iPhone

iPhone XR review: Keeping compromises to a minimum

Apple’s slightly cheaper handset is the best new iPhone for most people.

Samuel Axon – Nov 5, 2018 10:30 am | 338

The iPhone XR. Credit: Samuel Axon

Steve Jobs famously believed the devices his company produced would bring technology to the masses, but he was rarely willing to make the compromises necessary to bring that vision to fruition. Apple has only sometimes released products that were priced for everyone.

That trend continued in late September with the release of the flagship iPhone XS, a compelling, envelope-pushing product that is nonetheless priced out of range for many consumers. Enter the iPhone XR, a close sibling to the XS that trades the latter’s expensive OLED display for an LCD and a dual-camera system for a single camera among other things—all to bring the price down just enough so more people can buy it.

The iPhone XR is still not cheap—it costs about as much as Apple’s flagships cost at launch a couple of years ago. But the iPhone XR is an excellent handset that offers most of the iPhone XS experience for a price that customers were used to before things started getting a bit more expensive. (And, of course, the iPhone XR offers customers a bigger screen than they ever got for this price before.)

We previously reviewed the iPhone XS and XS Max at great length and detail, so for some subjects where there are no substantive differences between the XR and the XS, we’ll be linking back from this review to that one to offer more detail or context.

And since the XR is more like the XS than not, we tested it with two questions in mind: how is it different from the flagship, and is it a more attractive value with its lower price?

Table of Contents

Specifications

Specs at a glance: Apple iPhone XR
Screen	1792×828 6.1-inch (326PPI) LCD touchscreen
OS	iOS 12
CPU	Apple A12 Bionic (2x high-performance cores, 4x low-power cores)
RAM	3GB
GPU	Apple-made A12 Bionic GPU
Storage	64GB, 128GB, or 256GB
Networking	802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, NFC
Ports	Lightning
Camera	12MP rear camera, 7MP front camera
Size	5.94″×2.98”×0.33″ (150.9×75.7×8.3mm)
Weight	6.84oz (194g)
Battery	2,942 mAh
Starting price	$749
Other perks	Wireless charging, HDR, Face ID, augmented reality sensors, computational photography features

Apple iPhone XR

Buy Now

Starting at $749, the iPhone XR is specced out like a flagship. It has Apple’s newest SoC, the A12, which has two performance cores and four efficiency cores. Apple claims the two performance cores are up to 15 percent faster than last year’s and that the efficiency cores use up to 50 percent less power.

Also included is an Apple-made GPU, which the company claims is up to 50 percent faster than the GPU in 2017’s A11 thanks to lossless memory compression. (Don’t worry—we verified these claims with benchmarks to come.) There’s also an Apple-made ISP.

The real focus of Apple’s efforts in the A12 is what it calls the Neural Engine: machine learning-specialized silicon that sees the biggest claimed performance improvements compared to last year’s phones. The A11’s Neural Engine could do 600 billion operations per second, Apple says, but the A12 can do 5 trillion.

The Neural Engine is used to power Face ID, augmented reality apps, some camera features, and numerous machine learning features like searches in Photos, various Siri features, and more. The goal was also to free up the GPU from handling machine learning tasks so it could focus on graphics—key for augmented reality applications.

The iPhone XR has 3GB of RAM, the same as last year’s iPhone X. It comes in three storage configurations: 64GB, 128GB (which might be the best fit for most people, but which is not offered in the XS phones), and 256GB.

Like the iPhone XS, the XR sports stereo speakers with wider sound than previous iPhones. They sounded good to us.

Claimed battery life is up to 24 hours for wireless talk time, up to 15 for Internet use, and up to 65 for wireless audio playback—that’s the highest claimed battery life of any iPhone Apple offers. The phone supports both Qi wireless charging and fast-charging when wired to a computer system or a beefier power adapter than the inadequate 5W one that’s included.

I/O

In terms of ports, there’s only one: Apple’s proprietary Lightning connection. As we said in the iPhone XS review, this choice is frustrating for users. USB-C—which is offered in the company’s newest iPad Pro models, by the way—has many advantages.

Yes, if Apple switched, existing customers would have to buy new dongles and accessories in some cases. But we’ve been using Lightning since 2012, so it wouldn’t be like Apple was jerking users around if it made the switch today.

