iPhone XS and Max Review By Vector

Hi I'm Renee Richie welcome back to vector- and this is the iPhone 10s and 10s max, somehow probably play infinite looping around the Apple Park ring until I hit 88 miles per hour. Apple was able to send tomorrow's iPhone hurtling back in time almost a year as a result. If you spent a few hundred bucks more and learned some new gestures, you've been living the last 11 months in the bezel and home-button free future, but as basically every sci-fi plot twist ever has shown us time. Travel is never without consequence of releasing tomorrow's iPhone last year. What was Apple didn't release now today? The answer, of course, was and is an S type update, because as much as some people dislike the iterative in-betweens, nobody likes anything as a result, I'm sure almost every review for the next long while is going to perseverate over a single, utterly predictable question. Whether iPhone 10 owners, who picked up their little piece of the future last year, should consider upgrading to the S enhanced present this year.

Spoiler alerts the people who bought the iPhone 10 last year were either constant, early, adopters or eager to upgrade them, so they wouldn't have to wait until now. They'll, either automatically get a 10 s as part of one of those increasingly common annual update programs, or they'll just keep on keeping on until they need the next new thing. They know that, based on how iPhone 10s was introduced as a new iPhone 10 and not an all new iPhone Apple knows that it's just the rest of us nerds who have to get better at remembering it. It's everyone else, the ones who are still undecided about this whole next generation phone thing who still own older, iPhones or Android curious, who maybe think the iterative in-between, is really the new model done right. Thanks to a year of early adopter, beta tester, fed fixes and improvements, who may still be undecided about upgrading wondering if now might finally be the time to hand off or hand down their old, iPhone or Android and embrace not some nacho future, but the bezel is present for them.

The people who've spent the last year looking at that edge to edge display HDR video, fluid navigation at face ID depth, II selfies and an emoji, and at almost every phone for almost every vendor. That's tried and largely failed to copy it. The iPhone 10s and the bigger iPhone 10s max could be compelling I think that's exactly. The customer is aiming for this year and I spent the last week trying to figure out if the starting at $9.99 iPhone, 10s and starting at 1099, iPhone 10s Macs really are the phones to do it. iPhone 10s Macs, the biggest news about iPhone 10s, is literally the biggest in news.

A 6.5 inch version. Apple is calling max. It looks like iPhone, 8, plus with shave and a haircut seriously. You need to see this thing to believe it now confession time I've been having some trouble easing into that name max, seeing and hearing Apple use it. Isn't your parents reading from urban dictionary weird, but it's close aside from sounding like max like the back in Tosh computer.

It comes off as more than a little over the top like max excite, which, ironically, is a phrase I personally use way too often, but maybe that's exactly what Apple's going for here either way by this time next year, he'll at this time next month, I doubt any of us will even think about it anymore, not so sure, just ask iPad I get why Apple didn't stick with plus, though in previous years plus versions, weren't just bigger, they were better, notably, they had higher screen densities, superior cameras, including for the last few years, dual camera systems and more memory. That's simply not the case with Mac's this year, aside from the physical size, both models are identical: same 458, pixels per inch same dual camera systems and sweet Christmas. Even the same four gigabytes of memory, iPhone 10s max is literally a bigger iPhone.10S, because max is bigger, Apple can squeeze in more pixels 2688 by 1242 instead of 24 36 by 1125, and if my math is right, that's more than a standard retina iPad like the iPad, Mini or nine point. Seven-inch, iPad, there's also a larger battery to help push all those extra pixels, but that's it. That's all.

Differentiating based solely on size is something Apple has done off and on with the iPad lineup as well. Of course, size itself can be seen as an exclusive feature for some. The more expansive more legible now, including the much-anticipated return of display zoom, more pixel, full 6.5 inch 10s max, will be well worth the extra hundred bucks apple's asking for it. Others, though, will see the more compact more pocketable, more one, handable 5.8 inch, iPhone 10s as a sweet spot, save themselves those hundred bucks and smile so wide, while doing it personally I've gravitated towards the bigger iPhone ever since Apple introduced it other than my Apple Watch. My iPhone is the one device I have with me everywhere and can use to do almost everything and I want to be able to do as much as I possibly can with it.

