Apple iPhone XR is the affordable iPhone XS experience users want: Phil Schiller

The iPhone XR is currently the most anticipated phone that is yet to go on sale and the reason is not just the Apple branding on it. It is that cheaper iPhone with features that are more-or-less the same as its siblings the iPhone XS and XS Max. The iPhone XS and XS Max have received quite the positive reviews on their own and in our own review, we have concluded that the iPhone XS Max is the greatest iPhone ever. But what about the iPhone XR?[caption id="attachment_5175961" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

Philip W. Schiller, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing of Apple, speaks about the new Apple iPhone XR. Reuters[/caption]In an interview with Engadget, Phil Schiller, senior VP of global marketing for Apple, says that the 'R' in the iPhone XR does not have any significance as such. As a car aficionado Schiller says the letters 'S' and 'R' denote cars that are extra special and for him personally that's where the iPhone XS and XR get their names.The iPhone XR, which starts at Rs 76,900 in India, is by no means a cheap phone. However, in comparison to the Rs 1,09,900 iPhone XS Max, everything starts to look cheaper. But what justifies this Rs 40,000 cut? For this, we need to understand the thought process that went into making the XR.(Also Read: Apple iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR: Which iPhone should you buy?)Schiller says in the interview, "If we're going to push the upper boundaries with XS and XS Max to make something the best, how do we make something that's more affordable for a larger audience? To make the overall iPhone audience even larger? What choices can we make and still make it a phone that people can hold and say, 'I have the best too'?"On paper, the iPhone XR is not dissimilar from the iPhone XS. Both of them have the same A12 Bionic chipset, the same FaceID authentication system, no headphone jack, same primary wide-angle camera, and stereo speakers. The trade-offs include using an LCD instead of OLED, an HD display instead of FHD, no 3D Touch and no dual-cameras at the back. The iPhone XR also has a bevvy of colour options that are not present on the XS and XS Max.

In essence, Apple seems to have given audiences the same full-screen experience with the same processing power at a lower price point. However, saying that the LCD display on the XR is the same as the OLED on the XS would be wrong."I think the only way to judge a display is to look at it," says Schiller. "If you can't see the pixels, at some point the numbers don't mean anything. They're fairly arbitrary." These claims will be put to test in our full review, but Apple has never gone wrong with its displays before and there seems to be no reason it will do so now.Can the iPhone XR be the cheaper iPhone XS experience Apple loyalists have been looking for?Are the tradeoffs in the iPhone XR too much? And most importantly should people buy the iPhone XR?All these questions and more will be answered in our detailed review of the iPhone XR. The phone will go on sale in India on 26 October starting at Rs 76,900.