iPhone 11 review: The new normal

In September, Apple once again took a slightly different approach with an iPhone - the iPhone 11. Top specs, but a slightly lower price. Does the concept work? What are the disadvantages? I took a closer look at these two questions.

Apple currently sells three iPhones. The iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Both are the manufacturer's current high-end smartphones, which is particularly noticeable in the camera, the display and the battery life. And I was able to test the iPhone 11 – the new “normal” if you will. It doesn't have quite as good specs as them in places Promodels, but that doesn't mean that Proproduct is bad in any way, as my test has shown me.

Picture: TechnikNews

Unboxing and initial setup

The iPhone 11 comes in packaging unlike any other AppleProvery similar to products. On the front of the box we have a picture of the back of the device, on the side some inscriptions and logos, on the bottom some small print. The box is white. The plastic film can be removed without a knife or any other tool, after which the lid of the box can be lifted before the contents of the box are revealed. This box content includes the iPhone itself, a Lightning cable, an underpowered power adapter (more on that later), and Lightning EarPods. An adapter from Lightning to jack is no longer included this year, this one is available seperately.

Here is a look inside the packaging of the iPhone. (Image: TechnikNews)

The setup starts by selecting the region and language before proceeding in two different ways. The first is the perfectly normal, ordinary facility. You enter the Apple ID, possibly load a system backup, possibly set up other Apple services (Apple Pay) and agree to the necessary terms of use. The second type is a lot faster. If you have another Apple device, bring it close by and scan the code, which then appears on the iPhone 11. Then all the aforementioned things will be done automatically. Face ID must be set up separately; a new software update may then be available. The first setup is completed in about 20 minutes.

If you have not used the offer before, you can also use Apple TV + for one year free of charge in the TV app.

Design and workmanship

The iPhone 11 is again the colorful device in the group - it is available in several colors. You can choose between black, white, green, yellow, purple and red. However, I opted for the plain black.

The back of the smartphone is made of glass, with Apple giving the camera square a matt coating. This design and the arrangement of the lenses received a lot of criticism before the official launch because it is quite noticeable. I like the look in real life better than I thought, even if I would have preferred a simpler design at the end of the day. Otherwise you will only find an Apple logo on the back, which is placed exactly in the middle. Otherwise Apple has removed all unnecessary texts. A nice detail is that the edges of the glass glow when the flash is activated. In advance I feared that fingerprints would be very visible. And that's how it turned out, although it's not as bad as it was with Notes 9 has been. I haven't found out whether a special coating on the glass is used here.

The design of the camera has received prior criticism. (Image: TechnikNews)

The frame material is aluminum in the same color as the rest of the smartphone. On the left side we find a control for the volume and the Apple-typical silent switch. Unfortunately it often happened that it went from the silent position to the loud position in my pocket. The top is bare, on the right side we have the power button. At the beginning I found it a bit irritating that if you press it for a long time, the power menu does NOT appear, but Siri is started. The power menu only appears if you also hold down the volume down button. This requires a little getting used to at the beginning, but passes into the blood after a few days. By the way, screenshots are created almost in the same way - to do this, hold down the volume up button and not the volume down button with the power button. Apple Pay can be started by pressing the side button twice.

The obligatory Lightning port can still be seen on the underside, Apple has not had a jack plug since the iPhone 7. Instead, one of the stereo speakers was integrated there. The second is in the earpiece. I still prefer my headphones or my own loudspeaker, but they are definitely sufficient for the occasional, quick enjoyment of media.

While we're at the earpiece, I would like to briefly say a few words about the notch. This is clearly wider than most phones with Android on board. This is noticeable at the beginning, but it happened to me that I faded it out after a while. When I watch series, films and YouTube videos, however, I notice them again. The reason for the size is the different sensors that are required for Face ID, the face recognition of the iPhone.

Touch ID has had to make room for Face ID since the iPhone X, as there has been no space for the fingerprint sensor since then. Since then, Face ID has taken on all the tasks that the fingerprint sensor was previously responsible for. The setup takes place right at the beginning, for this you hold your face in the camera and move it a few times in a circle. A three-dimensional map of the face is made. Therefore it is not possible to outsmart the detection with a 2D photo. I was able to experience that after a successful setup, my face is recognized immediately and quickly if I even roughly looked into the sensors. That's why I often didn't even notice that the unlocking was happening at all, because it worked so smoothly. The only drawbacks are that it cannot recognize multiple different faces and that unlocking only works in portrait orientation.

The sensors for Face ID are located in the notch. (Picture: TechnikNews)

I did not notice any defects in the processing. And even if I take good care of my smartphones and usually use them with a cover, there are still no signs of wear and tear. I'm curious how long it will stay that way - with glass smartphones, that's always a thing. In addition, the device is protected against the ingress of water and dust in accordance with IP68 (maximum 2 meters and 30 minutes).