That's, including both the display size and the camera. For the last year, though, I've been living on a 5.8 inch, iPhone 10, because it was so much screen in so small a package now that the cameras are no longer a distinguishing factor, will I stick with that size, or will they escalate back up to 6.5 inches big iPhone versus tiny tablet? Is something I've joked about in my reviews for years, but this is no joke at 6.5 inches, it really is like iPhone 10 had a baby with an iPad Mini, that's especially true in landscape, where, like plus-sized iPhones before it, you get the iPad style split view layout in apps, even though you still miss out on the functional difference in aspect ratio and on key features like side by side, apps and picture-in-picture, which, at this point along the phone maturity curve. Those no longer feel like crammed in complexities. They feel like missing functionality holding iPhone 10 max. It feels about the same to me as the previous plus models.

It's just a tad slimmer, but not that I notice that edge to edge screen, though fact you can't miss almost all of us will need to swipe down for reach ability to get to the top half and tap into the one-sided keyboard to type one-handed or just give up and treat it as a two-handed device. But what you get for putting up with the bigger dimensions are those bigger dimensions, and it can be a hell of a reward. I'm guessing I'll end up landing on the max still I'm going to jump back and forth between them for the next month to really make sure stay tuned, iPhone, 10 s, design, wait what a design section for a phone- that's almost visually indistinguishable from the previous years! Isn't that like having a design section in a Porsche 911 review, a Letha M series review a Rolex submariner review whatever there are some important distinctions, both in how it looks and in how it works. The most obvious is the new gold finish. After sticking with it on iPhone 8, but not even using it on iPhone 10, this year's iPhone 10 s and iPhone 10s max both come with not only silver white and Space Gray, but gold.

It's not the champagne or rose gold of the 6s or 7, and not even the blush of eight. It's something new like the new steel gold, Apple Watch that so perfectly intentionally matches it. Furthermore, it's deeper to my eyes, still rich, but not at all ostentatious a splash of pink a touch of brown. Furthermore, it's bling! Furthermore, it's just not so fussy about it and I like it a lot since you can't anodize stainless steel, Apple brought the gold back using physical vapor deposition. Theoretically, it makes the surface tougher and more resistant to abrasions diamond, like carbon DLC, which apple famously used to make the black steel Apple Watch into something akin to adamantine is a form of PVD.

The bands are still beyond surgical grade stainless steel and the front and back are still glass but even stronger glass than the already even stronger glass apple and corning cooperated on last year. Chemistry typically forces a trade-off. The better, a glass formulation resists scratches the easier it is to crack the better it resists cracks the easier it is to scratch. My iPhone 10 survived many a drop, but it did pick up more than its fair share of battle damage this year. Apple says it found a way to improve both.

Take that chemistry still apple and Corning, worked miracles, notwithstanding I'm eager to see how the 10s holds up over time. The display is still edged too rounded edge, OLED, video, still Dolby Vision and HDR 10 compatible photos, though including the fancy new smart, HDR ones. I'll get to in a bit get an even higher dynamic range 60% higher according to Apple, and they look terrific but one second, a short but necessary rant about the display a year later and a lot of people who really should know better still insist on calling the OLED iPhone a Samsung, Display and crediting pretty much everything about it to Samsung. That is much bull now, as it was then, maybe even more if rumors of dual sourcing turned out to be true sure Samsung manufactured the OLED panels using its gentile process, but it did so to apple's order and specifications calling them Samsung displays, regardless of how clever that might make some people feel is like calling the 11 or a 12 Bionic at TSMC chipset or the iPhone itself, a Foxconn phone, regardless of who makes it Apple, designed it and implemented it Apple, fit it to the curves of the new casing. Apple engineered the silicon to drive it Apple developed the anti-aliasing and color shift and burning mitigations and Apple has each one individually color calibrated at the factory Apple, even folded it back on itself, so we could get rid of the chin at the bottom of the phone, something that a year later, almost no other vendor has been able to afford or engineer.

