iPhone 11 Full Review: What is better than iPhone XR?
After the success of Apple iPhone XR, iPhone 11 has taken over the market for over a year. Despite being the same, it is still “The brand new iPhone.” This is clearly a solid improvement over the XR in so many ways and it got a better price than iPhone 11 pro, making this phone a go-to phone if you’re willing to buy an iPhone.
It is similar to XR in a lot of ways, same shape & size, notch, mute switch, aluminum frame, and same lightning port as XR. It has the same water resistance, same buttons, and same LCD display which might be a puny thing for many. If everything’s the same, so what’s new about it?
Well, the name is new. Apple has got rid of roman numerals in its name. The iPhone 11 comes with six new colors, green, black, yellow, red, purple, and white. They added the second camera and that is an ultra-wide camera. The most interesting thing is that it is cheaper than XR and the good news is that nothing has been left out and there are a few welcome additions to the low-tier iPhone.
Design and Display
Same as iPhone XR, the iPhone 11 measures 150.9 x 75.7 x 8.3 mm and weighs 194g. The front glass has an oleophobic coating that minimizes the fingerprints and smudges. On the back, there are two different glass finishes, it is the same glossy across the back but the camera square is the matte glass finish whereas iPhone 11 Pro which featured a matt finish on the back with glossy camera square. Though it lacks the stainless-steel frame as any other iPhones, it has an aluminum frame. But still, the aluminum is better than plastic and the brushed finish is way better than polished finish as you can’t see any smudges on it and moreover, it is also not as heavy as steel.
There are the usual things like the silent switch on its side, the volume keys on the left, the lightning port with the second speaker and the mouthpiece at the bottom, the power key, and sim slot on its right.
Talking about the display, it has the same screen as the XR and there are no improvements in contrast or brightness. This phone has a 6.1 inches IPS LCD panel and features a big notch for the Face ID, the selfie snapper, and top speaker. It is protected by the custom Gorilla Glass made by corning. Instead of OLED, there is an LCD display.
iPhone 11 has bigger bezels than its pro models (but same as XR). Since the price is cheap, it is pretty much a great deal. It has a screen resolution of 828 x 1,792 pixels, which is not bad, but not high either. The pictures and videos look great on this screen, the text is sharp enough, and most of the time, you won’t even mind that this is a 326pp density. The overall display experience is good but you surely will feel the difference when using both iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro at the same time.
Read more: iPhone 11 Pro Max Review and Full Phone Specifications
Chipset
Apple iPhone 11 runs a powerful A13 Bionic chipset. A13 Bionic is the fastest chip that features a hexa core processor with 2×2.65 GHz Lightning high-performance cores and 4×1.8 GHz Thunder efficient CPU cores. The Lightning cores are 20% faster and 30% more efficient than its predecessor. It keeps the same 4-cores GPU introduced with A12 but now it is 20% faster and 40% more efficient than A12’s GPU.
This device is infused with 4GB RAM. This all points to a direction where you get the smoothest performance you have ever felt. This chipset will let you enjoy any large apps or heavy gameplay. The scrolling is utterly amazing, the multitasking is effortless and any task (the one that this phone can do) you throw at it, it will simply dominate that.
Camera
As this phone is cheaper than XR then you might be thinking that there might be some downsizing in the camera too. Well, not really, because the iPhone 11 has arguably the best camera in its price range. It features an all-new dual camera with 12MP sensors. The main shooter has large 1.4µm pixels, wide 26mm f/1.8 lens, optical image stabilization (OIS), and Dual Pixel AF. Let’s welcome the new addition of the camera in the iPhone 11, the 12MP sensor with 1.0µm pixels sitting behind the 13mm (120°) ultra-wide-angle lens.
In comparison to the iPhone 11 Pro models, the telephoto lens is missing in this phone, but the rest of the camera and the whole features are exactly the same. The photos taken from the main camera are very rich in detail with very low noise levels, and the dynamic range is excellent.
The ultra-wide camera lets you capture the field view of 120° which means if you love capturing landscapes, you’ll definitely gonna love this feature. The portrait does a fine job on this phone as it does not suffer from any problem like XR, which has only one camera and the portrait photo heavily relies on computation and machine learning.