Display

Now let's move on to the component that sits around the notch - the touchscreen, affectionately dubbed the "Liquid Retina Display" by Apple. In the end, it's just an IPS panel with a slightly better calibration. It measures 6,1 inches diagonally and covers around 79 Procenter of the front. That's slightly less than the iPhone 11 Pro, which means the edges are a bit wider. But it's not half bad. In numbers, this means that the display-to-surface ratio is 19,5:9. Even if I don't Proproblem: If the edges of the display had been a little thinner, the device would have been a little more compact.

The resolution is 1.792 x 828 pixels, which at first glance seems a bit low for this year's standards. And even if individual pixels are very weakly visible on closer inspection, this is compensated for by the good calibration of the colors. So I can't really complain. I didn't fully understand “True Tone”, a function of the display. In theory, the feature adjusts the color temperature of the display to the light of the environment. In practice, I have not been able to see much of a difference when True Tone is active.

I really liked the display of the iPhone 11. (Image: TechnikNews)

With the iPhone 6S, Apple introduced “3D Touch”. This reveals additional options or context menus when you press more firmly on certain elements, such as an app. With the iPhone 11, “Haptic Touch”, a long press on an element with no particular strength, has replaced “3D Touch”. But the functionality is the same.

Specifications

The current A13-Proprocessor that Apple developed itself. The graphics unit is integrated directly on this chip. The smartphone achieves the following benchmark results (via GSMArena):

• Geekbench (single core): 5.477 points
• Geekbench (multi-core): 13.882 points
• 3DMark SSE 3.1 Unlimited: 6.162 points

In the latter two, the 11 even has the 11 Pro outbid. In everyday use, these numbers are noticeable in that EVERYTHING runs smoothly and stably. Okay, while I'm similar things about smartphones like the OnePlus 7 Pro usual, but there are still a few weak stutters here and there. These are simply not available on the iPhone 11. Even complex games, such as Oceanhorn 2, run without any Protrouble. Only the small size of the main memory made itself felt from time to time. When using several apps, they often closed.

Picture: TechnikNews

As we know from iPhones, there are several storage options, but the storage cannot be expanded with a microSD card. So you have to know exactly how much you are going to prove beforehand. And there are these options:

• 64 gigabytes of memory, 4 gigabytes of RAM
• 128 gigabytes of memory, 4 gigabytes of RAM
• 256 gigabytes of memory, 4 gigabytes of RAM

The manufacturer chose the option with 512 gigabytes of memory for the Pro-Models saved. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that most interested parties (including me) can get by with 64 gigabytes.

There is an NFC chip in the device for Apple Pay. If you activate the service by pressing the power button twice, it is enough to just briefly hold the smartphone up to an ATM terminal. This is how paying is fun! Wifi6 and Bluetooth 5.0 are of course also on board.

Although there is no official information on this, several teardowns have shown that the battery in the iPhone 11 is 3110 milliamp hours. I always got through a normal day with it, the screen-on-time was always around four to six hours. And yet there are often still 30 in the evening Procents left. Because Apple includes a lame 5-watt power adapter (which is quite cheeky in 2019/2020), I quickly put this in my desk drawer. Instead, I now charge with one on the go 24 watt power supply from Anker and at home with 10 watts wirelessly via the Libratone COIL. That goes fairly quickly. I think it's cool that the software learns the charging habits over time and then only charges the battery up to 80 Procent loads before the 100 Procent just before the device is usually unplugged.

I always got a whole day with the battery. (Screenshots: TechnikNews)

For future Apple smartphones, I would like the manufacturer to also integrate bidirectional wireless charging. This would be very practical, especially for charging the AirPods or the Apple Watch on the go.

Software

The iPhone 11 is currently running iOS 13.3.1, but will soon be running iOS 13.4. What I find very good about Apple is that you can assume that you will receive software updates for several years. There are many good things to say about iOS 13.3.1, but there are also some bad things. Let's start right away with the lock screen.

Here I noticed positively that notifications are only shown when Face ID recognizes my face. At the beginning I found it a little awkward that I only get to the start screen by swiping upwards. As with many other things, you get used to it, but it is still not optimal. An option to disable this behavior would have been desirable here. In my opinion, it is somewhat incomprehensible and confusing that the notification center is a duplicate of the lock screen. A more uniform design would provide more clarity here.

Next we see the homescreen. This is very limited - widgets cannot be placed between the apps and apps cannot be arranged completely freely. For me it was enough to find the widgets on the left side of my apps. You also get used to the strict arrangement of the apps. The only thing that bothered me on the start screen was that so many errors still occur in the animations when moving elements. Usually there is nothing like that in a finished OS version. The Spotlight search is also often not displayed correctly.

