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amazon iPhone 11 Pro reviews
If you want the best smartphone photography, look no further than the iPhone 11 Pro. There is no other flagship phone that I would recommend for anything better right now.
It’s the most accomplished iPhone I’ve ever used, with great battery life and a top-notch camera.
This feeling is so different.
The face of the iPhone 11 Pro is indistinguishable from the iPhone XS, built with the same notch at the top of the screen and thick bezels surrounding it. But as soon as you have it in your hand, you’ll know it’s different.
The first noticeable change is weight and thickness. It feels like a thicker, heavier iPhone, and that’s because it is. The iPhone 11 Pro weighs 11 grams more than the Apple iPhone XS. It’s not an uncomfortable weight for a phone, and I got used to it after a few minutes. Plus, the purported four-hour battery boost is thanks to this larger belt.
If you are a fan of small phones, this is the one to get. The 5.8-inch screen size means the iPhone 11 Pro fit in the palm of my hand, and I don’t need to stretch my fingers to touch any part of the screen. It is awesome.
The next thing you’ll notice is the frosted glass back that’s less prone to fingerprints, the smooth and focused Apple logo, that giant camera mound. Apple wants you to know there are three cameras on the back, which is why each camera is not only individually raised by metal bezels, but the mound that houses them is also raised, carved from the same piece of covering the entire back of the phone. It’s not particularly good-looking, but you quickly get used to the look.
Even so, there are curious omissions, the most annoying being the lack of a USB-C port. That means carrying one cable to charge all of our devices. We’re all ready for it, Android phones have been using it for years, and Apple knows it’s inevitable – look at their laptops. So why not add it to this device Pro as it did with the most recent iPad Pro?
The next omission is 3D touch. I’ll admit, I think I’ve never used 3D touch, but after losing it, I’ve learned how often I do. Force-pressing the camera and flashlight shortcuts on the lock screen take you directly into the app with a relatively strong click.
I’m sorry I gave you the 3D touch. RIP.
Long-pressing to open these shortcuts via Haptic Touch, first introduced in the iPhone XR, not only takes longer, but it also feels like a step down – a strange feeling found on the first iPhone. I’m sorry I gave you the 3D touch.
Apple says the removal of 3D touch adds more battery capacity, and although I would lament the loss, I think many people will appreciate the battery gain.
A great screen
With a name like “Super Retina XDR,” the screen enhancements on the iPhone XS are significantly better – and they are. The iPhone XS’ OLED display is already impressively balanced and vivid, but the iPhone 11 Pro doubles the contrast ratio, improves HDR, and boosts maximum brightness to a peak of 1,200 nits.
Normally you’ll only get up to 800 nits since that’s 1,200 nits when watching HDR content. But all this adds up to a screen you can easily view indoors and outdoors and adjust flexibly to bring out the best highlights and the hardest blacks to see. The colors appear vivid but accurate, giving it a little pop on the impressive Samsung Galaxy Note 10, which seemed a bit oversaturated in my eyes.
It’s great to look at and a pleasure to watch videos, thanks to the sharp 2,436 x 1,125 resolution. If you watch tons of movies and videos on your phone, it’s worth considering the Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max, which has a much larger 6.5-inch display, but I’m happy with the screen size here.
Killer performance and dark iOS
Apple says the new A13 Bionic chip has up to 20% faster CPU and GPU performance, and the benchmarks attest to this dominance. It’s the fastest phone we’ve ever tested, and playing games, working, or just scrolling through music and social media will always be a smooth experience on the iPhone 11 Pro.
Here are a few benchmark results:
AnTuTu 3DBench: 455.778
CPU Geekbench 5: 1,323 single core; 3,503 multi-core
The AnTuTu score is the highest we’ve ever recorded on a smartphone, beating phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus.
iOS 13 brings us the long-awaited dark mode, as well as privacy-oriented features like Sign in with Apple, which allows instance-by-case location access for apps and a host of other features. Other new features and innovations. Check out our iOS 13 in-depth renders for the full story, but as far as iPhone 11 Pro goes, the operating system is smoother than ever.