The Lightning port is used for charging as well as data connections, and it can also be used for wired headphones, though Apple is clearly designing its phones with wireless headphones in mind now despite including mediocre Lightning earbuds in the box. Thanks to a chip unique to Apple-sanctioned products like AirPods or some Beats headphones, wireless headphones work very well on the iPhone; it’s obvious that they’re the intended way to go. But if you’re married to using your own wired headphones, you’re in for some frustration.

Display

The XR has what Apple calls a “Liquid Retina” display. That’s a meaningless moniker—most of Apple’s products have LCD retina displays. Basically, it’s Apple’s term for an LCD display that uses the company’s anti-aliasing method to enable rounded corners.

Like the display in last year’s iPhone 8 or the one on the iPad Pro, the 6.1-inch LCD display here is about as good as LCD displays get on mobile devices—at least in terms of color accuracy. At 1,792×828 resolution, though, it’s not the sharpest. Pixel density is 326ppi. There are diminishing returns in sharpness, and this display is just past the threshold that it looks fine. But it doesn’t look great, and the difference is very noticeable next to the XS or XS Max.

Other display specs include a 1,400:1 contrast ratio, P3 wide color, a maximum brightness of 625 nits, and True Tone support, which adjusts the white balance of the display to fit in with the ambient lighting.

Cameras

Cameras have grown in importance for the iPhone over the years, and it’s still a focus here—but it’s also the other big compromise besides the display when compared to the flagship.

The rear camera has a 12MP wide-angle lens (ƒ/1.8 aperture), a quad-LED flash with the same tone improvements introduced in the XS, optical image stabilization, and digital zoom up to 5x.

Most of the big new photography features in Apple’s new phones have more to do with the A12 SoC and Apple’s algorithms than they do with the actual optics. So even though this is a step down from the XS (the flagship has a dual-camera system), those new features appear here in both the rear and front cameras. That includes portrait mode, Portrait Lighting, and the not-too-shabby faux bokeh effect that Apple demonstrated on stage when it unveiled its new phones in September.

Smart HDR, which takes several frames and inter frames and analyzes all of them in real-time to produce what Apple’s chip and algorithms think is the best result in terms of highlights, contrast, and so on, is also supported on the rear and front cameras.

As for video, 4K recording at 24, 30, or 60fps is supported, plus 1080p at 30 or 60fps and 720p at 30fps. Like the XS, the XR brings extended dynamic range for video as long as you’re shooting at 30fps, and it records stereo audio for your videos. Slow-mo and time-lapse are still supported, and there’s digital zoom up to 3x. You can also take still photos (8MP) while recording video in 4K.

The front-facing camera, which is part of the TrueDepth array that also includes the IR sensing components that make Face ID possible, remains unchanged: 7MP, ƒ/2.2, and 1080p video at 30 or 60fps with the extended dynamic range. For a flash, the screen will just flash bright white to illuminate the subject.

Wireless

The wireless package is pretty standard: 802.11ac Wi-Fi (2×2 MIMO), Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, and NFC support that now supports a new feature that allows you to use the phone with certain transit systems and the like, even if the phone’s battery level is too low to turn the device on.

And of course, there’s LTE. Here are the cellular bands Apple says the XR supports:

FDD‑LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 66, 71)

TD‑LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41)

CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1900 MHz)

UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz)

GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

If you have multiple phone numbers or carriers, or if you travel internationally with regularity, you might get some mileage out of the new eSIM support, which allows you to store multiple functional phone numbers on the same phone. Only one can be used for your data plan, but you can make and receive calls with either one. A recent OS update, iOS 12.1, activated this feature and included various features to make using it easy—for example, you can now tell which number a call is being made to when it comes in.

We didn’t find call quality to be any better or worse than what you see in other recent iPhones.

Spec differences with the XS

There aren’t actually that many differences under the hood compared to the more expensive iPhone XS. The XR has the same CPU, the same GPU, the same machine learning processor, and so on. In most cases, performance should be nearly identical to that of the iPhone XS.

There is one difference that could affect performance, though: the iPhone XR has 3GB of RAM, while the XS and XS Max each have 4GB. Still, 3GB was enough for last year’s flagship, and it’s enough here. You might notice slightly poorer performance in a small number of games and that you can’t leave as many tabs in Safari open at once without having to reload their content.

