Apple’s New iPhones Are Simply Excellent
The iPhone Xs and Xs Max take performance and photography to the next level
Close your eyes and feel the “S” year.
In one hand I held the innovative Apple iPhone X. Released a year ago, it’s the first Apple handset to jettison the home button. In the other, I held its brand-new successor, the iPhone Xs. My eyes squeezed shut, I passed them back and forth between my hands, rolling each phone over, feeling the curves, glass backs, dual lens camera bumps, and lightning ports. I realized I couldn’t tell the difference between the two phones.
This is not a criticism. It’s just a fact of S model years, where Apple locks in the iPhone design and focuses, instead, on updating key internal components.
As such, the biggest changes to the 5.8-inch iPhone Xs and its big brother, the 6.5-inch iPhone Xs Max, both of which I tested, can be found in performance (thanks to the new A12 Bionic CPU), photos and videos, (new cameras and a new ISP backed by the A12), and functionality (iOS12, the final version of which came pre-installed on my test units).
The result is a pair of fantastic, elegant, and high-performing handsets that will please iPhone…