Good sourcing is definitely a requirement, but it's far from the only one OLED on the iPhone is something everyone from the platform technology to industrial design to display teams deserve a ton of credit for or if you hate, the way it turned out. Absolutely all the blame. Their grant over iPhone 10s retains almost the same size and shape as iPhone 10. The differences are mainly around the camera housing, and it's only a millimeter or so my old Apple iPhone 10 leather case fits fine on my iPhone 10s I have no problem using it, but, as always, your mileage may vary. The speakers are better on iPhone 10s and iPhone 10s Mac's as well.

No they're, not Dolby Atmos, because physics, but they are wide stereo I'm, the opposite of an audio file. So iPhone speakers have sounded fine to me for years now. Don't hate me, but people with much better ears than mine. Tell me that these sound, even better I do notice. The better separation from both channels and in movies can clearly hear monster trucks and couldn't get Semi from one side to the other, even as dialog somehow manages to stay eerily centered like iPad Pro, if you spin your iPhone 180 degrees, while watching audio will spin with it that keeps the left channel on the left, the right channel on the right, if you spin to portrait orientation all bets are off, though, and everything just sounds kind of centered and judgy, because portrait video still is the thing to everyone.

Call quality has been a mixed bag for me, but I need to swap some Sims around and find out what's roaming and what's actually happening. The bottom of the iPhone is now a symmetrical across the x-axis that access is still fine, but Apple had to add an extra antenna to the top and bottom to enable 4x4, multi and multi out my mo, and that came at the cost of matching grilles. Yes, I can't unsee it, and I'm guessing it makes Johnny Ives eye twitch just thinking about it, but it doubles the effective ways the iPhone 10s can lock on to and keep a carrier signal. So I guess we'll just have to put up with it for a while drowning our sorrows and gigabit LTE license assisted access, Leia, which is carrier aggregated unlicensed spectrum at five gigahertz, and you'll Simpson. Now, dual SIM support is shipping.

Later this fall in most places, it'll use one NATO SIM and one built-in ECM in China it'll use two NATO Sims. It basically means that you can have two different numbers active on two different carriers at the same time and switch between them whenever you want or need to. If you're curious, it works just fine with a paired Apple Watch, though, if you go out running without your iPhone you'll have to preselect which carrier you're going to take out running with you, particulate and liquid ingress protection. Basically dust and water resistance are even better now rising to ip68, which, according to apples vendor set claims means an iPhone 10s that gets dropped in the drink. Can now survive it up to two meters for up to thirty minutes again, don't confuse this with swim proofing or dive proofing, or for making it safe to use an underwater camera.

It's still so not! But if you spill your favorite beverage on it, get caught in the rain splashed on, or you knock it into the bathtub or pool chances are very good that if you fish it out clean it off and dry it out, it'll be just fine. It's three years, post USB Con MacBook and Apple still hasn't included a USB cable in the box, not even a USB, a two USB adapter, in fact, a 3.5 millimeter to lightning adapter, which Apple included in the iPhone 7 iPhone, 8 and iPhone.10 boxes is gone now, so we're expected to have switched completely over to lightning for audio, but not to USB-C for data or charging I know. Apple has all the numbers to make the best choices for his existing customer base, but over serving that customer base is seldom the wrong decision, and it's usually the type of decision we expect from Apple. How much does it cost to chamfer an edge or make one of those multi-layer depth? D finishes on an iPhone. Apple spends a fortune seen to every conceivable design detail on the phone themselves, but then don't continue that commitment through to the accessory experience.

It's also weird that Apple is still including a 5 watt. USB a charger in the box. Sure technically wired in slow is the best way to charge your iPhone, but for most people most of the time the tiny fraction of battery life you lose charging fast and hot, especially in the age of aggressive charge. Management, simply isn't worth the loss of convenience inside there's a new, tighter coil that makes the inductive charging system more efficient. It doesn't draw any additional power.