Whereas the iPhone XS has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, the XR has IP67. The primary difference here is the depth at which it can be submerged—one meter as opposed to two.

This could just as easily be in the design section of this review, but the iPhone XR does not support 3D Touch, a feature in the XS and other recent Apple flagships that lets you get different interactions in apps and in the OS by pressing down a little harder than a simple tap. Instead, we get “Haptic Touch,” which basically amounts to applying the same amount of pressure as always, but for longer.

It doesn’t work as well, and many of 3D Touch’s applications don’t apply here—though Apple indicated to us that it may add more in later software updates. But this solution is better than nothing, and it works great with the pressing-on-the-keyboard-to-zip-through-your-text interaction, at least.

Apple claims the iPhone XR has better battery life than either XS model, and we found in our tests that is indeed the case.

The iPhone XS has a remarkably well-balanced and bright HDR OLED display. That’s arguably the main thing the XR sacrifices. As noted above, the XR’s LCD display is good, but the XS’ true blacks, vibrancy, and HDR support make a much more dramatic impact—plus, higher pixel density. Whereas the XS screen shifts to a cool blue when viewed at an angle, this one shifts to a warm orange. Neither one has a dramatic problem here, but it’s noticeable when the phones are placed flat on a table at which you’re sitting.

We don’t believe any XR buyers will complain that this display is bad, but it’s not the best in the business. (That’s the iPhone XS.) There’s one win for the XR, though: image retention is not ever going to be an issue with this display.

And then there’s the camera, the second major difference besides the display. Whereas the XS and XS Max have dual-camera systems on the back, this phone just has one camera. It’s a bit like the difference between the cameras in the standard iPhones and their Plus size cousins in recent years.

Finally, while the iPhone XS offered much faster LTE speeds than preceding iPhones, the XR does not. Its wireless performance is similar to that of last year’s iPhone X or iPhone 8.

Design

The iPhone XR weighs 6.84 ounces and measures 5.94×2.98×0.33 inches. That’s 150.9×75.7×8.3mm.

Looking at just the back and the sides, the iPhone XR looks a lot like an iPhone 8 Plus—especially in the white-and-silver color scheme of our review unit, which is identical to one of the 8’s color options.

Of course, there are a bunch of other colors: yellow, coral, black, and blue. It might remind you of the iPhone 5C from some years ago, which came in a bunch of bright, welcoming colors.

Like all iPhones since last year, the XR has a glass back and a glass front. In these colors, it’s actually not apparent that these are glass at a glance, which negates one of the two reasons to go with glass on the back. First, it looks nice, at least to some people. The other reason is wireless charging, which is supported here via the Qi standard.

The edges of the phone are made of aluminum, with occasional small slits of plastic embedded in the band to allow wireless signal to pass. On one side of the phone you’ll find two aluminum volume buttons and a switch to toggle the phone in and out of silent mode. On the other side, there’s another button that is used to wake the phone (though it now supports tapping on the screen to wake, too) and to replace some interactions that used the home button in older iPhones. This side also houses the SIM card tray.

There’s nothing but aluminum on top, and the bottom features speakers and microphones along with the sole Lightning port. On the back, you’ll just find the Apple logo, the word “iPhone,” and the camera and flash. The camera protrudes outward a few millimeters from the back.

It’s the front that differentiates this from an iPhone 8 Plus. Like the iPhone XS, it has very small bezels, a large display that reaches out to four rounded corners, and a notch to house the TrueDepth sensor and front-facing camera reaching into the screen area from the middle of the top.

There’s a lot more screen and a lot less bezel here than on the iPhone 8, but it’s worth noting that the XR has slightly thicker bezels than the barely there ones on the iPhone X and XS. It’s obvious side by side but subtle otherwise.

Frankly, it’s hard to find too much to say about this phone’s aesthetic design because every part except the front looks like iPhones have looked for several years. There’s not much to see here. It’s functional, and it looks fine. Some consumers will like the lively colors, though.

That said, those who like big screens will appreciate that this is a 6.1-inch screen in a device that’s no larger than the iPhone 8 Plus and doesn’t cost as much as the bigger-but-very-expensive iPhone XS Max.

