The 2019 iPhone lineup may not be completely different from last year on paper. Cosmetically, the iPhone 11 Pro backs the iPhone XS’s clear glass for a frosted finish and of course adds a third camera to the back. Inside, however, almost every aspect of the iPhone 11 Pro is an upgrade from its predecessor. We’ve spent the last few weeks examining every aspect of the iPhone 11 Pro, and in this review, we’ll probably have all the reasons you’re looking to justify buying or passing a phone.

We tested the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera in various real-life shooting situations using the stock camera app. Additionally, the Deep Fusion functionality is not yet enabled on our phones.

The Apple iPhone 11 Pro continues to sport a 12-megapixel sensor and an f / 1.8 lens, two things that have dominated the iPhone’s primary camera for several years. A notable improvement is the aperture of the telephoto lens, which has gone from f / 2.4 to f / 2.0, currently the largest telephoto lens in smartphone cameras. Wide-angle lens aperture f / 2.4. The three sensors have the same resolution of 12 megapixels.

Note: All of the following camera samples have been resized for the web You can see the full-resolution sample in our Flickr gallery here.

During the day

During the day, the iPhone 11 Pro shoots images that showcase impressive features. For beginners, one of the most obvious features is the detailed reproduction. In the following samples, you can see how well the iPhone 11 Pro reproduces the finer details in the content.

In addition to good detailed reproduction, we also see impressive HDR processing from the iPhone 11 Pro. HDR processing allows photos to have an extended dynamic range, a result that shows us twice. Apple has implemented a new Smart HDR algorithm that uses machine learning to identify topics and backgrounds, and relays them accurately and independently. None of this is done in one, multiple exposures and blends together, and is done well enough for the complete absence of the typical HDR halo we see when shooting in bright light environments. Sample below.

Low light – Meet the new night mode

Ever since Google introduced the Pixel Night Sight, the special mode for low light shooting has been a thing of the past. It was only hoped that Apple would bring something similar to the iPhone, but some notes were needed to implement them. For starters, the iPhone has no dedicated night mode. It is triggered automatically when the system detects the scene to be dimmed. Although you may not have the option to trigger the mode, you can choose the duration of exposure, anything from 1 second to 3 seconds. If the phone is mounted on a tripod or a stable surface, you can extend the exposure for 10 seconds.

3 seconds less light exposure on primary camera

3 second hand-help exposure from a telephoto lens

When using the iPhone 11 Pro in low light conditions, night mode is only available for wide angle and telephoto lenses. For both lenses, holding the phone in your hand for up to three seconds works just fine. That’s a bit important. Also important is that the iPhone is not shooting a long exposure, but rather shooting multiple exposures and combining them in a way that Smart HDR manages. The results, just below, are impressive. The P30 Pro isn’t impressive, but it’s still incredibly impressive. Especially when you consider that you get an f / 2.0 aperture on the tele-lens. We note that the iPhone 11 Pro’s night mode images look much like the longer exposure, not the HDR images, which is a major plus. Enough talking, so here are some samples for you to enjoy.

Ultra-Wide-Angle-Limited-Lens

The ultra-wide-angle lens is a brand new addition to the iPhone 11 Pro, the first genre-product. He has several flaws in his consideration. First and foremost, it lacks any kind of autofocus, which is fatally depressing. Second, in some photos, the vignette is very clear, and it doesn’t always add a “pleasing effect.” What Apple admires is the well-controlled distortion of the lens. The 13mm field of view is often sensitive to a lot of barrel distortion, but the wide angle lens of the iPhone 11 Pro avoids it to a great extent. Here are some samples for your observation.

Telephoto lens

Apple iPhone 11 Pro uses a 12 megapixel sensor that offers a telephoto perspective with a 52mm lens. This focal length is traditionally one of the most common for portrait shooting. However, smartphones have a telephoto lens with an aperture of f / 2.4 (or smaller), which prevents them from actually creating that bokeh naturally. On the iPhone 11 Pro, Apple has achieved an f / 2.0 in telephoto lenses, the first in the industry. This allows for two things with a telephoto lens. First, it improves the bokeh so much when taking portraits (not in portrait mode, just regular portraits). Second, due to the large aperture, Apple was able to enable night mode on telephoto lenses as well. Here are some results from the telephoto lens that must have fascinated us.

In the past, the iPhone has always had good imaging performance, but it tended to be more “reliable” than “Starler”. This year, the iPhone 11 Pro is not only reliable, but also close to perfect as a smartphone camera. It surpasses all the camera smartphones we’ve tested so far this year in terms of detail capture, AF performance and of course ease of use.

Performance

In addition to the upgraded camera stack, the new A13 Bionic SoC is another major highlight of the phone. The chip has a hexa-core processor with 4 efficiency cores and 2 performance cores. There’s also a quad-core GPU backed up, but the really impressive thing here is how Apple claims to be able to turn on and off circuits and gates based on the work they’re doing.

By measuring the performance of the iPhone 11 Pro, we find absolutely no surprises. The new A13 bionic chip has surpassed benchmark figures across all flagships, scoring as high as expected. Without going into specific topics, we’re just going to sort all the benchmark numbers in the chart below.

