“Coming from any previous iPhone from the Plus era, if you preferred the Plus size, I can’t see why you wouldn’t prefer the XS Max now. It’s almost exactly the same height and width as the 6-8 Plus devices, but about a millimeter smaller in both dimensions. That shouldn’t make much of a difference, but I swear, in my hand, it actually somehow feels more comfortable than an iPhone Plus. I don’t know if that’s a steel vs. aluminum thing or just the reviewer’s placebo effect,” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball. “Personally, I prefer the XS. But it was a closer call for me than in previous years. For the remainder of this review, I’m mostly going to talk about the ‘iPhone XS,’ but everything I say pertains to both sizes.”
“Take a look at Apple’s nifty three-column iPhone Comparison web page. It defaults to comparing the XS, XS Max, and XR.3 Change that third column to last year’s iPhone X, and the differences from top to bottom mostly look rather mild. Part of that is that most of the year-over-year improvements are rather mild. Water resistance, for example, went from IP67 to IP68 — from 1 meter for up to 30 minutes to 2 meters for up to 30 minutes,” Gruber writes. “Nice, but not wow.”
“But there is one wow factor comparing the iPhone XS to last year’s iPhone X: photography. But the reasons don’t show up in Apple’s comparison spec list (even though some of them could). I’ve focused nearly the entirety of my testing on taking photos and videos side-by-side against my 10-month old iPhone X,” Gruber writes. “Overall, I’m simply blown away by the iPhone XS’s results. Sometimes the difference is subtle but noticeable; sometimes the difference is between unusable and pretty good. The iPhone XS can capture still images and video that the iPhone X cannot.”
“For anyone upgrading from an older iPhone, the iPhone XS and XS Max should seem amazing in every regard. Compared to last year’s iPhone X, the XS and XS Max are solid refinements across the board, but deliver a dramatic year-over-year step forward in photo and video quality. If you care about the image quality of the photos and videos you shoot with your phone, it’s hard to resist.”
Tons more in the full review – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: The photo samples in the full article each speak a thousand words amidst some 5,000 actual words.
SEE ALSO:
Tom’s Guide reviews Apple’s iPhone Xs Max: You won’t want to put down; it’s like a pocketable mini movie theater
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
NYT reviews Apple’s iPhone Xs and Xs Max: Bigger is now definitely better – September 18, 2018