Speaking of big screens, the XR supports the more information-dense Split View that some apps have offered for iPhone Plus phones, but it only shows the home screen in portrait mode.

Design differences with the XS

While there were few differences between the XS and XR in terms of specs, these phones look different. While the XR comes in bright colors, the XS’ finishes have a deeper look to them. They’re made out of different materials, too. The sides of the XS are made out of stainless steel instead of aluminum, and they’re treated in a physical vapor deposition (PVD) process to achieve a striking sheen. The result of that PVD process is quite lovely, and it’s something you might miss here if you’re focused on aesthetics.

The XR looks a bit flatter and less attention-grabbing by comparison. Plenty of people will like that, though. The XS is built to look expensive. This phone isn’t, though that’s not to say it’s made out of poor materials—it’s not. They’re just not as ostentatious.

The iPhone XS and XS Max added two additional, subtle plastic slits on the top and the bottom for passing wireless signal. These slits are not present in the XR; the top is all aluminum with no break.

The XR has thicker bezels around the screen, and at 6.1 inches, the screen falls between the XS (5.8 inches) and XS Max (6.5 inches) in size. I felt that the XS Max was too big because I couldn’t reach across the screen while holding it with one hand, but many of my Ars colleagues who bought it and are happy with it disagree, and so might you. To me, the XR is more usable on that front. I just wish Apple offered consumers who want smaller phones, not bigger ones, more options.

While the XR and XS Max support Split View apps, the XS does not.

All told, the XR makes some sacrifices to the aesthetic design to bring costs down. Some, like the thicker gap between the edge and the screen, are quite subtle. Others, like simple aluminum edges instead of a shiny, complex finish on stainless steel, are more noticeable. But none of these compromises are going to be dealbreakers to most people.

Software

At launch, the iPhone XR runs iOS 12, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system used in all iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices—and which was also the basis for the offshoots watchOS for the Apple Watch and tvOS for the Apple TV.

It’s an excellent operating system that is stable, performs well, and is generally pretty easy to use—though feature bloat and somewhat arcane gestures have crept in over time to make it a little less intuitive than it used to be. The latest release focused on performance, stability, features to automate workflows, ways to tap into Apple’s (mostly so-so, compared to some competitors) machine learning work to improve search and other features, and the ability to track your phone usage and personal data settings in new ways.

iOS 12 has a very robust app store, including a growing library of augmented reality apps that aren’t essential but can be pretty neat.

We previously published a very detailed review of iOS 12, so check that out if you want to dig deeper. Apple has generally supported phones with new software updates for about four or five years.

Cameras

As noted before, the rear camera is one of the main differentiating features between the iPhone XR and the iPhone XS. Where the latter has a dual-camera system with both a telephoto and a wide-angle lens, the XR has only one—the wide-angle. But like the wide-angle lens on the XS, it’s 12 megapixels, and it supports most of the same features.

Many of those features include what Apple referred to as “computational photography” during its event announcing this phone in September. Apple’s philosophy here is that there are simply limitations to the optics in a cell phone camera—it can’t have a big lens like a DSLR camera, among other things. So like its competitor Google, Apple has sought to use software and processing power to make up for that.

The A12 has an image signal processor (ISP) that analyzes and tweaks photos digitally as you take them. It’s aided by various machine learning algorithms, which largely run on the A12’s Neural Engine silicon. There’s a lot going on here, but here’s one example: Apple touts a feature called “Smart HDR” in the iPhone XR. Smart HDR actually captures four frames when you take a photo, plus interframes between them. Apple’s hardware and software analyzes all the images and compares them, and it uses that analysis to make decisions like which highlights to accentuate for contrast and so on.

It won’t fool professional photographers who depend on DSLR cameras—those “shot on iPhone” ads you see are indeed shot on iPhones, but they’re done with a whole bunch of extra equipment you don’t carry around in your day to day. But one of the claimed benefits of this approach is that software can emulate a pro photographer’s results for a user who doesn’t have the practice and skill to use a DSLR.

As you can see in these images, the iPhone XR offers substantially better photo quality than the iPhone 8 or even the iPhone X.

