Apple introduces three new iPhones — pricing starts from just $749!

The new iPhones come with a pretty nice list of upgrades, and here are what we think are probably some of the highlights of the launch.

New camera

The highlight feature of this trio has to be the new camera setup. In a move that brings it up to parity with the leader of bokeh enhancement, HUAWEI, Apple users can finally adjust the background blurring to their tastes, after the shot is taken. And interestingly, Apple doesn’t even need dual cameras to do this now. It is available on the single camera iPhone XR too. Not sure if they will bring it to the iPhone 8 though, as they did mention that this is enabled by their new A12 Bionic’s ISP and neural processing prowess.

The front camera is also upgraded, and it can now use the IR camera for depth detection. It is supposed to help with better selfies, but iPhone users are always very proud of the selfie quality on their smartphones anyway.

New chipset

Speaking of the A12 Bionic, this is a pretty interesting little chipset here. It is the first 7nm chipset to the market, and uses a hexa-core configuration. It comprises of two high performance cores and four efficient cores, with the performance cores delivering up to 15% better performance. The CPU cores use up to 50% less power than those in the A11 Bionic too, promising better battery life.

The new 4-core GPU is claimed to be 50% faster, capable of delivering console-grade gaming experiences. For those who love AI, the A12 Bionic also packs a new 8-core Neural Engine which can do dedicated machine learning. CoreML is 9x faster on the A12 Bionic, while consuming just 1/10th the energy it did on the A11 Bionic. Truly amazing stuff.

Battery life is also improved. Not by much, as the iPhone XS claims a meager 30 minutes more battery life, while the iPhone XS Max goes for 1 hour 30 minutes longer. For some reason, the iPhone XR is compared to the iPhone 8 Plus, and it does an hour and a half more.

Dual SIM support… Finally

The new iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR will all support dual SIM. It’s not entirely straightforward though. Apparently, only China will get the variant with two nanoSIM slots. The rest of the world will have to live with a eSIM + nanoSIM configuration. We are actually seeing carriers pick up eSIM support, so the new iPhones will only accelerate adoption.

New screen sizes

Now onto the major difference between the three newly announced iPhones. For starters, the iPhone XS features the same 5.8″ OLED Super Retina display featured on the iPhone X. Same resolution, same HDR10 support, all the bells and whistles. The iPhone XS Max amps up on the size, bringing the display to 6.5″ but keeps the same 458 PPI the iPhone XS has. Meanwhile the more affordable iPhone XR comes with an LCD display with the classic Retina pixel density of 326 PPI. The FaceID system which is in the notch above the screen is also supposed to be faster, but Apple didn’t state any solid numbers for this.

More affordable?

How much more affordable? The iPhone XR starts at $749 (~RM3,100.79) for the 64GB variant, while the iPhone XS starts at $999 (~RM4135.76). The larger iPhone XS Max starts at a lofty $1099 (~RM4549.75) for the same capacity, so I would say it’s pretty affordable. The iPhone XS duo will come in the standard black and white colors and a new gold option, while the iPhone XR will be available in 6 different shades. For those multimedia hoarders out there the iPhone XR is capped at 256GB, while the iPhone XS and XS Max go up to 512GB.

Availability vary by region, with pre-orders of the iPhone XS duo starting tomorrow and availability a week later. The iPhone XR will come later, with pre-orders starting 19th October, and shipping to commence a week later.

And oh, there is a red iPhone XR.

Pokdepinion: I think the iPhone XR is going to sell really well. It doesn’t really lose out on too many features available in the iPhone XS, but it comes with a much lower price tag.