ISSUE383|COMPUTER SHOPPER|JANUAARY 2020 19
EVENTHOUGHHE’Slong gone from Apple,
the designinfluenceofJony Ivecan still be
seeninthe new iPhone 11 Pro,particularly in
its set of three rear cameras.Contained within
alarge glasssquare, whichisactuallypart of
the backplaterather than aseparatehousing,
the asymmetricallypositioned lensesare an
eye-catchingfeature in their own right.
Otherwise,however,this is avery
familiar smartphonetolastyear’siPhone XS.
There’s the same abundance of glass, the
same colour-matchedstainless steel frame
surrounding the edges,and the same wide
notch. This lasttouch is still an incongruously
large ingress intothe screen, butatleast it
houses the Face ID setup,and thefront-facing
camera sensor has also beenupgraded from
sevenmegapixels to 12.
LITUP
Alsolike the iPhone XS,the iPhone 11 Pro
meets the IP68 standardfor dust-and
waterproofing,soitwillsurvivebeing dropped
in apuddle,bathoreventhe deepend of a
swimming pool.Conversely,3DTouch has
beenremoved, although this is no great loss:
while innovative,itnever felt as if Apple made
enough use of it on previous iPhones.
The iPhone 11 Pro is equipped with aSuper
Retina XDR OLED display, withsupport for
HDR10 and DolbyVision. In plain
English,this meanslittle more than a
boost to the overallbrightness of
the display.It’sthe same resolution
as theiPhone XS, at 2,436x1,125.
How much brighterisit, then?
With automatic brightness mode
enabled,the screenonthe iPhone 11 Pro
willpeak at up to 766cd/m^2 –upfrom
686cd/m^2 on the previousmodel–anddd
whenplayingHDR video,thatrises to aaan
even brighter1,200cd/m^2 .Evenifyou’rrre
alreadyfamiliarwith theiPhone XS,hooowever,
you might struggletotell the differenccce: we
placedthe two phones side by side anddd,
althoughwecould see slightly moreclaaarity in
the highlights on theiPhone 11 Pro,the
difference wasn’tnight andday.
Regardless,this is still adelightful display.
Contrast is perfect,thanks to theOLEDpanel,
and it was spot-oninour colourcalibration
tests:98.3%gamut coverage and an average
delta-E of 1.01 is about as goodasitgets.UNDISPUTED CHAMPION
On the performance side, Appledidn’t even
needtocome up with anew processor; the
Bionic chip that powers its2018 line-up is still,
today, morepowerful than any Android-
focused SoC.It’s faster than the Qualcomm
Snapdragon 855, theKirin 980 and the
Samsung Exynos 9820, allofwhichcan
currently be found in thefastest,and most
expensive, Android smartphones.
Even so,the iPhone 11 Procontainsa
new,hexa-core A13 Bionic, extendingits
performance advantage even further.In
Geekbench5,the newly released (and much
moredemanding) replacement forthe
Geekbench4benchmark,the iPhone11Pro
scored 1,337 in thesingle-core test and 3,
iiinnnttthhheeemmmuuullltttttiiicccooorrreeettteeesssttt. BBByyycccooommmpppaaarrriiisssooonnn,
the iPhoneXSsitsat1,119 and
2,818 respectively,whilethe Samsung Galaxy S10 (Shopper379)
is farbehindwith 823and 2,271.
The iPhone11Pro is, in short, hugely
powerful foreverydaytasks, and even the most
demandinggames will barely cause it to break
asweat. Theonly limitation is thedisplay’s
60Hz refresh rate: GFXBench Manhattan
recorded60fpsinthe onscreentest, as well as
amonstrous170fps in the offscreentest.SHOOTING RANGE
Where allthis horsepower maycomeinuseful
is in niche,near-professional-level applications
such as the forthcoming Filmic Pro app. This
app, rather remarkably,will be able to record
twostreams of 4K 60fps video simultaneously
from twoofthe three rear cameras, or one
stream fromthe front and one from the back,
again at thesame time.With many modern
phones only just beginning to gettogrips
with single streams of 4K video, theiPhone
Pro looks trulytobeone step ahead.
Applehas establishedcredentials in the
performance stakes, however.Where it has
struggled in recent yearsisbatterylife, with
bbbooottthhhttthhheeeiiiPPPhhhooonnneeeXXXSSSandXSMax (Shopper371)
falling short of theirrrAndroid rivals. Thegood
newsisthat the iPhhhone11Pro shows solid
signsofimprovemeeent: it lasted for17h 15m in
our videoplayback test, comfortably longer
thanthe iPhone XSSS’s 12h45. This remains
one area in which thhheAndroid competition
can do better –the Snapdragon855-powered
XiaomiMi9,for inssstance,lasted for22h 54m
–but it’s still amajooorimprovement.
As is therear caaameraarrangement. Apple
hasn’tjust slapped on an extra lens andleft it
at that: it’s also immmproved imagequality
across the boarrrd, added anight mode that
currently beaaats Google at its owngame,
andboostedddvideoquality as well.If youdon’t mind spending as much on aphone as on asecond-hand car,this is the one to buy