Now it is time to start the first apps. I liked that the App Store has a pretty wide and good selection. I can also use Apple Arcade continue to gamble. You can also find app updates in the App Store, but it often took a while for the device to recognize that an update was available at all. In addition, most apps offer integration with Apple's CloudKit API. What this does is very simple: synchronize data with other Apple devices that I am signed in to with my Apple ID. Sounds pretty nice in theory, but it didn't always work so reliably in practice. I noticed that especially in the Photos app. There has been no data exchange at all for a short time. Various remedies did not help me. Other apps often take a little while to sync automatically. In short, Apple still needs to improve a few things for iOS 14 when it comes to CloudKit.

I think it's praiseworthy what options there are for preserving privacy. I would like to explain this using the example of the Fitbit app and location sharing. In principle, there are options that the app may only use the location once, only when using the app, or never. There is also the possibility that Fitbit can access the position at any time. Then a message appears regularly on the home screen that Fitbit used GPS (including map) and the question of whether you want to do so in the future. The same thing happens when, for example, the Facebook app calls up the current location.

So the bottom line is that I have mixed feelings about the software.

Camera

I've already talked about the camera design on the iPhone 11 beforeprochen. Now let's look at the technical specifications and the actual results. Overall, the device has two camera lenses on the back. The first sensor has 12 megapixels, f/1.8, a wide angle and optical image stabilization. The second sensor also has a resolution of 12 megapixels (f/2.4) and is there for ultrawide shots.

Picture: TechnikNews

The results that you normally get (during the day, good lighting conditions) are definitely impressive. Details, sharpness and colors are on a level as one is used to from high-end smartphones. Long exposure is activated in poor lighting conditions. This means that many details can be seen even in the dark. It also happened to me once that the long exposure didn't interfere and my shot was for the trash. I can't say why that happened.

Of course, I also have the portrait mode offprobeers. Normally one expects a portrait mode in a smartphone to blur the background while the foreground remains clearly recognizable. The iPhone 11 can do that too, but it also has a little more to offer. For example, there is a light setting that completely darkens everything in the background. The foreground remains black and white or in color, if desired. You can also switch back and forth between the light modes afterwards, but some contours may not be recognized correctly.

There is an album with test recordings here.

The front camera also has a resolution of 12 megapixels (f / 2.2, wide angle). This takes good-looking selfies with sufficiently good colors and lots of details for my taste. It is nice that you can also use one of the different portrait modes - thanks to the Face ID depth sensors.

I also tested the video function while skiing. In principle, videos with up to 2160p (4K) up to 60 frames pro second or up to 1080p (Full HD) with 240 frames pro second recorded. I particularly liked the image stabilization in my test video. Although I didn't hold the smartphone steady at all (like when I was skiing?), the picture was still very steady. You see the video here.

Prices and availability

The iPhone 11 is available from Apple, Amazon and some retailers, including MediaMarkt and Saturn. The recommended retail prices for the various storage options are as follows:

• 64 gigabytes, 4 gigabytes of RAM: 799 euros
• 128 gigabytes, 4 gigabytes of RAM: 849 euros
• 256 gigabytes, 4 gigabytes of RAM: 969 euros

iPhone 11: summary and conclusion

Apple got something right with the iPhone 11: a smartphone with the fastest Processor from the company and top specifications at a comparatively low price. So far we have only seen this in the Android area, for example with the OnePlus 7 or the OnePlus 7 Pro. Now the manufacturer from Cupertino also has something on offer for people who do not spend a lot of money but still want a good smartphone / iPhone.

A few final words about the top specifications. Through the A13Processor you get the same speeds as in the current ones Promodels, which is why you don't make any losses here either if you opt for the cheap iPhone. The camera is not quite as high-end as in this year's top iPhones, but it also spits out fantastic pictures and videos that are definitely enough for the average Joe. The software, iOS 13, is not entirely error-free, but the system optimizations contribute a lot to the good performance.

My only real criticism: the power adapter that Apple includes. More than just 5 watts could have been in it. Some would certainly be happy if the display bezels were a little thinner and the entire device was so compact.

In my opinion, the iPhone 11 is the smartphone that most people who want an Apple smartphone will reach for. It is not as expensive as the other models, but still offers most of the features and very good everyday performance. In my opinion, the iPhone 11 is the new “normal”, and I hope that there will be a cheaper version of the iPhone 12 again this year.

Buy iPhone 11

• Buy iPhone 11 on Amazon
• Buy directly from Apple

Recommendations for you

• iOS 13 with Apple Arcade and Dark Mode available from today
• iOS 13: New details on the upcoming version of Apple's operating system
• TechnikNews Weekly # 049: New 4K monitor from LG, FaceTime bug, notebooks being tested and more
• Rumors of upcoming iPhones, iPads and iOS 13