 Everyone knows the iPhone 11 Pros are the sexy, interesting ones. So why are we leading a review coverage with the sub-tier model? If you have to ask that, you probably don't know much about the iPhone 11. Under the hood, it's got exactly the same guts as the Pro and Pro Max, right down to the CPU and RAM, and the display area is right in the middle between the two, but it isn't significantly heavier than the smaller Pro. It also gets a dual rear camera configuration and a $50 price drop compared to last year's XR. But why? Competition is a hell of a drug, isn't it? Today's sponsor, Private Internet Access, has you covered if you've got plenty of competition. Looking for an affordable and reliable VPN? Private Internet Access encrypts your internet traffic and uses a safe, protected IP. Check it out today through the link below. The moment you compare its screen against its Pro cousin, the difference is striking. While the liquid retina display introduced on the previous generation iPhone XR isn't poor by any standard, it simply cannot compete with the contrast and sharpness afforded by the Pro's XDR OLED display. That's not to say it's bad, though. Compared to an older iPhone or a lesser LCD-based phone, color accuracy and contrast are still significantly improved. There is one glaring deficiency, though. How could anyone even consider a screen that's less than 1080p in 2019? Well, if you've used the XR, you'll know that at 326ppi, raw resolution doesn't really matter as much as you think it does. The TLDR here is that mobile OLEDs typically have a third fewer subpixels that make up the image than an LCD in an arrangement called Pentile, and at a given resolution may appear patchy by comparison. That's why comparing the 11 and 11 Pro resolution directly isn't useful. Rest assured you won't be seeing any individual pixels in daily use. You will notice the notch, though. While some at this point may not care or even prefer a notch to just having a chin, and while Apple may have a sophisticated sensor suite in their notch, this is a problem that has already been solved, and there are now multiple phones on the market with under-screen fingerprint sensors, pop-up cameras, and speakers that don't require a long grill built into the face of the display. To add insult to injury here, the bezel around the display itself is thick enough to be distracting if you've used anything with a slimmer, more modern display. But coming from an iPhone 6S, it's honestly no bigger than what I'm used to, and given the XR was Apple's best-selling X series phone, it clearly wasn't a huge factor for those customers. And Apple's done a lot right here. Aside from their trademark UI responsiveness, there are certainly a few other nice touches here that aren't really game-changers but help keep the experience more streamlined than before. Tap to wake is one feature I low-key love about Android and it's finally made an appearance on iDevice, meaning I don't need to pick up my phone and tilt it every time I want to check my notifications anymore. And whether you love them or hate them, you can now pair a pair, that's two, pairs of AirPods or Beats headphones. Which is great for like watching the movies, uh, watching the movies, can you go watch some of them, those, the movies. And of course, there's the standard checklist of things we've come to expect from modern smartphones like wireless charging, gigabit LTE, dual-SIM, Wi-Fi 6 support, etc etc. Speaking of stuff all modern smartphones have, the camera was a bit hit or miss for me. On the one hand, it's every bit as good as the iPhone 11 Pro's, albeit without the telephoto camera that's been triggering a lot of trypophobia. There's a lot of detail here and in photos like this flower, the Note 10 by comparison does a terrible job. But in many other cases, it seems like Apple's processing is sometimes a bit too aggressive when it comes to making colors pop and, confusingly, sometimes goes the exact opposite direction, producing a solid tone across a whole image and desaturating details as in this image of Canada Place, where we hosted LTX in 2019. There's some heavy image sharpening going on here and it's especially noticeable in this shot with float planes. Look closely at the wing struts and propellers and it gets more aggressive with noise reduction, making this shot almost look like the pavement is experiencing motion blur from camera shake, despite everything else being sharp. Ironically, the Note 10's version of this image is less noisy while still retaining detail in natural noise like this. And check out the legibility of the branding on this SUV. Most importantly, results can vary dramatically depending on how the camera app behaves. These two images look similar, but zoom in and suddenly one is detailed and the other is not. Now, none of this is