It just uses the same power better Apple also says the new design won't be as fussy about where exactly you place it on the inductive charging pad. That's great, going Wireless quickly loses its appeal when you wake up next to a dead phone that tip just slightly off its sweet spot in the middle of the night. Battery chemistry is still battery chemistry, though, and it hasn't seen any significant technological improvements in a while, but Apple keeps improving all the technology around the lithium-ion to eke out as much as it possibly can. iPhone 10s is no exception. Apple says it gets slightly longer battery life than the 10 I've been using both side-by-side for the last week and largely under the most rural conditions imaginable roaming on AT&T.

Even though the battery on the 10s is a year newer and far less abused, it still hangs on impressively better enough that, despite the radios burning up in a desperate attempt to keep a signal, I could almost make it through a day for the brief period of time that I was home is the day no problem. I'll have to do a lot more tests, especially with the bigger battery on the bigger iPhone 10s max, but I'm hopeful that we're finally turning the corner from phones designed for light web browsing and mail reading to phones that can handle the constant screen. GPS and data of our now social and gaming focused lives, iPhone 10s Bionic. The funny thing happened when Apple shipped the first 64-bit chipset on mobile in the iPhone 5s it instantly catapulted to the head of the silicon pack and the platform technologies team hasn't slowed down since not with the fusion high efficiency high performance cores in iPhone 7, not with the neural engine block in iPhone 10 and not with the second generation bionic in iPhone 10s and iPhone 10s max I've already explained a ton about why and how Apple is winning mobile silicon. But here is the TLDR in pop culture terms.

If the old Bionic was a six billion dollar man, the new Bionic is Iron Man, post extremist edition, and that keeps happening in different but important ways: generation after generation, it's seven nanometer now processes have become more marketing terms than absolute measures, but this is the first commercial chip to ship at that tiny scale like forget: Ant-Man, shot an arrow depth of field, tiny and think knocking on the door of quantum realm tiny, tiny. Basically, it means Apple can pack even more transistors into an even smaller die, because performance is inextricably linked to efficiency. Seven nanometers improves both the CPU is still a six core fusion system, with two high-performance cores and for high efficiency cores that can all be used together to really rock your socks off if and when they need to, but those performance cores are now up to fifteen percent faster and 40 percent. More energy efficient. Those efficiency cores are up to 50 percent more efficient in an industry where the explosive growth of mobile processing power has seemed like a hockey stick for years.

Those numbers might seem a little more modest like drum sticks, but year after year the gains are still adding up. Apple's custom performance controller is still the secret sauce. Here, it's what coordinates all the tasks across and to all the cores for the GPU Apple. Second, fully custom design. The number of cores has gone up from three to four tessellation and multi-layer.

Rendering and lossless memory compression have been folded in to along with metal to support, and that gives it a 50% bump over last year's, basically games videos, editing photo filters and all other graphically. Intensive tasks may be more intensive than ever, but they don't feel that way. The biggest news is the knurl engine is skyrocketed from two cores to eight cores, with multi precision, support capable of 5 trillion calculations a second, and that makes it able to accelerate apple's core ml machine learning frameworks up to nine times at up to ten percent the power of last year. It's also got smart compute, which lets it decide on the fly. Whether any given task is better off being run on the CPU GPU or a neural engine.

I'd call it ridiculous, but in the time it takes me to type that Bionic would have performed fifteen trillion calculations and come up with six one. Six, better words for it, and a second plan to beat Thanos the neural engine core recognizes frequent patterns, tries to proactively predict behavior and learns what you do so it can help you do it faster and more easily, like Jarvis so much faster. This year's Bionic can do a lot of machine learning tasks in real time that lets you spin up a experiences and map out the staging surface. In a way that feels positively snappy, it also helps with photo searches, applying intelligent filtering in apps and more face ID. Biometric authentication benefits not only from the more advanced neural engine, but faster algorithms and a faster, secure, end clave as well previously, when it worked faced idea, was so seamless it felt almost as though it was passive.

