Hi community.
As an die hard fan of small phones, I have received an 11 Pro iPhone as an unexpected gift. I used an iPhone 7 and have some extended experience with the XR, but would take the poison pill that my next phone won't come close to 6 inches diagonal. I am (or rather was) super excited about the SE2 rumours and possible iPhone smaller than the current 5,8" standard. The intent of the gift giver was to give me the Pro Max, but the sales person has mixed it up and so i received the 11 Pro. I did have intent to try to use a Plus/Max phone for some time just to test the battery life, but i consider 11 Pro as big too.
So i have some first impressions to share, possibly to help out other people in similar situation.
A. It is massive. Compared to iPhone 7 it is 1 by 4 by 6 mm bigger which is relatively OK. But 50g heavier. You can hold it comfortably while it lays in your palm, but try rising it up, over your head, in your bed or taking a picture and you will quickly feel uncomfortable compared to old iPhones. The display stretches really tall, so while it is quite narrow (claustrophobically so coming from a 16:9 screen) it is by no means a one handed experience. 19:5 does not give me impresion of bigger screen or more space to read. I would definitely prefer something shorter You just cannot reach top to bottom with a single stroke, unless you lessen the grip or jiggle the phone. Still, it gives significantly more compact impression than a XR.
B. Midnight green is truly a gorgeous collor, and matte glass back is just a joy to touch like Mac Book trackpad. The super polished steel frame is just a finger chopping contrast to it. It feels strange coming from matte aluminium. The camera bump is huge by footprint but quite flat. Actually it protrudes less than iPhone 7 bump which is to say less than 1,2mm. This is helped by the fact that it is a "two level design" so in the end you will just feel some half a millimetre step there and there. On the other hand, i always try to hold my phone in such a way that the camera gets unharmed by my skin oils, but it is kind of impossible on the 11 Pro as the bump goes almost half way trough the phone width. Face ID IR window for the dot projector is smaller compared to XR. Considering the 30% wider scanned area I appreciate that the notch actually stayed the same size.
C. My first oled screen. It is gorgeous, but not a dealbreaker. The contrast drop with wieving angle is practically nonexistent compared to LCD, the color shift is visible though. But still better than i expected. PWM is quite hard to notice, it causes some small scrolling jellyness at worst. The display gets chopped into 4 segments and one of them is turned off at a time. The eye strain at low brightness is real. Very uncomfortable for me the first time using at minimum brightness in the dark. But i dont think it will be a problem at normal brightness levels. By using eye reflectometry (read superficial guess) the disply is more reflective than the XR which by itself is more reflective than 7. This is more than compensated by great panel brightness and the sunlight readability is good. But where is that 1,8% AR coating Apple ?
E. I was worried about the haptics and speaker performance though. The phone teardown shows that both the taptic engine and speakers are signiffically smaller in footprint than previous gen like XR. This is supposed to be thanks to new materials Apple is using.
On the flip side they probably have more room in Z space. Haptics is just as great as any modern iPhone, speakers are actually louder than XR, but i would say there is a sacrifice in bass for really loud mid frequencies compared to XR. Both are definitely on the high end.
F. Night mode is amazing, ultra wide camera is quite soft and telephoto does not bring 2x more detail. While diffrent perespeciteves and usecase are good to have and fun, the main camera will be used by software in most situations to get the best result. It is the only camera with 1,4 picron mixels. Other three visible light cameras have 1 micron. That is not enough - there will be significant upgrades in those sensor sizes sooner or later.
G. Last but the most important. The iPhone 11 Pro has an oled which takes up to 3,5 W on full white brightness and has very high driving power at about 0,5W. I was worried that the phone will be negatively impacted by this and so on so forth. But I just can not kill the damn thing. Out of the box at 76% and over 5 hour SOT later testing HDR video, games, cameras, chatting. Still has 6% left. I just have to give a huge shot out to Apple it even beats the XR I would say. This year was especially well made for this to happen. There is 15% more efficient oled, way more efficient SoC, even smaller motherboard enabling larger and thicker battery, custom power mangment IC from Apple. I can not even imagine how long would the Pro Max last.
If Apple can somehow decrease the display driving power using LTPO, add 5nm chips, or that fancy metal battery packaging from the Apple watch... Who knows how much they will invest into even longer battery life.
In the end. The new phone is great for testing, and i enjoy it a lot. But I still can not get over the fact it is a much bulkier device. I just keep thinking about what could be possible in the old school 4,7" formfactor with all the new tech we have got since 2014. L batteries, oleds, stacked motherboards, multiple cameras. It would be definitely hard to add it all to a smaller phone, but even if it means some milimeters of thickness and grams, i would gladly take it even at 4 digit price. And I know a lot of people around me that like small phones and keep their SE's till death because some phones they would like to upgrade to spec wise dwarf the 11 Pro Max. The 11 Pro is definitely pocketable, comfortable to hold and so on. But it does not disappear in your pocket and it is not a one handed device. So I am keeping my iPhone 7 with my 11 Pro for now. What about you ? Do you have a perfect screen size or aspect ratio ?
Have a Great Day !
