Going Pro

Vaibhav Sharma

The iPhone XR was Apple’s best-selling smartphone in the lead up to the announcement of the new iPhones on 10 September. So how does Apple make the device even more tempting? Add another wide-angle camera, make the processor even faster, throw in a few new colour options and reduce the price a little and what you get is the new iPhone 11. It is interesting to note that Apple has dropped the XR moniker from the iPhone 11 this time round, as it does not want people to feel that they are buying the new ‘cheaper’ iPhone. Instead, to justify charging a premium for its flagship devices, the Cupertino company has bestowed the more expensive models with the ‘Pro’ suffix. This is a good marketing strategy, and has worked with MacBooks in the past. 

Camera is the king

The biggest upgrade to this iPhone is the camera. The improvements are more than substantial, but do these alone justify the ‘Pro’ tagline? The iPhone 11 Pro is the 5.8” version, whereas the 6.5” iPhone 11 Pro Max is essentially the same phone, with a bigger display and a larger battery. Both phones come with a triple camera system on the back. One regular camera that you are used do, one telephoto lens that lets you shoot portraits and adds some zoom capability to the setup, and a 120º wide angle lens that has a much larger field of view, and is great for shooting landscapes and group photos. The telephoto camera adds a new dimension to how you can shoot photos and videos, opening up the possibility of zooming out. So standing at the same spot, you can take a shot/video that is 0.5x (zoomed out), 1x (regular) and a 2x (telephoto) without losing any quality as there is no digital zoom at play. 

Powering the new iPhones is Apple’s even faster A13 Bionic chip. It manages to leapfrog the competition (Qualcomm’s Snapdragon lineup, Samsung’s Exynos series and Huawei’s Kirin range) by some distance. Before the shutter is even pressed, the phone is already capturing multiple shots  and intelligently combining these to preserve every detail, reduce noise and improve low light performance.

Androids in the market

One area that Apple is very good at is locking its users into its own ecosystem. If you have invested in an Apple Watch, there’s little chance that you’ll switch to Android. Similarly, the iPhone works great with Macs and the iPad. Making the best tablet on the market i.e. the iPad and the best smartwatch i.e. the Apple Watch, therefore, puts Apple at a distinct advantage and gives it the loyalty quotient that other brands would kill for. 

But should you not be bound by these trappings, what Android devices should you consider? The upcoming Pixel 4 is iPhone 11’s biggest competitor on a technological perspective, but this is seldom demonstrated by the number of units shipped owing to Google’s less than stellar marketing and sales strategies. The Pixel is where Goggle designs both the hardware and software itself, and demonstrates to the word cutting-edge Android advances. 

Manufacturers like Samsung, with their Galaxy line-up, build their own software on top of Android to give their devices a distinctive feel, and this results in slow updates and some bloat. This approach, however, does let them add a few features that go beyond what Google offers up. The Note 10 and Galaxy S10 phones are certainly better to look at, and with the Note, you get the S-Pen to doodle and take notes as well. Stylus support is not something that iPhones or Pixel phones offer, and if that is a must for you, Samsung is the way to go. 

However, if it is fast updates, and an incredible camera you’re after, the Pixel is an easy choice. It may not be the best-looking Android phone in the market but it’ll be the one that is supported for the longest time. Huawei had started creating a market for itself, but after  US’ trade ban that stops Huawei from introducing new flagships with the Google integration, its future is in the doldrums.

The Pixel challenge

With the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3, Google really showed the world the power of AI algorithms in photography. On the strength of software prowess alone, it could take photos that produced bokeh-like effects, something that the iPhone initially needed two cameras to do. But where the Pixel phones really took the cake was in the low light photography space, where they had no equal and Apple was playing catch up. Huawei with its P20 Pro became the first phone to challenge the Pixel’s night mode, and Apple was relegated to a distant fourth with Samsung taking the number three spot with its hardware solution that put variable aperture lenses in its Galaxy lineup. 

With the iPhone XR last year, Apple introduced the ability to take portrait mode (bokeh) shots with the background blurred and the subject in focus, with a single camera. With iPhone 11, Apple has finally caught up and by a number of accounts, left the Pixel 3 behind. Unfortunately for Apple, iPhone 11’s place as the best camera phone may be shortlived as Google is due to announce the Pixel 4 on 15 October. The Pixel will have more than one rear camera for the first time this year. 

The bottomline, however, is that even with the arrival of the Pixel 4, the gap between the two competitors will be minimal; and because the cheaper iPhone 11 carries the same internals as the Pro twins (but for the telephone lens), those in the Apple ecosystem will have one less thing to be jealous about. 

And the verdict is...

The ‘Pro’ models aren’t really aimed at professionals, but are Apple’s way of telling everyone that the camera performance is at a level that would even excite professionals, and that the suite of inbuilt editing software and the power of the A13 chip lets anyone indulge their creative streak. Fortunately, most of this functionality is available in the more mass-market iPhone 11 as well. If you have an iPhone that isn’t more than two years old, you can think about giving this upgrade cycle a miss; everything else, including the performance will feel about the same. But if photography is your thing, or you really want the extra battery life that the new line-up brings, then by all means upgrade. The 2020 iPhone will be the one that debuts a new design, and perhaps, a long-awaited switch from lighting to USB-C.