to say that the cameras are garbage. You do need to zoom in to tell the difference most of the time and some may prefer the sharpened look, but you may want to use a third-party camera app capable of shooting raw to get the best out of your iPhone 11, whether it's a Pro or not. Whatever the choice, Apple still doesn't have a screen-off camera shortcut. So if you storm Area 51 again next year, you'll probably miss the UFOs as they're taking off. Quick take video is a huge blessing though, and that means you no longer need to fumble between shooting stills and shooting video if the camera app is already open. That's a feature Samsung actually removed from theirs, something I'm sure Linus is going to whine more about in the upcoming review of the iPhone 11 Pro Max and Galaxy Fold. Man, that's a mouthful. iPhone 11 Pro Max. Make sure you're subbed so you don't miss them. For now, it's time to talk about the SloFee. It's a stupid word, and like so many other Apple-related terms of the years, I'm still mad about podcasts. But I'm mad enough to admit that it amused me when I tried it. I do question the longevity of it as a social media meme, but hey, a faster front-facing camera is a faster front-facing camera. No complaints there. LTTSore.com. Buy one at all. SloFee your friends. Bringing us to the battery life. Can it keep up with its pro cousin? Does it do what Apple says it does on the 10? Well, yeah, actually. With a capacity of just over 3100 mAh, it'll comfortably get you through your day, especially thanks to Apple's trademark software and hardware optimizations. But make no mistake, this is no two-day phone, and you'll want to plug it in at night. A worst-case scenario Geekbench 4 battery life test with the screen brightness at 50% lasted a decent 6 hours and 24 minutes from full to empty. But an hour longer than the 10R. That's great, though it does still mean that if you're a gamer or like to edit video a lot, you might want to keep a wireless charger nearby or buy the sold-separately Type-C lightning cable and an 18W charger to top up mid-day. Something the pro models do come with. So when all is said and done, is the 11 subbed here? What are you actually getting for your extra $300 with the iPhone 11 Pro? Smaller bezels, an extra camera, a fast charger, and an OLED display? Apple advertises an extra 2 meters of water resistance, but unless you drop your phone in the swimming pool, that's not likely to matter. I suppose if you need 512GB of storage on an old device, you don't really have much of a choice, but that's really it. The other difference is just boil down to what color you want and whether you care about having stainless steel versus aluminum for the outer housing. Well, okay then. It's not subbed here. Should you buy the iPhone 11? Well if you were considering the Pro, then yeah. You get a wider array of color options, a larger screen unless you're looking at a Macs, and you get the same guts at a much more reasonable price point. It's actually kind of hilarious how Apple bends over backwards to differentiate them on their product page, and even more hilarious is that they let you choose older models to compare. The iPhone 6S Plus for example has no design and no 64GB variant, so everyone who bought one of those, like me, has been hallucinating for the past 4 years of their lives. As for those of you who aren't already in the ecosystem, this desperation to make the 11 exciting exemplifies the problem at Apple right now. They haven't truly innovated on their iPhone hardware designs in some time now, and they're failing to differentiate in the face of Android's ever-increasing maturity. Features like Touch ID and 3D Touch have been cut. They're copying other multi-camera designs, while their image processing and quality in general falls behind the competition. This say nothing of Google Assistant's overtake of Siri and the CarPlay vs Android auto debate being virtually non-existent. Apple consistently boasts the fastest mobile processors on release though, and iPhones enjoy consistent long-term support. So as we discussed in our pre-launch event coverage, we think buying an iPhone is a great idea if you want a phone that's going to receive updates and hold its value for a long time. It's just ironic that this consumer-friendly quality makes being a holdout extremely easy. Aside from the fact that my iPhone 6s is nearing the end of life in iOS, there wouldn't really be a compelling reason for me to upgrade today. And I think that is the real conclusion. Apple has some innovating to do. As we observed in our review of the Asus Dual Screen ZenBook Pro Duo, go check that one out. And also check out our sponsor Ting. If you use WiFi a lot on your smartphone, then why should you pay for a fixed data monthly plan? 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