As an die hard fan of small phones, I have received an 11 Pro iPhone as an unexpected gift. I used an iPhone 7 and have some extended experience with the XR, but would take the poison pill that my next phone won't come close to 6 inches diagonal. I am (or rather was) super excited about the SE2 rumours and possible iPhone smaller than the current 5,8" standard. The intent of the gift giver was to give me the Pro Max, but the sales person has mixed it up and so i received the 11 Pro. I did have intent to try to use a Plus/Max phone for some time just to test the battery life, but i consider 11 Pro as big too.
So i have some first impressions to share, possibly to help out other people in similar situation.
A. It is massive. Compared to iPhone 7 it is 1 by 4 by 6 mm bigger which is relatively OK. But 50g heavier. You can hold it comfortably while it lays in your palm, but try rising it up, over your head, in your bed or taking a picture and you will quickly feel uncomfortable compared to old iPhones. The display stretches really tall, so while it is quite narrow (claustrophobically so coming from a 16:9 screen) it is by no means a one handed experience. 19:5 does not give me impresion of bigger screen or more space to read. I would definitely prefer something shorter You just cannot reach top to bottom with a single stroke, unless you lessen the grip or jiggle the phone. Still, it gives significantly more compact impression than a XR.
B. Midnight green is truly a gorgeous collor, and matte glass back is just a joy to touch like Mac Book trackpad. The super polished steel frame is just a finger chopping contrast to it. It feels strange coming from matte aluminium. The camera bump is huge by footprint but quite flat. Actually it protrudes less than iPhone 7 bump which is to say less than 1,2mm. This is helped by the fact that it is a "two level design" so in the end you will just feel some half a millimetre step there and there. On the other hand, i always try to hold my phone in such a way that the camera gets unharmed by my skin oils, but it is kind of impossible on the 11 Pro as the bump goes almost half way trough the phone width. Face ID IR window for the dot projector is smaller compared to XR. Considering the 30% wider scanned area I appreciate that the notch actually stayed the same size.
C. My first oled screen. It is gorgeous, but not a dealbreaker. The contrast drop with wieving angle is practically nonexistent compared to LCD, the color shift is visible though. But still better than i expected. PWM is quite hard to notice, it causes some small scrolling jellyness at worst. The display gets chopped into 4 segments and one of them is turned off at a time. The eye strain at low brightness is real. Very uncomfortable for me the first time using at minimum brightness in the dark. But i dont think it will be a problem at normal brightness levels. By using eye reflectometry (read superficial guess) the disply is more reflective than the XR which by itself is more reflective than 7. This is more than compensated by great panel brightness and the sunlight readability is good. But where is that 1,8% AR coating Apple ?
E. I was worried about the haptics and speaker performance though. The phone teardown shows that both the taptic engine and speakers are signiffically smaller in footprint than previous gen like XR. This is supposed to be thanks to new materials Apple is using.
On the flip side they probably have more room in Z space. Haptics is just as great as any modern iPhone, speakers are actually louder than XR, but i would say there is a sacrifice in bass for really loud mid frequencies compared to XR. Both are definitely on the high end.
F. Night mode is amazing, ultra wide camera is quite soft and telephoto does not bring 2x more detail. While diffrent perespeciteves and usecase are good to have and fun, the main camera will be used by software in most situations to get the best result. It is the only camera with 1,4 picron mixels. Other three visible light cameras have 1 micron. That is not enough - there will be significant upgrades in those sensor sizes sooner or later.
G. Last but the most important. The iPhone 11 Pro has an oled which takes up to 3,5 W on full white brightness and has very high driving power at about 0,5W. I was worried that the phone will be negatively impacted by this and so on so forth. But I just can not kill the damn thing. Out of the box at 76% and over 5 hour SOT later testing HDR video, games, cameras, chatting. Still has 6% left. I just have to give a huge shot out to Apple it even beats the XR I would say. This year was especially well made for this to happen. There is 15% more efficient oled, way more efficient SoC, even smaller motherboard enabling larger and thicker battery, custom power mangment IC from Apple. I can not even imagine how long would the Pro Max last.
If Apple can somehow decrease the display driving power using LTPO, add 5nm chips, or that fancy metal battery packaging from the Apple watch... Who knows how much they will invest into even longer battery life.
In the end. The new phone is great for testing, and i enjoy it a lot. But I still can not get over the fact it is a much bulkier device. I just keep thinking about what could be possible in the old school 4,7" formfactor with all the new tech we have got since 2014. L batteries, oleds, stacked motherboards, multiple cameras. It would be definitely hard to add it all to a smaller phone, but even if it means some milimeters of thickness and grams, i would gladly take it even at 4 digit price. And I know a lot of people around me that like small phones and keep their SE's till death because some phones they would like to upgrade to spec wise dwarf the 11 Pro Max. The 11 Pro is definitely pocketable, comfortable to hold and so on. But it does not disappear in your pocket and it is not a one handed device. So I am keeping my iPhone 7 with my 11 Pro for now. What about you ? Do you have a perfect screen size or aspect ratio ?
Have a Great Day !