Now it feels almost as though it's not even there, combined with iOS 12 swipe up to retry I, can't even remember the last time I had to enter a passcode or password. The new neural engine also works with the new image signal processor to make taking and editing pictures and video better than ever. That includes not only moving portrait mode from a custom, but consistent disk blur effect to what's basically a full on computational lens model that ingests and understands what's in a scene and then applies a dynamic effect that distorts as it gets further from center or layers, as it encounters different light sources that are overlapping. It's like moving from a static photo filter to a dynamic 3d render in real-time, and it gives both iPhone cameras front and back a real character. Because of that you can even change the depth effect currently in post later this year live you can literally step it from F 1.4 to f-16 and watch as the computational lens model recalculates in steps with you. It's not the same as shooting with a dedicated camera and big hunk of glass, but it's so good you'll be wanting to reach for that camera and that glass far less often, and that seems to be the driving goal of Apple's ISP and neural Engine teams, there's a bunch of other cool stuff in a12 as well, including HEV, C, encoders and decoders to speed up 4k HDR and an audio subsystem, there's even a new, fast storage controller that can address up to 512 gigabytes of solid-state chips.

So yep. In addition to the aforementioned 4 gigabytes of memory, iPhone 10s can come with up to 512 gigabytes of storage. Now as well, half a terabyte, HL Bionic is so important. It's what makes iPhone 10s and iPhone 10s Mac's. What they are gold is great.

New cameras are always better, but it's the silicon that currently makes Apple unmatchable iPhone 10s camera if it feels like I've, already covered a lot of the camera stuff in the silicon section, that's just the reality of modern computational photography. It's the bits that let us transcend the atoms, the artificial intelligence that propels us beyond the physics that you get the idea. What I like about Apple, though, is that it's not so reliant on the computational stuff that it forgets about the photography. There are single camera systems without the benefits of apples, true depth, but with perfect glass and algorithms behind them. That can segmentation mask and disk blur the hell out of photos so much so many people prefer them to systems like Apple's, that, via dual cameras or dot, projectors managed to capture real depth data to combine with segmentation masking I like having both because, as I think, will become clearer over a short period of time, real depth.

Sensing isn't just a one portrait mode trick pony the new dual camera system on the back has the same telephoto capabilities as last year. The wide-angle, though, has a new sensor with both bigger and deeper pixels bigger pixels drink in more light to perform better in the dark, deeper pixels prevent crosstalk to make for a clearer image. The amount of focus pixels has also been to autofocus is now twice as fast so fast. You almost forget. You can change the focus if you need to, because you so seldom need to the true tone flash not to be confused with the true tone display, because those terms are confusing now has advanced flicker detection.

So even if you have to resort to the flash, you still maintain better white balance and color accuracy. The true depth camera on the front also has a new sensor, that's twice as fast for blisteringly, quick selfies on both the back camera system and the true depth. In addition, all the fancy stuff apple's ISP has been doing for years in combination with the neural network. It's now fast and intelligent enough to do what Apple is calling smart HDR. Once the camera is open, it starts buffering.

So there's zero shutter lag when you go to take the photo, that's not new that it can buffer four frames now in order to better isolate and capture motion is new. At the same time, it's also capturing underexposed versions of each frame to preserve, highlight details, and once you take the shot, it's capturing a long exposure as well. So you can get even greater details from the shadows, the smarts in smart HDR, then takeover figure out the best pixels from each frame and produce a single idealized photo now, of course, none of that is absolutely new. Google has been sucking photos up to the cloud and auto-awesome in them for years, but this is all being done locally on the a12 Bionic, so you can rest easy, knowing your selfies aren't being used to feed any other company's military drone, recognition, program or law enforcement surveillance, video I kid, but not really. It's terrifying, and cheap services aren't gonna, keep Sarah Connor alive when and if the T 2 million already knows what she looks like and where she is.

