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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Amosliu - Wednesday, February 6, 2019 - link
I don’t think 3dmark slingshot extreme is a good benchmark for iOS platform. First the cpu usage is too high even in the graphics test. Second the gpu vertex usage is nearly the half in the graphic test. However there is no issue in the slingshot OpenGL es 3.0 edition. It is too old and need to update. By the way, there are new GPU benchmark suits building on metal 2 in iOS and Vulkan in android named snow forest benchmark and orbital flight benchmark.darwiniandude - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
Agree. 3Dmark has always been very odd on iOS, especially the physics test, and hasn't matched real world performance comparisons I've seen between Android and iOS games.tuxRoller - Thursday, February 7, 2019 - link
Is the black value when at the the min brightness correct?If so, and assuming the spectrometer is the same a usual, then is this the first time we've seen an LCD that has an imperceptible off pixel while the backlight is still on?
samerakhras - Saturday, February 9, 2019 - link
The better battery life comes from the lower resolution.The less pixels you use , the less power you need.
Jackdaniel - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
I come from an iphone 8 and now I have iphone xs max 256 gb, I find completely false the duration table with the common use that lasts twice as compared to the iPhone 8 (both have the health of the beater to 100%)hasseb64 - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
No button* = no buy*front
zeeBomb - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
More battery, More life.Great to see Andrei taking over for the smartphone reviews, this was a good read man!
Jhonson - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link
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mark3785 - Sunday, August 4, 2019 - link
I’ve had my iPhone XR for quite a while now and still like it very much. I upgraded from a 6S and am amazed by the battery life! I've had iPhones since the first model and no other iPhone has come close to the XR in battery life!The LCD vs OLED issue doesn't bother me. The lower resolution is still a retina resolution, and with fewer pixels to push, it makes for more efficient use of the processor and is one of the reasons it gets better battery life.
I miss 3D Touch but not as much as I expected. I used it mainly for turning the keyboard into a trackpad but a long press on the space bar performs the same function, and does that more accurately.
The camera may not be nice as the dual unit found on the XS/XS Max but it is an OIS camera which, coming from a 6S, is a nice upgrade.
Its audio output is in stereo (which was a nice surprise) and is quite a bit louder. I’m not thrilled about the lack of a standard phono jack but as a long time Apple user I’m used (though still not happy with) the way they change ports.
It may cost less than the XS/XS Max, but it's a serious upgrade for me. To add to the deal, one of the colors the phone comes in is (PRODUCT)RED which is a rich shade of red and a nice break from the black, white and silver I’ve had in the past.
While it's missing a bell here and a whistle there compared to the XS/XS Max, it works great and is a nice upgrade from the 6S.
And just in case nobody noticed, Apple made a slightly thicker and heavier iPhone with a bigger battery and Hell didn’t freeze over!