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  • - Hey guys, this is Austin.

  • Today, Apple announced three brand new iPhones

  • and they range from kind of expensive

  • to very expensive to, "Are you serious?"

  • The main announcement today was the iPhone XS.

  • And yes, even though it is spelled XS,

  • it is pronounced iPhone ten S

  • because Apple likes confusing names.

  • Although to be fair, the S model has been around forever.

  • What you're getting here is a phone that is

  • very, very similar to the current iPhone X.

  • Besides a new gold color option,

  • the actual physical dimensions

  • and the look of the phone are almost identical.

  • There are some physical differences,

  • including the most durable glass ever on a smartphone,

  • because we've heard that one every time

  • anyone launches a phone.

  • And on top of that, there's also going to be some

  • slightly better water resistance.

  • It's now going to be IP68 rated,

  • which basically means it can be

  • underwater for slightly longer.

  • Actually, I think specifically IP68 is

  • two meters instead of one meter, right?

  • - [Male Voice] 2 meters, 30 minutes.

  • - Two meters, 30 minutes; not a massive difference.

  • Other minor updates include a little bit more

  • dynamic range with the display

  • and better stereo separation with the speakers.

  • One thing that a lot of people brought up

  • during the keynote, although I think they slightly

  • misunderstood it, was the 120Hz touch sensitivity.

  • It's not going to be like the iPad Pro,

  • a 120Hz display.

  • What it is going to do is look for your

  • actual touches 120 times a second.

  • Surprising no one, TouchID is nowhere to be found.

  • Instead, we do have a slightly tweaked version of

  • Face ID on the new phone.

  • What you're getting here is going to be

  • basically the same hardware of the old Face ID,

  • but it does have a better algorithm,

  • as well as faster secure enclave processing

  • to be able to supposedly get you a little bit of

  • a quicker scan of your face and to be

  • a little bit more accurate when doing so.

  • One of the biggest upgrades is with the processor.

  • I will absolutely give credit where credit is due.

  • Apple completely kills it when it comes to

  • developing their own custom processors,

  • and the A12 Bionic is no exception.

  • First of all, this is going to be the very first chip

  • shipping on a seven-nanometer process.

  • It is assumed that's going to be the TSMC process,

  • which means that not only is this going to be

  • cutting edge, it's going to give you better performance,

  • better battery life, all that kind of fun stuff.

  • But importantly, it's going to allow them to put

  • a lot of really high-tech stuff on a single chip.

  • It's got 6.9 billion transistors.

  • That might not really mean anything to you,

  • but that's a lot, especially for a phone.

  • The general layout of the chip is very similar

  • to the last generation.

  • We still do have a six-core CPU design,

  • so two of those cores are going to be high performance

  • and they're going to be a little bit faster,

  • but most importantly, more efficient.

  • The four low-power cores that back them up

  • are going to be about the same performance,

  • but consume around 50% less power.

  • On top of that, Apple is also introducing their new GPU.

  • Last year was the very first time that

  • Apple had completely developed their own

  • GPU in-house, and now there's going to be

  • a second-generation version of that,

  • which supposedly, again, all these numbers are

  • with a grain of salt, going to be about

  • 50% faster than the previous generation.

  • A specific part of the chip called

  • the neural engine was introduced last year

  • with the A11 Bionic, and here on the A12,

  • it is a lot faster.

  • Previously, it was able to do somewhere

  • in the neighborhood of around 600 billion

  • operations per second, but now it can do almost

  • an order of magnitude faster at 5 trillion.

  • Camera-wise, the XS does have a slightly updated sensor,

  • so the main wide-angle camera is

  • "slightly larger" as far as sensor size goes.

  • That is a good thing; that's actually one of

  • the main advantages of a lot of

  • the Samsung Galaxy phones, is that for a while,

  • they've actually had bigger sensors than

  • pretty much anyone else in the smartphone space.

  • So having a little bit of a bigger sensor

  • and hopefully better glass to cover it is a good thing.

  • It's still going to be 12 megapixels,

  • and the telephoto camera from the sound of it

  • actually hasn't been updated.

  • But with that A12 Bionic chip onboard,

  • the processing is all going to be a lot better

  • and there are some legitimately new features there.

  • One of the new features is Smart HDR.

  • HDR's been around on iPhones for quite a while.

  • What it traditionally will do is take

  • multiple photos and then take a higher exposure,

  • low exposure, and just merge it in to be able to

  • get as much dynamic range as possible.

  • But Smart HDR takes a page out of

  • the Pixel 2's playbook by taking individual frames

  • in between the HDR shots.

  • Speaking of other features that are brand new,

  • even though they've been on other Android phones

  • for quite a while, we have an updated portrait mode.

  • Right now, if you take a portrait photo on, say,

  • an iPhone X, essentially what you see is what you get.

  • There's not really going to be any adjustment

  • beyond being able to have the original photo

  • and then the portrait version.

  • But with the XS, you can now adjust the level of

  • simulated depth of field.

  • This is almost identical to what you were able to get

  • on quite a few other phones in the past.

  • Specifically the Note 8 last year did a really good

  • implementation of being able to really allow you to

  • tweak how that portrait photo looks.

  • I will completely admit that the iPhone

  • does a really good job of cutting people

  • out of the background, and I'm sure the XS is

  • going to be better, but it just bothers me

  • when they're bragging about, "Oh look,

  • this is revolutionary and brand new,"

  • when phones have been doing this for years.

  • But I guess it's glad that they caught up.

  • And continuing on the train of this should've

  • happened a long time ago, you now do have

  • dual-SIM support on the XS and the XS Max.

  • Yeah, I'll get to the Max in a second.

  • The XS is actually going to do it

  • in a slightly different way.

  • As opposed to having two individual SIM cards,

  • instead you put a standard SIM card in

  • and you can also take advantage of an e-SIM,

  • which is cool if you're on one of the very few

  • carriers around the world that actually supports this.

  • Funnily enough, they actually acknowledged this onstage.

  • If you actually wanna pick up the phone with

  • dual-SIM capability in China,

  • it straight-up just supports two full-size SIMs.

  • So yeah.

  • Actually no, it's not full-size SIMs,

  • it's the nano-SIMs.

  • It would be great though if it actually fit

  • the full-size SIM, like the old-school one. (laughs)

  • So the main difference here with the XS Max

  • is just going to be the screen size,

  • so if you want a plus-size version of the iPhone X,

  • this is going to be your option.

  • Where this is not going to be a great option,

  • and one of my big problems with the phone,

  • besides the fact that it's a kind of boring update,

  • is the price; these are expensive.

  • Like really, really expensive.

  • You may have caught a little video I did the other day

  • talking about why I'm not a huge fan

  • of the Galaxy Note 9.

  • A big reason why I'm not excited about it

  • is because I think the value proposition

  • is kind of sketchy.

  • But when you take a look at the XS and the XS Max,

  • oh man, it's a bit of a mess.

  • To start with, the iPhone