In a lot of cases, the iPhone XR camera is on par with the XS—which makes sense, given that the wide-angle lens in use here is identical to that used in the XS. The XR’s low-light shots are excellent, for example. It captures detail in the lit part of the vase above where older iPhones struggle terribly.

The main differences you’ll run into are photos taken while zoomed—since the XR doesn’t have a telephoto lens, it relies on digital zoom. Portrait mode could also suffer, but frankly, we didn’t find portrait mode to be worth our time in the XS despite Apple’s hype. So not much is lost here.

Front cameras, TrueDepth, and Face ID

There’s also not much to say about the front camera that we didn’t in our XS review, because the hardware is absolutely identical—including the TrueDepth array. We went into considerable detail on the TrueDepth array and Face ID in that earlier review and recommend checking that out if you want more detail about subjects like security, privacy, and more.

For the short version: the TrueDepth camera array is housed in the notch at the top of the screen, and it includes a wide range of sensors, including both a normal front-facing camera and an IR camera that maps your face in 3D. This enables Face ID, an authentication method that replaces the old fingerprint-based Touch ID in earlier iPhones.

Face ID creates a map of your face in three dimensions that is modified over time via machine learning techniques if you grow a beard, put on makeup, or other minor changes like that. This map is stored within the phone’s Secure Enclave in the A12, and it never leaves your phone unless you give an app permission—and the TL;DR there is that it’s extremely unlikely anyone could access it. It’s also stored in a format that can’t really be used by a human to reconstruct your face.

The iPhone XR is always looking for your face. If it comes into view, the phone immediately unlocks as if you have entered your passcode, though you still have to swipe on the screen to get to your apps and most of your data. It works the vast majority of the time—even in pitch darkness—though it is a little less consistent than Touch ID was.

TrueDepth can also be used by third-party apps (with your permission) for things like sentiment analysis, reading your facial motion to control games, health diagnosis, accessibility features, and probably quite a few things we haven’t seen yet. Apple has banned its use by apps in the App Store for marketing or advertising purposes, though.

There are really two areas where Apple is way out ahead of the competition in these 2018 phones, and this is one of them—though the real value of this for the user is not entirely obvious yet. The idea is to reduce friction and make it to where you virtually never have to think about unlocking or locking your phone, and it mostly accomplishes that. It’s not necessary, but it’s neat. And more may come out of this feature later.

Performance

The other big area where Apple’s products are ahead of the competition is performance. If you read our iPhone XS review, there’s not a lot to see here until we get to battery life. That’s because, as noted, the iPhone XR has the exact same SoC as the XS and XS Max. It is the fastest and most efficient SoC in smartphones at this time, for almost all use cases. What does that mean exactly?

CPU

You wouldn’t expect significant differences in performance between the iPhone XR and iPhone XS, and for the most part there aren’t any. The XR’s insides are pretty much the same, except for the fact that the XS has more RAM. But there are some anomalies here and there.

Here are the results of our benchmarks—and we’ve included the Web browser tests, too.

Single-core performance is almost identical to what we got on the iPhone XS, but multi-core performance was consistently a little poorer on the iPhone XR. In our various browser tests, though, we saw very small increases in performance. None of this variance is likely significant enough to matter to a buyer. Note that we run these tests several times and average the results—these aren’t one-offs.

All told, the A12 is up to 15-percent faster than the A11 found in last year’s iPhone 8 and iPhone X in most cases. CPU performance improvements this year are incremental, but that’s because Apple put more effort into the Neural Engine—for which we don’t currently have reliable benchmarks—and the GPU.

GPU

The A12 also includes an Apple-designed GPU, which is notably faster than its predecessor found in the A11. While individual tests varied, we generally found that the XR offered the same GPU performance in off-screen tests as the XS. With a lower screen resolution, though, you could theoretically expect slightly improved performance on the XR in some 3D games over the XS. But in just as many cases, the difference in RAM (which is shared between the GPU and CPU) could cause the XR to lag behind just a little.

In any case, this GPU performance is better than you’ll get from most other phones, and it’s more than good enough for all consumer smartphone use cases.

Because Apple uses its own proprietary graphics API called Metal instead of cross-platform alternatives like OpenGL or Vulkan, any comparisons in GPU performance between modern iPhones and Android phones would be inconclusive, so we haven’t made that comparison here, unfortunately.

