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Get Ready for the iPhone XR and iPhone XS

By Disc Depot In Tech Industry News

They’re here. Apple has announced the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max (due on the 21st of September) and the lower-end XR (due on 26 October).

Although we concentrate on repair and don’t sell phones ourselves, we expect them to be widely-available through the usual mobile phone stores in Dundee and St Andrews (and Angus and Fife in general).

Meanwhile, the original iPhone X has been discontinued less than a year after its late-2017 launch.

iPhone XS and XS Max

These are the new flagships- the XS sells for the same £999 price as the iPhone X and has the same (or similar) 458 ppi 5.8″ OLED screen. The XS Max is an extra £100 (yes, that does mean it costs £1100). It has a 6.5″ OLED- heading into tablet territory.

The OLED will almost certainly be of very high quality (as was that of the iPhone X), but it’ll also no doubt contribute to the high cost of the device. As with the iPhone X and high-end Samsung Galaxys, it’s a safe bet that replacement OLED displays (and hence repairs) will be very expensive.

As with the X, the XS series lacks a home button and uses Face ID instead of Touch ID.

iPhone XR

This one’s obviously a lower-end model, but at £750 it’s still “less expensive” rather than “cheap”. It features a 6.1″ “Liquid Retina” LCD (rather than an OLED) whose resolution isn’t quite as good as the OLED, but 358 ppi is still likely to be impressive regardless.

Does the LCD matter? It’ll certainly help reduce the price, and if you’ve ever had to have an OLED/AMOLED display replaced, you’ll know that they can be eyewateringly expensive. So, repairs are likely to be cheaper.

The use of LCD technology also means that unofficial “copy” replacement screens are likely to come out quite soon after the launch as awell. Unfortunately, these are usually of very low quality and some can even damage phones. Many repair stores use them because they’re cheaper than originals, but we always advise against the use of copy screens where possible.

As with the XS series, there’s no home button and Face ID- rather than Touch ID- is used. Unlike the XS, there’s no 3D Touch.

Names?

The names got a mixed reception, particularly the unwieldy “iPhone XS Max”. The iPhone X- officially pronounced “iPhone 10”- frequently got called the “iPhone Ecks”, and the XS will probably get called the “iPhone Excess”. (“XS Max” smacks of 90s Xtreme advertising, though we doubt this was the intention!)

Repairs

As an established repair business that has been around far longer than most of our competitors, we’ve survived by keeping on top of the latest technology and need to know in advance what we’re likely to be fixing in the coming months.

The XR and XS aren’t out yet, so not even the usual outlets like iFixit have been able to strip them down yet. We definitely suspect, however, that replacing the screen will be a different kettle of fish on the LCD-based XR than it is for the OLED XS.