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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Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
The ROG2 is in the charts. It's getting good scores because it's the only S855+ phone in the charts, because the Adreno 640 has extremely high ALU performance, and because the phone itself is allowed to reach much higher temperatures than the iPhones.The benchmark *tests* are the exact same other than being run on different APIs. What's being rendered is identical between iOS and Android is the exact same.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Very nice, I think you should write that in your review. Although taking an iPhone review and then starting off with exploiting its apparent weakness on the first graph, which is the only thing most people will read, isn't very objective in my opinion. I also generally think it's better craftmanship to run benchmarks that have received updates on both devices, regardless.I mean, opening 3Dmark on the new iPhone literally starts it up in an iPhone 8 compatibiltiy mode. You can tell by how the UI doesn't even border the entire display. I just don't see a single compelling argument as to why you would ever pick this tool.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Hi Andrei, I see that you updated the review. I apologise for my harsh tone, thank you for this discussion, I learned a lot of new info.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
I updated absolutely nothing ...............techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Oh so you are here, why are you not addressing my point ?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
What point? The UI is irrelevant, the test is offscreen.techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Okay, i'll just have to quote yourself then:" I’ve actually gone back and quickly retested the iPhone XS on iOS13 and did see a 20% increase in performance compared to what we see in the graphs here; " - Andrei Frumusanu
And here is the knockout:
" the workload is running on Metal and the iOS version is irrelevant in that regard." - Andrei Frumusanu
Jesus christ, pull yourself together and fix your god damn review.
People reading, you can make your own conclusion here.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
There is nothing to fix and there is nothing wrong with the benchmark, you went from the test being old and broken, to talking about it throttling differently because it's older, to the UI being an issue when it's completely irrelevant. The scores are what they are because that's the performance of the chip.The physics test sucks on Apple because it's one weakness in their microarchitecture: https://benchmarks.ul.com/news/understanding-3dmar...
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Are you literally quoting an article from 2013 to prove something? I didn't go from anywhere, it IS old and broken. The score does NOT represent the throttling you would expect on updated software and certainly can NOT be graphed and compared with the Android version. It is BS that the app renders the same thing, you have literally 0 way of knowing since you didn't write the code.And I didn't go "herp derp, the UI is small" - I said that the app is so ancient that it literally boots in compatibility mode for the iPhone 8. And it is a real thing, go ahead and check the developer forums.
"The scores are what they are because that's the performance of the chip." ...
" I’ve actually gone back and quickly retested the iPhone XS on iOS13 and did see a 20% increase in performance compared to what we see in the graphs here; "
Comeone dude, stop it.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
The THROTTLING has nothing to do with the software version or and GPU driver updates that Apple makes to improve performance. The improved drivers on the A12 in iOS13 do NOT change the throttling % between peak performance and sustained, which is a PHYSICAL characteristic of the phone.The workloads renders the SAME SCENE both on Android and iOS. We work closely with Futuremark, the developer of the benchmark, along with the developers of GFXBench. If you cannot accept this you have no place reading AT as I can not do anything more to convince you of basic facts regarding the testing.
The compatibility mode you blarb about is related to the UI resolution. It DOES NOT matter in any way for the test as it's been rendered off-screen in our suite. The performance results DO NOT CHANGE.
I am completely done with this topic.