Battery life

When announcing the XR, Apple claimed it had better battery life than even the XS or even the XS Max. (Larger phones often have space for larger batteries, so sometimes have better battery life.) We found that to be the case.

For the past few iPhones, we’ve lamented that Apple has made only minuscule improvements to battery life—an area that consumer surveys have shown to be a top priority. This is the first time in a while we’ve been satisfied with the gains here. The iPhone XR has significantly better battery life than any other iPhone Apple sells today, and that’s one of its strongest selling points.

Keeping compromises to a minimum

The iPhone XR exists primarily because Apple wants to continually push the envelope on display tech, manufacturing process and materials, and more with its flagship phones, but those flagships carry price tags too steep to reach every prospective customer the company is interested in.

This phone lets Apple have its cake and eat it, too, but fortunately, this means buyers get to feast as well. They get most of the innovative features of the iPhone XS—TrueDepth, Face ID, the new screen shape, the powerful internals, and more—for a few hundred dollars less, and with much better battery life to boot.

This price advantage is even more apparent if 128GB is the ideal storage size for you, as the XS jumps from an unusable-for-many 64GB straight to a maybe-too-much 256GB. Need 100GB of storage? That’ll cost you $1,149 for the 256GB iPhone XS, but only $799 for the 128GB iPhone XR.

Apple’s custom-made A12 chip is the iPhone XR’s best feature. It’s far ahead of the competition in almost all areas. It allows you to not only enjoy great graphics in demanding games and AR applications but makes the whole user experience smooth, from app launches to simply scrolling through Web pages. It’s a responsiveness that Apple’s rivals can’t match.

That, in tandem with iOS’ very strong App Store, is the selling point of an iPhone, and Apple has delivered both in the XR. On the other hand, Google’s Android platform offers its own different advantages.

The compromises you’ll be making to save some money here are in the display, camera, aesthetic quality of materials, and LTE wireless speeds. The first of those is more a luxury than anything; the XR’s screen is good enough for the majority of users. Only heavy consumers of visual content or display-tech geeks will miss the XS’ OLED if they go for the XR. Yes, the difference is significant. People who are going to care already know who they are (I’m one of them). But I also recognize that the advantages of OLED and HDR support won’t be worth the money to most people.

The LTE gap could also be significant, but it won’t apply for everyone everywhere; it’s dependent on the service in your area. And the materials and aesthetics advantage may be subjective. For many people, the choice about the XR will come down to the camera, but even that is situational.

In other words, the XR is an ideal mass-market iPhone. Its size closely reflects consumer trends right now, its impressive performance will likely ensure that it’s efficient and pleasant to use for a few years, and it has great software.

We just wish Apple would offer something even cheaper (or smaller) besides past years’ phones to bring iOS to more people. That would be good for the platform—for developers, for users, and for Apple’s slowing smartphone sales.

But even if it’s not the entry-level handset some might want, the iPhone XR at least brings most of the benefits of the iPhone X-series phones to consumers who aren’t too keen on raising the bar on the cost of a flagship. For that reason, it’s the iPhone we’d recommend to most people.

The good

Powerful CPU, GPU, and machine learning chips give this phone the same industry-beating performance we measured in the XS.
The iOS operating system offers a robust market of quality apps and games, is loaded with privacy and screen time management tools, and is both highly efficient and highly performant.
It offers a better dollar-to-inch screen size ratio than Apple has ever offered before, if you’re into large screens.
The XR offers the best battery life of any iPhone you can buy.
The LCD screen has great color and gets as bright as you’ll need it to.

The bad

The screen’s pixel density is not optimal, and Apple’s OLED implementation offers many advantages you’ll be missing out on here as compared to the XS phones.
The rear camera is fine, but it’s outdone by both its XS siblings and several Android flagship phones in a few situations.
The glass back and front pose a risk for fall damage.
LTE speeds are so-so.

The ugly

Yes, it’s cheaper than the iPhone XS or XS Max, but it’s still not going to serve consumers who want an affordable entry point for iOS. To get that, you have to look at the two-year-old iPhone 7.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Samuel Axon Senior Editor

Samuel Axon is the editorial lead for tech and gaming coverage at Ars Technica. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.

338 Comments