The Home button, forehead, and chin, are still gone, as is the headphone jack. But, these days that's the norm, not the exception.
It's still Lightning, not USB-C, and still includes a 5 watt USB-A charger, not the beefier 18 watt USB-PD charger now included with the Pro. Though, if you pick one up separately, you can fast-charge to 50% in just 30 minutes.
You can also still charge inductively with a Qi pad at the same 7.5 watts as last year.
The speakers are new and offer spatial audio, which will precisely place 5.1 surround or Dolby Atmos sound to precisely match any video that supports it.
The notch is still here, but now it houses an even faster, more reliable Face ID and a wider, 12MP selfie cam that goes to up to 4K and, yeah, shoots slow-mo selfie video.
Glossy, glassy black and white are still options, but there's also a paler yellow this year, and a slightly different Product Red. Sky blue and coral orange are gone, though, replaced with a lavender purple and mint green.
That glass is also tougher, so hopefully harder to scratch or shatter. Water resistance is still 30 minutes but up from IP67 and one meter to IP68 and two meters. Just take it easy dropping it in the deep end.
Apple says the battery will last an hour longer than the iPhone XR, which โ ugh, math โ makes it 2.5 hours longer than the iPhone 8 Plus. Roughly 17 hours of local video, 10 hours of streaming video, and 65 hours of wireless audio. Thanks to the huge leaps forward in the Pro models, the 6.1-inch iPhone is no longer the battery life leader, but it packs plenty of power.
There's still a dual SIM, one nanoSIM card, one eSIM. I know some people want dual cards. I can't wait for dual e, but it's upgraded to Gigabit LTE, up to 38% faster Wi-Fi 6, and up to 45% longer-range beam-forming Bluetooth.
It's also packing Apple's top-of-the-line, industry leading chipset, the A13 Bionic. A13's efficiency, performance, graphics, and neural cores aren't just 20% faster each, they use 40, 25, 30, and 15% less power respectively. It also has 4GB of memory instead of 3GB like on the XR, and brings with it a machine-learned ton of new photographic and other features we'll get to in just a few minutes.
Storage options remain the same at 64, 128, and 256 GB, but the price is now $50 cheaper for all of them. So, go for at least 128. You'll thank me later.
I've been using a purple iPhone 11 review unit running iOS 13.0 for almost a week, both while traveling in California and here at home in Montreal, Canada.