The difference is most noticeable when you're shooting dark subjects on bright backgrounds. Like a face against the Sun high contrast, shots like someone's sipping coffee with the morning sky out the window behind them those Twilight moments when you wished, your camera could capture what your eyes and your heart see, and those high impact action shots where athletes or your pets or kids just won't stop moving. Video should benefit as well. Apple showed some demo footage that looked like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie only better. You know all shadows and light trails and fog and forests, and even then you could clearly see the color from around the high contrast.

More than previously possible, I haven't a chance to try to shoot that yet, but I'm looking forward to it and that's been the story of iPhone photography going on years now. The new camera on ever has one job to capture photos and videos that the previous camera simply never could iPhone 10s conclusion, 11 years ago, Apple launched the original iPhone and kicked off a decade of modern mobile revolution. Last year, Apple launched the iPhone 10 intent on kicking off another decade, the former road, the convergence of ubiquitous cellular networking, multi-touch interface and miniaturization to become the most successful product. Human history of successful products has effectively limitless broadband, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. From silicon to software now begin to converge.

The latter is trying to do the same and Apple's next step towards that future. Is this year's iPhone 10s? Yes, it's an S year again after taking a break and naming last year's swan song, two bezels and home buttons. The iPhone eight instead of the iPhone 7s Apple, is back to its number or against numeral, in this case, number numeral, plus s convention for some that s has come to connote a minor insignificant, even boring iteration on the previous year's Hardware for others that s represents a polish of perfection and a boost in performance that makes this year's Hardware the one to get. If you look back at the history of speed boost, Siri touch, ID 3d touch and inductive charging. It's pretty clear that when the casing becomes a known commodity, the various platform teams from chipsets to cameras can really hit those internal upgrades hard and that's absolutely the case with iPhone 10s, which gains the world's first seven nanometer processors, with a twelve Bionic faster face.

I'd wider stereo speakers, gigabit LTE deal sim smart HDR, adjustable background blur, stereo video, recording, ip68 water resistance, a new gold finish and oh yeah, an all-new 6.5 inch max model, but again I'm going to keep harping on this. It is really about the a12 Bionic and its new neural engine. If you're interested in that, then check out brilliant, a problem-solving website that teaches you about everything, from algorithms to neural networks, instead of passively listening to podcasts or lectures you get to master concepts by solving fun and challenging problems and brilliant provides the tools and the frameworks you need to tackle those challenges. Brilliant thought-provoking content based around breaking up complexities into bite-sized, understandable chunks, will lead you from curiosity to mastery. So what do you for checkout, brilliant org, slash vector thanks brilliant, unlike last year, where Apple positively strutted out iPhone 10 on stage and hey? If I was 2017, Tim, Cook and I somehow managed to snatch 2018 Tim Cook's iPhone and launched it early, Ida strutted as well.

This year the company was far more careful, a new iPhone 10, not an all new iPhone, in other words, Apple, never positioned the iPhone, 10s or iPhone 10s max is revolutionary. Given how much technology Apple pulled forward into iPhone 10 last year, there was simply no way it could have through engineering or marketing. What Apple did do was quickly and carefully position it not as what's all new, but is what inevitably comes next I. Don't think Apple intends iPhone 10 owners to rush out in upgrade to iPhone 10s industry, insiders, tech enthusiasts and those on yearly update programs will of course do just that, but I think Apple intends those new models to appeal to those who didn't yet make the leap to an all new iPhone, those who always avoid reveille boards or who stuck with Android or with the home button or who were simply waiting on a bigger screen and I. Think for them.

iPhone, 10s or iPhone 10s Mac's are exactly the new phones. They've been waiting for, and I want to know what you think, which iPhone or Android phone do you have now? Are you planning on upgrading to the iPhone, 10s or iPhone 10s max? Are you planning on waiting for the iPhone 10 are if you're planning on upgrading, let me know ? what and, if you're, not planning on upgrading. Let me know why hit like hit subscribe and then hit the comments below. Thank you so much for watching.

Source : Vector