Three threats to reclaim the camera crown
Nearly a year after introducing Night Sight’s magical night vision mode on the Pixel 3 (and several manufacturers releasing their versions in the interim), we’ve finally got it. Apple, with this desirable feature, along with the new ultra-wide-angle lens – another piece of Apple’s camera game has fallen behind the competition.
Another new feature that was announced is called Deep Fusion. That means for medium to low-light photos, machine learning algorithms run pixel-by-pixel analysis on photos taken in this range, optimizing detail, color, and sharpness. Sounds great, but unfortunately, we’ll have to wait and see how well and fast this works.
Apple now has its facilities covered to regain the dominance of photography, and I can confidently say that this group of three 12-megapixel dreams is the best camera system available today. Is it perfect? No. In the flagship smartphone camera arena, every camera has its moments where competitors’ shots come out better or more to your liking. With the iPhone 11 Pro, those cases are less common.
Let’s get this over with quickly: the iPhone 11 Pro takes great photos during the day. Improved Smart HDR applies exposure adjustments to certain parts of the photo it recognizes (the sky, some flowers, etc.). When you click the shutter button, take the photo you want, and one overshoot afterward to produce a result with the best detail and the least noise.
Overall, the iPhone 11 Pro produces the best daylight shots you can get on a smartphone. Night mode isn’t needed at night; the same holds for its excellent exposure and detail capture, although noise can creep up quite a bit.
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Night mode
Also, enter Night mode. This automatic feature enables itself when the iPhone recognizes a scene that is dark enough to warrant. With Night mode turned off on the Pro and compared to the iPhone XS, the result is a slightly brighter and better-looking picture.
You can adjust the aggression of Night mode by setting the exposure time to the maximum, auto, or off, but this can only be adjusted within the parameters the iPhone sees fit. For instance, some scenes may be bright enough that it only allows a maximum exposure time of one second, even if that is also the auto setting. You can stretch up to 10 seconds or more in much darker scenes, while auto can choose two or three. Most photos taken in automatic mode seem to fall into the one to two-second range.
The main exception to this is when you’re taking pictures of the stars – something very few smartphones can do. For this, you’ll want to increase the exposure time to the maximum and enjoy the snapshots that iPhone users once thought were possible only with DSLR cameras. They’re not DSLR quality and have a significant amount of noise, but long exposures produce nice portraits of the stars without brightening the sky so much that there’s a gray or blue streak.
However, adding some foreground to this equation tends to make the sky look artificially blue and gray. In this regard, Huawei P30 Pro can still win awards for such photos for now, but further comparison is needed, and I don’t forget about the upcoming Pixel 4 astrophotography mode.
In terms of functionality, once I started taking photos at night, I never cared that Night mode couldn’t be manually turned on. Being automatic, you end up disallowing it in a situation where you force it to cross its limit and thus create a worse picture than being enabled. That is a common issue I’ve noticed with Night Mode on the Galaxy Note 10; for example, sometimes you need to shoot in both modes to find out which mode is needed.
As with all its camera features, Apple’s goal with Night mode is to give you the best chance of capturing that perfect shot without having to think about it, and in most cases. In almost every case, I’ve seen the iPhone 11 Pro deliver that promise. Compared to Google’s Night Sight on the Pixel 3, the iPhone 11 Pro’s Night mode proved more photographic in its interpretations of lighting while also capturing slightly more detail than the Pixel 3.
The iPhone’s Night Mode makes scenes look like a photographer’s professional studio lighting setup. It gives a more balanced light to the entire scene while intentionally highlighting certain photo areas and keeping highlights in check, making it look more natural and aesthetically pleasing.
Google’s night vision does a great job with a lot of this. Still, it quickly falls behind when dealing with highlights in dynamic scenes, typically overexposing these areas and causing The photo to look too bright and artificial compared to the iPhone. That’s a difference you can see in the background of these two photos.
While both expose and blur the flowers and grass, the iPhone still prioritizes the foreground with the light, making the subject (flower) stand out. At the same time, Pixel’s algorithm can’t take your eyes off the flowers by an extremely bright background area. That is the difference that the iPhone 11 Pro makes: creating a night photo that is brighter and better.
