These are the smartest and most powerful iPhones to date
Apple’s iPhone Xs is undoubtedly the star of today’s show, and the new phones did not disappoint. While the phones are visually similar to the iPhone X (which means glass, stainless steel band and still no headphone jack) the innards are all new.
The iPhone Xs has a 5.8-inch OLED display, and with a 2436 x 1125 resolution OLED display, it has the sharpest screen on an iPhone yet, with 458 ppi. The iPhone Xs Max has a bigger 6.5-inch display and sports a 2688 x 1242 resolution which still comes out to 458 ppi.
Each new iPhone iteration gets a new custom chipset, and this year’s new crop of iPhones is no exception. Apple’s new A12 bionic chip is made with a 7nm process, and the company claims it’s the first of its kind (Huawei may have an issue with that). The chipset has a 4-core GPU and a 6-core CPU as well as a new Neural Engine. The 9-core machine-learning capable Neural Engine is able to process 5 trillion operations per second.
Machine learning is fast becoming a core component of new chipsets, and the new iPhone’s AR capabilities are powered mainly by the phone’s neural capabilities.
A demo of Blades, made by Bethesda Studios (the same people who created The Elder Scrolls series of games) showed off just how capable the new phone is in terms of taking mobile gaming to the next level. Many effects that you usually associate on consoles and the PC is present on the demo that was shown during the presentation, which really shows how much muscle Apple’s new chip can flex.
Apple is always looking to make its cameras better, and to this end, they’ve managed to create a new shooting mode dubbed Smart HDR. Thanks to the A12 bionic, the cameras are able to take shadow and highlight information in addition to the actual image, which it then combines to give you the best photo possible.
As far as the actual sensors go, the iPhone Xs and Xs Max have a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera with OIS and 1.4um pixels, a f/1.8 aperture opening, and 6-element lens. The 2x optical zoom camera is still there, and still has a 12-megapixel sensor and f/2.4 aperture lens. The wide-angle camera has a brand-new sensor, and the True Tone sensor has been tweaked and improved for better performance. The 7-megapixel front megapixel camera is faster than last year as well.
Apple has also added the ability to add or subtract artificial bokeh to photos taken by the new phones, from f/1.8 and beyond.
Moving to battery life, the iPhone Xs is pegged to last 30 minutes more than the iPhone X, while the iPhone Xs Max is able to last for more than an hour and a half. The new phones also are now dual-SIM capable.
Interestingly, Apple is putting a single physical SIM card in the iPhone Xs and Xs Max and an e-SIM for places that support it. In areas that don’t like China, Apple is releasing a version of the phone that has two physical SIM slots.
The iPhone Xs and Xs Max are available in 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB, with prices starting at $999(~Php 53.8k) for the iPhone Xs and $1099(~Php 59.2k) for the iPhone Xs Max. Pre-orders start on September 14.
