Another year, another Apple event. This year’s devices were the iPhone XS, XS Max, XR, and the Apple Watch Series 4. One of these 4 new launches was a success, while the others were slight letdowns. It was one of Apple’s less spectacular showcases in terms of new devices.
Starting from the top, Apple’s new launches that were supposed to be their flagship upgrade from the iPhone X were the XS and XS Max. The hardware on the two new flagships is a severe disappointment as they are almost identical to their predecessor. The outside looks the exact same with the inside being the only slight improvement. Their new processors are faster and their camera technology is better, but all these changes are too small and feel too much like Apple is stalling for time to come up with a new idea. As Business Insider says, “We still didn’t get any of the magic Apple normally turns out for its iPhone events.”
Their other phone that they announced was the iPhone XR. This is supposed to be Apple’s third option for people who don’t want to throw away $1,099 on an XS Max. The cost of this new iPhone is $749 which may sound good, but that lower price only comes with the knowledge that Apple had to lose some premium features to bring the cost down. Instead of their premium OLED display used on all their other new phones, the XR uses an LCD display that isn’t up to par with the quality of the nice OLED screens.
In addition to the screen being lower quality, the actual interaction with the screen is not as good either. Instead of using the same quality Super Retina display on the XS and XS Max, the XR only has what Apple is calling a “Liquid Retina” display. This is yet another downgrade from their more premium flagships. So even if this price seems attractive at first, the truth is the quality of the phone doesn’t match the price at all. There are much better phones out there such as the Android phone, the OnePlus 6, which only costs $529, has a higher quality, and is built with more premium hardware than the XR.
Finally, Apple’s last new device announcement at their event was the new Apple Watch Series 4. This was by far their best announcement at the launch. This new Apple Watch has an increased screen size that is over 30% bigger than the Series 3 screens. It also comes with a built in EKG and has a new watch face that can be set to be showing 8 different things at once.
The new Series 4 watch was Apple’s best announcement by far with all the others being slight disappointments. Hopefully Apple can learn from this tragic letdown and come with more to showcase for next years event, because this year was not a huge win for them.
