iPhone XS review - A modest upgrade on a very good phone

OUR VERDICT

The iPhone XS is, obviously, the best that Apple's ever created – that's no surprise, as it's the new flagship iPhone. However, the question is whether Apple has done enough to make this the most attractive to buy, and whether it's enough to stop anyone moving to a competitor. The iPhone XS is good enough in many ways, but it's not much of an upgrade over 2017's X, and doesn't redefine anything the way last year's phone did – the main upgrade is the camera, with Smart HDR making a difference. If you're looking for a great iPhone, this is it – but you might want to wait a month and see what the iPhone XR offers instead.

FOR

Smart HDR helps the camera
More powerful again
Fast operation in the hand

AGAINST

Battery life not world-beating
Design not altered in a year
Still very expensive

Editor's note: We've not given the iPhone XS a star rating yet as we've not had time to fully run our complete suite of battery and camera tests – we'll append a final score in the very near future, but we want to make sure we're properly checked out every aspect of the phone's performance before making recommendations.

This is the iPhone XS – pronounced ‘10-S’, not ‘excess’ as you might think. It looks identical to last year's iPhone X, and you might think that not a lot has changed – but it’s inside where the differences lie.

This is a weird situation for a review; usually, when looking at an ‘S’ variant of an iPhone we’re asking the question of whether it’s better than the now-cheaper model from the previous year.

In 2018, however, Apple has made the choice to discontinue the iPhone X, so while we can draw comparisons they won’t help you make an informed choice (unless you can still pick one up while stocks last).

If you want the best iPhone Apple has created, the iPhone XS is surely it – but do the tweaks inside really justify the price tag, and are they enough to fend off the ever-improving competition?

There’s also the looming specter of the iPhone XR – it’s a more affordable version in many ways compared to the iPhone XS, but until we can test that in the future (it’s due out in October) it’s hard for us to say whether the iPhone XS is the best Apple handset for you.

Read our in-depth iPhone XS Max review
Read our hands-on iPhone XR review
Read our hands-on Apple Watch 4 review

iPhone XS price and release date

The iPhone XS is now available to pre-order in most countries around the world, with the handset going on sale globally from September 21 if you want to pick it up from a store.

In terms of the price, the good (ish) news is that it hasn't risen over last year’s incredibly expensive iPhone X, with the 64GB iPhone XS price coming in at $999 / £999 / AU$1,629.

The 256GB iPhone XS price is $1,149 / £1,149 / AU$1,879, and the 512GB iPhone XS price is $1,349 / £1,349 / AU$2,199.

That said, while the cost of rival smartphones has been going up, the iPhone XS is still going to be one of the most costly phones you can buy (apart from the iPhone XS Max, which carries the eye-watering price tag of $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,799 for the cheapest option).

Key features

Usually in this section we'd talk about all the new features that the phone brings – but in this case there really aren't that many, with Apple resolutely sticking to the strategy of launching an 'S' phone with little changed other than speed improvements and a few other performance bumps.

That's not to say it isn't impressive, and useful, new hardware in the iPhone XS, but most of the benefits won't be instantly discernible to the average user.

One change that is easy to spot is the new color: the gold variant is more mocha than anything else, with a touch of copper in the shade, and brings another option in addition to the Space Gray and silver options.

We can only surmise that this was possible because the chassis of the iPhone XS is so similar to that of the iPhone X, so it wasn't expensive or time-consuming to alter the process to add in a new hue.

A12 Bionic chipset

The iPhone XS and XS Max both have the same chipset inside

Loads of power
Neural Engine brings enhancements throughout
Notably more powerful AR capabilities

Apple is proudly talking up its new chipset, and with good reason: it's one of the most powerful on a smartphone, created as it was using a 7nm process.

That may not mean much to most people, but essentially it means that more transistors can be chucked onto this hexa-core CPU, which has two 'power' cores and four more that are optimized for efficiency.

However, even those slower cores are still more powerful than any of those found in the iPhone 6, a handset that's only four years old, showing just how rapidly smartphone technology is progressing in terms of power and efficiency.

One might question whether this much power is really needed – and sure, if you're just browsing the web and sending messages it's utterly wasted.

However, if you want to explore the world of augmented reality, then these extra transistors are on hand to help out.

There's also a new 'Neural Engine' in the mix, enabling your phone to become more intelligent, learning as you use it.

It adds a 'smart layer' to proceedings, allowing the handset to recognize things on the screen, whether that's appending an Animoji to your head in real time during a FaceTime call, or working out what's needed to improve the quality of a photo as you're taking it.

It's hard to really quantify the benefit of this improved chipset other than through numbers. Running the iPhone XS through the Geekbench CPU testing process showed that it's the most powerful phones we've ever used: a score of 11,481 is over 1,000 higher than the iPhone X from last year, and better than any phone we've tested.

That speed improvement is easy to feel within the phone, as the iPhone XS is one of the snappiest handsets we've ever tapped our way through.

It's tricky to say how much of this is down to the hardware and how much to the improved iOS 12 software – but either way, it's a really, really rapid experience.

The A12 chipset brings a step up in graphical performance too – gaming is getting ever closer to console-level graphics, and we had the chance to check out a few AR titles too.

That said, we're still not fully convinced about the benefits of AR gaming – it's mildly diverting for a while, but many titles still seem to lack the overall polish that more typical iPhone games bring, such as Elder Scrolls: Blades, where you've got incredible gaming prowess mixed with high-level effects within.

For instance, we played ElemenTao, and not only did it lack any kind of tutorial but it was a bit clunky when we tried to play it on a desk. That's not really the fault of the game, but rarely do we have a large table with nothing on it on which we can play solo titles, or with chums.

Yes, there will be moments when it's cool, but they'll be as rare as deciding to play board games of an evening – so it depends if that’s what you’re into.