The Apple iPhone XR Review: A Different Display Leads To Brilliant Battery Life
by Andrei Frumusanu on February 5, 2019 9:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Apple
- Smartphones
- iPhone XR
Battery Life - Excellent
For all their strengths, battery life is the one aspect where things didn’t quite pan out for the iPhone XS and XS Max. Even though Apple promised that the phones would see longer battery lifetimes in day-to-day usage, in our tests we weren’t able to replicate this. The main reason for both models not being able to match the battery life of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus is because of their significantly higher base power consumption. I’ve attributed this to the OLED display – here either the OLED panel itself or the DDIC driving the panel see a big degradation in base power consumption, amounting to an extra 150mW. This is a figure that is unavoidable and a power drain that will be present any time the screen is on – no matter the actual display brightness.
The iPhone XR avoids this issue as it uses a more conventional LCD screen:
As expected, because the XR doesn’t suffer from the same high base power consumption, this significantly helps the actual battery life results for the phone. Here we see the iPhone XR reach the highest battery runtimes of any past iPhone – almost beating some of the record holders – and is only outmatched by the more recent Mate 20 with its 33% larger battery.
The results here are a lot more in line with the iPhone 8 Plus, and better represent the overall power efficiency improvements of the A12 SoC. Compared to the iPhone XS and XS Max, the XR lasts 37% and 25% longer respectively in our test.
Overall, if battery life is something you value the most, then the iPhone XR will absolutely not disappoint.
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LeftSide - Tuesday, February 5, 2019 - link
Whenever I see an iPhone X, I gave to ask if it’s and XR or and XS. I can’t tell the difference without seeing the back of the phone. I was actually surprised about how good the LCD looks. I’ve been recommending the XR to everyone I know, the cost increase for the higher end models just isn’t worth it.krazyfrog - Tuesday, February 5, 2019 - link
The lack of a telephoto camera and 3D Touch are the real omissions in my opinion. The display is perfectly fine for most people.jakoh - Tuesday, February 5, 2019 - link
How can you not tell the difference in display?Do you use a oled on a daily basis? The oled display on the iPhone is amazing.
krazyfrog - Tuesday, February 5, 2019 - link
I was speaking more in terms of pixel density than panel technology.Stuka87 - Wednesday, February 6, 2019 - link
Just because an OLED is amazing doesn't mean that the TFT isn't fine for most people. The lack of 3d touch, which has been on iPhones for YEARS, is complete BS.mcbhargav - Tuesday, February 5, 2019 - link
I am an XR user, who upgraded from iPhone 7. I found the difference in the first minute. The text is slightly smoother, everything simply is little smooth. But, i am not even a display enthusiast, so i cringed a little and moved on. But, 'perfectly fine' is far from want i think about XR's display. far from!casperes1996 - Tuesday, February 5, 2019 - link
Uhmmm. Your iPhone 7 and the XR had the same pixel densite; @2x. The iPhone 7Plus ran @3x with non-linear scaling.hMunster - Wednesday, February 6, 2019 - link
Non-integer-factor scaling, it was still linear!casperes1996 - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Sorry, yes. That's what I meant of course... Now, finally, I get to join all the people who have said "Where's the edit button please?"levizx - Wednesday, February 6, 2019 - link
So you immediately found "difference" in smoothness of displaying text. Great, now, tell me again how much difference is there between 326ppi and 326ppi?