iPhone XS Max
£1,449
We have entered a looking-glass world in which a phone that starts at £749 can somehow be described as a ‘budget’ option.
But if you’re going to soften up an audience for a hammer blow like this, the ideal way to do it is to unveil a phone costing £1,449, after which almost anything else seems fairly reasonable.
That’s exactly what Apple did this week, ushering in a future where phones are uniformly vast and expensive – even the budget ones – and you’re going to have to fork out for expensive new wireless headphones on top of that.
You can buy a perfectly decent laptop for £400. This year’s iPhones cost twice or up to three or four times as much for the expensive XS models.
The 6.5in flagship iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR (from £749). From now on, we’re all going to carry vast, tablet-esque slabs where the front is almost entirely made up of screen
For Apple, it makes sense. Sales of its phones have flattened off, so the public must be persuaded to buy ever larger, ever shinier, ever pricier phones to keep company profits high.
I have no doubt that the sleek, all-screen design of the new XS and ‘budget’ XR handsets (all of which have had the Home button discreetly removed) will set the tone for flagship phones from the rest of the mobile industry. Other companies copy Apple so slavishly they even ‘borrow’ ugly Apple designs like the ‘notch’ in iPhone’s screen.
As a result, Apple’s decision to quietly ‘retire’ the smaller phones in its line-up (the 3.5in iPhone SE took a bow in this presentation) probably marks a final kiss of death for small phones altogether. Anyone with small hands is basically out of luck, and that includes quite a number of women.
From now on, we’re all going to carry vast, tablet-esque slabs where the front is almost entirely made up of screen. Oh, and we’re all going to be buying new, wireless headphones, as Apple has now killed off every iPhone model with a headphone socket. The future is wireless, whether we like it or not.
Headphone companies (including Apple itself, with its pricey wireless Beats and Earpods headphones) will be over the moon.
It’s also ironic that after years where Apple fans used to chortle at the vast size of Samsung handsets, that Apple’s flagship XS Max now actually has a bigger screen (6.5in) than Samsung’s Galaxy Note, although it feels smaller with no bezel around the screen.
It’s a desirable machine, and will no doubt be a hit with the no-holds-barred early adopter brigade – although at 208g, it’s quite a weighty device, and will probably require two hands to operate.
For hardcore fans, the enormous price doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem, though, with some of the most expensive 512GB configurations having already sold out on Apple’s website.
For normal mortals, the cheaper LCD XR will, I’m sure, be the big seller – although buyers will have to wait another month, as the two pricier XS models come out first.
Technology-wise, it’s all a little familiar, though, with the biometric Face ID system and all-screen look unveiled last year – and spruced-up processors and cameras the only ‘new’ feature, as well as slightly improved waterproofing (woop! woop!), which means it will now withstand half an hour immersion in 6ft of water (or beer). Apple’s much-vaunted wireless charger seems to have been quietly forgotten.
Apple is a master at whipping up techno-lust for high-priced handsets, but in a world where Nokia’s big-screen 5.1 handset is only £189, and the Honor 9 Lite is £149, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see what you’re paying hundreds of pounds for… barring a large fruit logo on the back.
1. All this year’s handsets lose the Home button (something Apple unveiled in iPhone X last year), replaced by on-screen gestures to access menus. It’s surprisingly easy to get to grips with.
2. The iPhone XS Max isn’t much bigger than previous Plus handsets, despite its whopping 6.5in screen, due to the ‘all screen’ frontage.
3. Apple remained vague about how it had improved two of the major bugbears of smartphones – broken glass and battery life. The glass, we’re promised, is ‘stronger’ than iPhone X – and battery life is 30 minutes longer on XS and one hour longer on XS Max.
4. The specs of the two XS handsets are actually identical bar the screens, with both handsets armed with the new A12 ‘Bionic’ processor, which is supposedly 15 per cent faster than last year’s.
5. The rear camera has larger pixels for improved low-light performance (a weakness in phone cameras) and faster sensors for improved action shots. But can it compete with the AI cameras in Google and Huawei handsets?
6. The big difference between the high-glamour XS handsets and the XR is the screen: the pricier XS handsets use OLED, for improved colours, while the XS uses cheaper LCD. But even the XS boasts a suite of screen-enhancing technologies to make pictures look colourful and accurate.
7. The other big ‘missing’ part on the budget handset is the rear camera, which is single lens rather than dual-lens – although the front-facing camera is the same, so XR users can unlock with their faces, rather than a fingerprint.
Not only smart but good for your heart
Apple watch has tended to be the neglected runt of the litter at each year’s Apple Event – but this year it had far more interesting upgrades than any of the iPhones.
For older people, it could be genuinely revolutionary.
Apple has (sensibly) focused on the health and fitness aspects of wearable devices (which tend to be what people actually use them for). It’s telling that shares in Fitbit slumped in the hours after the announcement of Apple Watch.
The new device has a monitor that detects whether the wearer has fallen over and can alert emergency services, and a revolutionary heart scan that goes far beyond counting beats to give a medical-grade overview of a wearer’s heart health.
Combined with low and high heart-rate detection and personalised fitness coaching, Apple Watch is suddenly looking like a decisive move to take control of the health wearable market.
1. The display is 30 per cent larger than previous models, and the case is slightly thinner than last year’s (although the clunky look remains unchanged).
2. If Apple Watch senses immobility for 60 seconds after a user falls over (sensed by a new accelerometer and gyroscope), it will automatically call emergency services.
3. The £399 watch can send wearers an alert if their heart rate goes above or below normal levels, using a built-in heart-rate monitor.
4. Wearers can take an ECG reading of their heart (used by doctors to detect problems with heart rhythms), using new electrodes built into the digital crown (although this won’t be available at launch in the UK).
5. The watch counts calories burned for many activities such as walking and running, giving you an alert to start recording your activity.