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We have already seen the iPhone XS Max being torn down , drop tested , and compared to other flagship Android devices out there. Now, let’s see just how durable the phone is. Apple has come a long way since its #bendgate days of the iPhone 6 Plus , with the iPhone XS Max featuring a stainless steel chassis and the most durable smartphone glass ever. As a durability test done by YouTuber JerryRigEverything shows, the iPhone XS Max has the same hardness level on the Mohs scale as previous iPhones. This also means that it scratches at around the same hardness as older iPhones. Here’s hoping the durable glass shows its worth when one drops their $1,000 smartphone. As for the stainless chassis, it is extremely durable, though there should be no surprise in this regard. Despite Apple claiming that it uses a sapphire crystal lens on the iPhone XS rear camera setup, the camera lens scratches at a Mohs hardness level 7 similar to the iPhone 8 and iPhone X . This means that Apple is n...

Apple is actively working on the iPhone XS applying a gracious amount of smoothing/beauty filter effect in selfie photos. The company reached out to Abdul Dremali who had posted his sample selfies from the iPhone XS and iPhone X for comparison purposes on Twitter. The issue has received a lot of attention this week, with thousands of new iPhone XS owners complaining about it on Reddit. Popular YouTuber Unbox Therapy has also posted a video about this issue on his channel. iPhone XS owners have termed this excessive smoothening effect as #beautygate. @Advil soo I was watching Unbox Therapy and… #beautygate 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/hj2NcZMicP — bryan™⭐️ (@ilive_onX) September 26, 2018 i emailed the CEO of Apple about being unhappy with the post-processing on my iPhone XS front camera and they FOUND MY NUMBER AND CALLED ME ABOUT IT LMAO. they’re working on fixing it now this is hilarious pic.twitter.com/xbRYe3wU1b — abdul (@Advil) September 27, 2018 Apple seems to have spe...

A week after first going on sale , Apple’s new iPhones — the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max — have made their way to more markets across the world. Starting today, the iPhone XS series will be available in 25 more markets. This is on top of the 30 countries where the devices went on sale starting September 21. The list of countries where the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max go on sale today are as follows: Andorra, Armenia, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, India, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and South Africa. Pre-orders for the devices started in the above country from last week itself. Given the relative lack of demand, it should be pretty easy for customers living in any of the above countries to get their hands on the new iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max. Additionally, the Apple Watch Series 4 will go on sale i...

Apple has made massive improvements to the iPhone XS camera in terms of both hardware and software. While the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max feature a larger sensor with bigger pixels, they also come with an improved processing algorithm for improved details, contrast, and dynamic range. However, a processing change on Apple’s behalf particularly for selfies has annoyed a lot of iPhone XS owners.  iPhone XS owners are complaining about selfie photos having excessive skin smoothing effect. This results in selfie photos taken from the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max having a very artificial look. This is similar to what Samsung, Vivo, Oppo, and Huawei do on their devices as well. In devices from these OEMs, this feature is usually called the beauty filter and there’s an option to increase/decrease its effect, though there’s no way to completely disable it. On the iPhone XS, however, there’s no such option to reduce this beauty filter effect for selfies. The rear camera al...

A teardown and analysis of the iPhone XS Max with 256GB storage by TechInsights points to the total component cost coming in at $443. The display was the most expensive component of the lot at $80.50. A12 Bionic The A12 chip and the new Gigabit LTE modem came in second at $72. The A12 Bionic chip is among the first in the world to be fabricated by TSMC on the 7nm process which is why it is so expensive. It features an 8-core neural engine, a 4-core Apple designed GPU, and a 6-core CPU featuring two high-performance cores and four power-efficient cores. Display Despite the jump in display size to 6.5-inches, the iPhone XS Max display has turned out to be only 3.23$ more expensive for Apple — $80.50 vs $77.27 — when compared to the 5.8-inch OLED panel of the iPhone X. Apple managed to reduce the overall price of the OLED panel for the iPhone XS Max by removing some of the 3D Touch components that were previously found on the iPhone X. This helped the company reduce the displa...

We have already seen the iPhone XS Max beat the iPhone X by a small margin in a speed test. But how does the iPhone XS Max compare to the best flagship Android smartphone around, the Galaxy Note 9? As a speed test conducted by YouTuber SuperSaf shows, while the Galaxy Note 9 and iPhone XS Max perform neck to neck while loading apps, the former is always a second or two behind the iPhone XS Max while loading heavy games like Angry Birds 2, Temple Run 2, Dead Trigger 2, Subway Surfers, and more. The excellent app loading times of the iPhone XS Max when compared to the Galaxy Note 9 can be attributed to Apple optimizing its latest iPhones for faster app loading times. The company did claim during its presentation that the iPhone XS series loads apps up to 30 percent faster. The multi-tasking comparison shows the iPhone XS Max actually beating the Galaxy Note 9. This is despite the Note 9 coming with 6GB RAM, while the iPhone XS Max comes with 4GB RAM. The Note 9 unloaded apps like Facebo...

The folks over at  Tom’s Guide  have posted detailed battery life benchmarks of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, with both devices doing exceedingly well. In Tom’s Guide battery test which involves continuous web browsing with a screen brightness of 150 nits over T-Mobile’s 4G network, the iPhone XS Max lasted for 10 hours 38 minutes while the iPhone XS lasted for 9 hours and 41 minutes. The iPhone XS Max fell short of besting the times of other major Android devices like the OnePlus 6, Galaxy Note 9, Google Pixel 2 XL, and the Huawei P20 Pro. However, all these devices have a higher capacity battery than the iPhone XS Max here, with the Galaxy Note 9 and Huawei P20 Pro coming with a massive 4,000mAh battery. As for the iPhone XS, its time of 9 hours and 41 minutes was just short of the category average of 9 hours and 48 minutes. Surprisingly, the iPhone X managed to beat both these devices and lasted 10 hours and 49 minutes in the test. This is despite Apple claiming...