Samsung still has grounds for compensating both Google and Apple, as its night mode is the least practical and likely to make worse shots better when it’s not an absolute necessity.
A variety of possibilities
Taking photos with the iPhone 11 Pro’s new ultra-wide-angle camera is a joy and offers the versatility I’ve enjoyed on flagship Android phones for several years now. As always, Apple’s rollout at this late stage means the company has done it a little differently and better than the competition.
Starting with distortion correction, the iPhone 11 Pro does enough to correct the curvature of the edges of images commonly found on ultra-wide-angle cameras without making the shot look awkward. It also maintains the elongation that makes ultra-wide shots fun to shoot, creating a balance that inspires the continued use of this camera.
Especially in larger landscapes and large subjects, an ultra-wide-angle lens is a must, even for scenes where it is unnecessary; switching to this camera after capturing the original image becomes necessary to see how great it looks on super wide. The solid unification between all three cameras (telephoto, wide-angle and ultra-wide) also translates to less about the quality of the photo you want to capture and more about the style.
There is a slight but noticeable loss of quality with the ultra-wide-angle lens, especially in low-light situations due to the narrower f/2.4 aperture. Compared to f/1.8 and f/2.0 on both the main and telephoto cameras, respectively, they let in more light and afford better detail and control over dynamic range.
Aside from that, my only other gripe is the fixed focal length lens, which only focuses properly when the subject is at least a meter away. Most smartphone ultra-wide cameras have this limitation, but it’s nice that Apple’s launch a bit later makes more sense with a changed focus. On photos like one of the cars, I’m forced to take a step back or use the prime lens when all I want to do is get up close and stretch the car for a unique look. Unfortunately, that means getting shot with only a very small portion of the vehicle barely in focus and the rest blurred.
Improved Portraits and Selfie!
The iPhone 11 Pro takes better portraits than ever, accurately blurring the background of a subject while making it look natural (like from a DSLR). You won’t get this high precision with factories and other objects, but it still works pretty well.
One new addition is how you can now take Portrait mode photos with the main lens instead of being forced to rely on the telephoto lens. That means portrait quality has improved significantly at night, as using the main f/1.8 lens means you can let in more light, allowing for better exposure photography.
With an upgraded front-facing camera, the new 12-megapixel sensor increases the sensor size from 7-megapixel, but portrait selfies are set to a cropped 7-megapixel mode. You can rotate the phone to landscape or press the zoom out button in portrait orientation to open the view to the wider 12-megapixel format, but this isn’t possible in Portrait mode.
Selfie portraits, as always, cleverly apply blur and now capture more detail with less smoothing.
And the new Slofie (slow-motion selfie) feature is cool. Slowing down yourself and your background with 120 frames per second 1080p video creates a great effect, especially when you want to show where you are.
Two things to watch out for: you can’t zoom in on a wider view like you can with selfies, and you won’t be able to do anything about overexposed backgrounds. You can also shoot regular selfie videos up to 4K at 60fps if that’s your thing – a first for the iPhone series.
Improved cinematic stability
Speaking of smooth videos, the iPhone 11 Pro makes you feel like a pro when watching the videos you can shoot on this device. Shooting at 4K 60 FPS is incredibly smooth, especially with the iPhone 11 Pro’s improved cinematic stabilization, making videos appear steady.
Combined with smooth zooming and relatively stable high-quality images produced across different lenses, it’s simple to shoot a stunning video on iPhone 11 Pro, day or night.
Batteries get you into a second day.
Our standard screen-on test puts the phone at full brightness and plays 1080p video on Wi-Fi, where the iPhone 11 Pro scored 12 hours on the dot, with the Max clocking in at over ten and a half hours. While these tests are not a perfect indicator of daily use (our iPhone 11 lasted about five hours in the same test but easily lasted for a day of use), the data This data combined with my usage shows strong battery life for the iPhone 11 Pro.
Finally, we have an 18-watt charger in the box. While the charging speed is much improved compared to the 5-watt charger, which takes about three hours to charge the XS from 0 to 100, it still takes about 2 hours to charge the iPhone 11 Pro fully. That falls behind most Android flagships, fast charging almost 90 minutes or less.