The Apple iPhone 11, 11 Pro & 11 Pro Max Review: Performance, Battery, & Camera Elevated
by Andrei Frumusanu on October 16, 2019 8:30 AM ESTBattery Life - A Magnitude Shift
By now many will have heard positive things about the new iPhone 11s' battery life. As we have covered in the introduction, possibly the biggest changes to Apple’s line-up this year is the device’s vastly increased battery capacities. The Pro models in particular have seen significant increases: the 11 Pro gets a 3046mAh battery which represents a 14.5% increase compared to the XS, and the 11 Pro Max gets a 3969mAh battery which represents a very large 25% increase. The Pro Max is now the first Apple device which has a battery capacity comparable to Android phones out there, some of which have offered similar large capacities for a few years now.
iPhone XS Max vs. iPhone 11 Pro Max Batteries (Image Courtesy iFixit)
The regular iPhone 11 sees only a 5.7% bump to up to 3110mAh, which isn’t all that big upgrade compared to the XR. But it also doesn’t increase its weight nearly as much as the Pro models.
The battery results in our web test are outstanding. Apple in this generation has gone from being average in battery life to showcasing some of the best results we’ve seen in the market.
What is very interesting here is how our absolute test runtimes end up compared to Apple’s marketing claims. Apple has promised +1H, +4H and +5H of battery life for the 11, 11 Pro and the 11 Pro Max compared to their predecessors, and what we measured is 1.08H, 3.9H and 5.27H, which is pretty damn near Apple’s promoted figures, pointing out to some very similar testing conditions between our test and Apple’s internal metrics.
If we break this down a bit and theorize a bit, if we take the XS Max 10.31H result, multiply by 1.25x for the increased battery capacity (12.88H), multiply again naively by 1.15x for the more efficient screen (14.82H), we’re left with a ~5% margin which would account for the more efficient SoC. Give or take margin of error here or there, the results we’re seeing shouldn’t be all too surprising. The math would also check out for the iPhone 11 without a newer display: 5% increased battery capacity and an on average ~3% more efficient SoC.
There’s not much to say about the new iPhone 11 series' battery life other than it's exemplary. More importantly, Apple has managed to finally catch up and exceed the battery life of the LCD iPhone 8 and Plus models from 2 years ago.
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Anand2019 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"manufacturers from asia" not manufactured in asia.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
We've tested GPU Turbo, and found it to be a very legitimate technology for the specific apps that Huawei has trained its AI on.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13285/huawei-gpu-tu...
That's different to some benchmark cheating that also went on at the same time.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13318/huawei-benchm...
This was all examined last year in detail.
Anand2019 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Where is the competition? Android is so far behind."there’s really no competition as the A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC"
"We’ll need to see some major paradigm shifts from the competition in order for them to be able to catch up in the next generation of devices."
FunBunny2 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
"there’s really no competition as the A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC"I've read nothing beyond Apple widening registers, increasing caches, and re-arranging real estate on the chip. and, may be, bringing more off-chip function on-chip. that's like brute force ya know.
willis936 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
That’s how CPUs get faster. OoO execution and keep on ramping up wherever the throughput bottlenecks are for targeted workloads.weevilone - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
It's too bad that Apple is still using PWM for their OLED displays. It's the reason I stuck with the 11.tipoo - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Be nice if they added a DC dimming toggle like Oneplus.peevee - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"I was not very impressed with the XR display’s density, and the fact that Apple chooses to retain this resolution is unfortunate"I disagree, it is very fortunate as low res enables higher energy efficiency, faster framerates and longer play time for games. Very real advantages vs the resolution difference only nearsighted people not wearing glasses can see with a naked eye.
tipoo - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
I agree with the review, at this density I too often make out its limits around curves, i.e the time display on the lock screen, or notification dots. Even if sticking to an LCD, the Plus's 1080p resolution would have been nice.peevee - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
" Integer division has also seen a large upgrade as the throughput has now been doubled and latency/minimum number of cycles has been reduced from 8 to 7 cycles."I wonder which workloads can it possibly affect. Hash table access which require remainder ops for prime-sized table sizes?