When Apple debuted Face ID with the iPhone X in 2017, it claimed it was even more secure than Touch ID. While this might be true, the biggest issues with Face ID are that it is slower than Touch ID and despite being more secure, it could be easily bypassed by one’s identical twin brother or sister . For the 2018 iPhone XS series, Apple has only made claims of Face ID being faster than ever and that it is still more secure than Touch ID. Yet again though, as tests conducted by twin brothers running the LifeofTwinz YouTube channel show, Face ID on the iPhone XS still unlocks if one identical brother registers their face and another tries to unlock the phone. Face ID was also fooled when one identical twin tried opening the iPhone XS Max with a beard. That seemed to have made little to no impact as Face ID still unlocked the device. In the third test, the identical twins wore a hat and then tried to open the same iPhone XS Max. And once again, they were able to do so successfully. T...

The 512GB variant of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max are a major profit earner for Apple since the company does not have to make any design changes to account for the higher storage NAND chip. As per  Bloomberg  report citing analysts, Apple is charging customers significantly more for the 512GB iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max than what it pays its suppliers for the chip. As per Wayne Lam of IHS Markit, Apple pays its suppliers 25 cents per gigabyte, while it charges its customers around 78 cents per gigabyte. In comparison, Samsung charges its customers 68 cents to go from the 128GB to 512GB variant of the Galaxy Note 9. The higher the storage variant that Apple sells, the more profit it makes off them. To upgrade from the 64GB iPhone XS to 512GB iPhone XS, Apple charges a staggering $350 while it pays its suppliers only around $132.5 for the chip. The report states that Apple could make about $134 per unit more than what it makes on the smallest storage option.  The market price of this...

When Apple unveiled the iPhone XS and iPhone XR earlier this month, it highlighted the new Depth Control feature on the devices. The feature allowed users to change the amount of depth/blur effect applied to a photo after it was shot. Now, Apple seems to be working on improving this feature with iOS 12.1 by allowing users to change the depth effect while taking a picture. The company has already added this feature for beta testing in iOS 12.1 beta 1 on the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. While taking a Portrait photo, the Depth slider will show up thereby allowing one to adjust the amount of blur to be applied. There’s no word from Apple if this feature will make its way to the final version of iOS 12.1 but that’s most likely the case. Users will also be able to edit the Depth effect of a photo after capturing it, something that they can already do on their iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max. Many Android phones already offer the ability to change the intensity of the blur effect whil...

Apple claims the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max use the “most durable smartphone glass in the world.” But then that’s a claim the company has made every year during the launch of a new iPhone but that has not stopped the front or rear glass from picking up scratches or shattering on a drop any rarer. So, how does the ”most durable smartphone glass in the world” perform in drop tests? Just for comparison sake, YouTuber TechSmartt also threw in an iPhone X in the drop test comparison. The iPhone X cracked in the second drop test itself when it was dropped from nearly a 6ft height. The bottom right corner of the display cracked as the phone hit the ground on its lower edge. As for the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, they survived the drops from a height of 6ft without any issues. In the final drop test when all the three phones were dropped from a 10ft height, the iPhone X’s condition went from bad to worse. It fell on one of its edge and its rear and front ...

With the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and Apple Watch Series 4 now available in their launch markets and customers getting their hands on their pre-ordered units, Apple has shared photos of the launch from all over the world. For now, Apple has only shared photos from its Apple Store in Orchard Road, Singapore, Apple Kyoto in Japan, and Apple Sydney. Check out some of the launch photos shared by Apple below. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook also tweeted on the occasion of the new iPhone launch. Thrilled to get these new Apple products into the hands (and onto the wrists) of so many customers around the world. Can’t wait to hear what you think! pic.twitter.com/GHpaDFgqeO — Tim Cook (@tim_cook) September 21, 2018 Apple Orchard Road, Singapore The demand for the iPhone XS and Apple Watch Series 4 seemed to be particularly high in Singapore, with customers queuing up outside the store 24-36 hours before the launch day. Apple Kyoto, Japan Thanks to time zone difference, customers in Australia, ...

iFixit might not be the first this time around to publish an iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max teardown but the company’s teardown of Apple’s latest iPhones are the most in-depth one and reveal a quite a few interesting tidbits about them. The iFixit team tore down the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max which gives us a clear look at the adjustments Apple had to make on the bigger iPhone. Firstly, Apple uses a bigger Taptic Engine on the iPhone XS Max when compared to the iPhone XS. This makes sense since a bigger device requires a stronger motor to achieve the same effect as the smaller iPhone XS. Secondly, the bigger iPhone comes with an extended logic board compared to the iPhone XS, with the display connector moved to the bottom. Contrary to what the first iPhone XS teardown claimed, the iFixit team did not find Apple using stronger water-resistant seals on the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max to help it achieve its improved IP68 certification. The teardown confirms that while the iPhone...

To celebrate the launch of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, Apple has launched a new mini-site where it gives a 3D overview of the device. This new mini-site is only available when users visit the following link from a mobile device. This is the first time that Apple has launched such a mini-site for one of its iPhones. The company is also using the same link for promotion purposes on its social media channel. This is also the first time that Apple is using a domain ending in “.apple” for its marketing campaign. Make sure to visit the experience website on a mobile device as then you get a cool 3D overview of the iPhone XS. You can also select one of the three colors that Apple offers the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max in. Like this post? Share it!