Although benchmarks can sometimes be a reflection of ideal situations, real-world numbers may vary. We tested the real-world capabilities of the iPhone 11 Pro using Gamebench, which allows us to record average frame rate and average CPU-GPU usage. We’ve played a number of popular titles on the iPhone 11 Pro and found its functionality to be as impressive as ever. IPhone Asphalt 9, PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile consistently provide 59 fps. Stability is also 95 percent (or higher). Needless to say, gaming or any other kind of heavy work is not a problem for the A13 Bionic to get the iPhone, and when you factor in the fact that the phone has only 4GB of RAM, you can’t help but get what Apple has achieved.

Whichever way you look at it, the iPhone 11 Pro is running on the fastest hardware on the market right now and you will have a hard time finding any bugs or slow-down here.

Battery life

Continuing the hot streak of significant improvements to this year’s iPhone, we have the battery. Last year’s iPhone XS had a battery capacity of 2658mAh whereas now, we have a slightly larger battery measuring 3046mAh. With a larger battery, SoC design and some crazy optimizations in iOS 13’s Dark Mode, Apple claims up to 4 hours more battery life. As it turns out, this is not entirely accurate. The iPhone 11 Pro has managed to get a longer battery life.

On Geekbench 4’s battery test, the iPhone 11 Pro lasted 6 hours 48 minutes. In our video loop test, the phone worked better, providing 9 hours of continuous video playback and locally stored mp4 video files using VLC. One hour of navigation using Apple Maps costs us 10 percent battery penalty. In everyday use, however, the iPhone 11 Pro was perfectly impressive, delivering screens consistently anywhere, anywhere from five to six and a half hours on time.

Fortunately, Apple finally has a bundle of 18W fast chargers in the box and there’s also a Lightning cable from a Type-C. Using the iPhone 11 Pro stock charger and cable can charge up to 100 in 86 minutes, which is not bad at all. Since the iPhone uses USB-PD, you can buy any charger that supports it and get fast charging anywhere other than your home. Either way, the iPhone 11 Pro eventually changed the bad reputation for battery life for this particular form factor.

Display

The iPhone 11 Pro has a 5.8-inch 60Hz OLED panel with a resolution of 1125×2436. The display supports 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage and because of this, you get support for Dolby Vision playback capabilities and even YouTube HDR.

The iPhone has traditionally reproduced the most accurate colors in the business, but this time around, we’ve also noticed an extremely bright display. Although the display of the iPhone 11 Pro should theoretically hit more than 1000 nits of brightness during playback of HDR content (if HDR metadata is required), with regular use, the brightness peak is 857 nits and it can be as low as 4 nits. What does it mean if you get a nice blade for use in bright daylight even in pitch darkness?

The Apple iPhone 11 Pro has the brightest display we’ve tested this year

As an OLED display, the iPhone 11 Pro’s display registers a reading of 0 in our Lux meter.

Honestly, the iPhone 11 Pro’s display is one of the best in the business and you’ll have a hard time finding anything to complain about. Of course, the notch is going to be present, but it doesn’t really hinder anything since the content, videos or games, fits it very well. Needless to say, good luck finding this panel.

Construction and design

The iPhone 11 Pro continues to use the same design specs as the iPhone X which introduced this new look. There are only two visible changes to the design this year; Camera module on the back and glass finish on the back. Other than that, the design stays the same.

Seen from the front, the iPhone 11 Pro is similar to the iPhone XS and iPhone X.

The frozen finish on the back looks nice

Our Silver iPhone 11 Pro comes with a frosted white back, which I liked, but the finish may not be everyone’s cup of tea. However, the triple camera layout is what most people dislike. The lenses seem to be very large and the square bumps are just awkward in their accommodation. And although you can express your frustration for it, it’s actually the only thing that sets the iPhone 11 Pro (and its older brother) apart from other smartphones on the market.

iOS 13

One of the main reasons for the great performance of the iPhone 11 Pro is iOS 13 If you consider the long battery life, it can be partly attributed to the dark mode which significantly increases the battery life. The tight integration with SoC allows the OS to provide an incredibly fluid experience, not only when gaming or multi-tasking, but also when doing something as simple as scrolling through browser windows or apps. This is partly due to the 120Hz polling rate for touch input.

A key element of iOS 13 that makes the iPhone so much more desirable is that Apple has finally enabled external drive support. Plug in a USB drive (with a lightning connector) and it will pop up in the File app and you can easily move things around. This also applies to being able to download things using a web browser and save them to internal storage.

Overall, the iOS 13 experience continues Apple’s tradition of providing a solid, consistent, and feature-rich experience for iOS users. Could it have more? Absolutely. However, for what it has to offer, iOS 13 is a pretty tough release by Apple.

The last row

Apple iPhone 11 Pro continues the trend of expensive iPhones, but unlike last year, this year’s iPhone has definitely made a very strong impression. When you consider that it surpasses every Android flagship on the market right now, it has a camera that delivers stunning images and also manages to offer great battery life, it’s hard to be impressed. Yes, the iPhone 11 Pro is expensive, but anyone who buys it will probably have no regrets.