But with the depth-of-field added by the second camera, the portrait is delightful, as good as in the expensive iPhone 11 Pro series. The Night-mode does a fine job, you don’t have to switch between the cameras to capture photos during the night as the camera automatically does it for you when it detects there are not enough lights. As advertised, shooting 4K video at 60fps is an exceptional experience with good video stabilization.
The front camera is a 12MP shooter behind a wider 23mm f/2.2 lens. The “Slofie” is the fun part here. It can simply be described as slow + selfie, slo-mo video captured by the front-facing snapper.
Battery
The iPhone 11 is powered by a 3,110 mAh battery and the phone supports wireless charging (Qi-compatible), and it supports 18W fast charging thanks to the USB Power Delivery support. Alas, you get an ancient 5W Apple charger which takes as much as 4 hours for a full charge. Of course, you can send that 5W charger to the museum and buy Apple’s or other compatible 18W fast charger which fills your battery in less than an hour. After a full charge, you get an excellent battery life with an endurance rating of 84 hours (which is more than iPhone XR and iPhone 11 Pro).
iPhone 11 Full Specifications:
DIMENSION
Type: Liquid Retina IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size: 6.1 inches, 90.3 cm2 (79.0% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution: 828 x 1792 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio (326 ppi density)
Brightness: 625 nits max brightness
Protection: Scratch-resistant glass, oleophobic coating, IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 2m for 30 mins)
BODY
Dimensions: 150.9 x 75.7 x 8.3 mm (5.94 x 2.98 x 0.33 in)
Weight: 194 gram
Build: Glass front and back (Gorilla Glass), aluminum frame
SIM: Single SIM (Nano-SIM and/or eSIM) or Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
PLATFORM
Chipset: Apple A13 Bionic (7 nm+)
OS: iOS 13, upgradable to iOS 14
CPU: Hexa-core (2×2.65 GHz Lighting & 4×1.8 GHz Thunder)
GPU: Apple GPU (4-core graphics)
STORAGE
Internal: 64/128/256GB internal storage with 4 GB RAM
CAMERA
MAIN CAMERA (Dual-camera)
12MP wide-angle camera, f/1.8 aperture, 26mm, 1.4µm, dual pixel PDAF, OIS
12MP ultra-wide camera, f/2.4 aperture, 13mm
Features: Quad-LED dual-tone flash, panorama, HDR photos
Video: 4K video recording at 24/30/60 fps, 1080p video recording at 30/60/120/240 fps
Features: HDR, stereo sound recording
Front Camera (Dual)
12MP wide-angle camera, f/2.2 aperture
SL 3D (depth/biometrics sensor)
Features: HDR
Video: 4K video recording at 24/30/60fps, 1080p video recording at 30/60/120 fps
NETWORK
Technology: GSM/ CDMA/ HSPA/ EVDO/ LTE
2G bands: GSM 850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900 – SIM 1 & SIM 2 (Dual SIM model only)
3G bands: HSDPA 850/ 900/ 1700(AWS)/ 1900/ 2100 CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO
4G bands: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 66, 71
Speed: HSPA 42.2/ 5.76 Mbps, LTE-A(4CA) Cat16 1024/150 Mbps, EV-DO Rev.A 3.1 Mbps
SOUND
Loudspeaker with a Stereo speaker
COMMUNICATION
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, hotspot
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, QZSS, GALILEO
Bluetooth: 5.0
USB: 2.0, proprietary reversible connector
SENSORS
Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro sensor, compass, Proximity sensor, Face ID
BATTERY
Li-Ion 3110 mAh, non-removable
18W fast charging, Qi wireless charging, USB Power Delivery 2.0
COLORS
Black
White
Yellow
Purple
Red
Green
LAUNCH
September 20, 2019
iPhone 11 Price in Nepal:
NPR 1,18,000 (4 + 64GB), NPR 1,26,000 (4 + 128GB), NPR 1,44,000 (4 + 256GB)
iPhone 11 Price in India:
INR 61,990 (4 + 64GB), INR 71,600 (4 + 128GB), INR 75,900 (4 + 256GB)