved its custom quad-core GPU on the A12 promising a 50% increase in speed. Considering how well the iPhones last year performed against its competitors, we can expect even better output from this year's iPhones.

Additionally the A12 Bionic chipset has an improved neural engine, which has been upgraded to an eight-core setup compared to the dual-core design from last year. The neural processor on the A12 is capable of handling up to 5 trillion operations per second compared to the 600 billion on the A11.

RAM

The Apple iPhone XS along with the Apple iPhone XS Max are the first two smartphones from Apple to feature 4GB of RAM. While Apple themselves did not officially reveal this number during their keynote, it started appearing on various benchmarks within 24 hours of the unveiling.

Camera

Apple has made several improvements to the cameras on their new iPhones. Both the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have the dual 12MP camera setup on the rear - one regular camera coupled with a telephoto lens capable of 2x optical zoom and portrait photos. Even though the number of megapixels havent changed, the main camera now has a larger 1.4 μm pixel sensor (compared to the 1.22 μm on iPhone X) which should improve the quality of the images.

Apple has also introduced something called Smart HDR which makes use of the powerful A12 Bionic chipset and new Image Signal Processor (IPS). With this feature, the camera can process multiple frames, fuse them together, and curate them, so that in the end you can have one shot that exhibits great quality across all aspects, like color balance, exposure, focus, and detail. 

This is very similar to what Google does on its Pixel phones, where it uses a neural engine and machine learning to produce high quality photographs. Apple states that the biggest advantage of this feature is that it'll allow for more detail to be captured in both highlight and shadow areas.

Apple also demonstrated the bokeh (blurred background) and depth control of the new iPhone XS in some portrait photos. The updated depth control on these devices allows you to adjust the depth of field after you capture the photos

Apple also demonstrated the capabilities of the camera's enhanced Portrait mode selfies which uses depth control to adjust the depth of field after you shoot. Low light photos, Action Shots and 4K video capture with wider stereo were also demonstrated.




Price and Availability

The brand new Apple iPhone XS and Apple iPhone XS Max can be pre-ordered starting September 14th, with shipments set to begin on September 21. The pricing for the new smartphones is as follows:

Prices	64 GB	256 GB	512 GB
iPhone XS	$999	$1149	$1349
iPhone XS Max	$1099	$1249	$1449

sources - Apple | LetsGoDigital