iPhone 11 Review: 9 Months Later

Since its release, the iPhone 11 has been one of Apple’s most popular smartphones. Aside from its affordable price, it packs a few new features compared to its predecessor, the iPhone XR. I purchased one nine months ago and used it as my daily driver. Fast forward to today; here are my thoughts about it. Who knows? This might also help you decided whether you should buy one or not.

Table of Contents

Design and Construction

The design of the iPhone 11 isn’t that modern compared to today’s Android smartphone designs. It’s still got that huge notch that many people are complaining about, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me that much. One complaint I have is the camera protrusion.

As you can see, my iPhone 11 has this scuff around the camera ring, which appears out of nowhere, and generally looks annoying. Since this device’s screen isn’t AMOLED, bezels are quite on the thicker side than the iPhone 11 Pro models.

Display

For its price, I kind of wish that the iPhone 11 has an AMOLED display because the 6.1-inch Liquid Retina display, or just LCD, looks behind by today’s standard. Sometimes, I find myself looking for a more contrasty image with deep blacks, especially when watching Netflix. Another downside is that videos are limited to 720p on YouTube, but the 1080p option is available, which is weird.

Using this device under broad daylight isn’t that bright. Most of the time, the iPhone automatically lowers the screen’s brightness to prevent the device from overheating. Great features, but it is quite a hassle when you mostly work outdoors since sometimes texts are hard to read.

Camera

The iPhone 11 has a dual-camera setup at the back consisting of a 12MP primary shooter with f/1.8 with OIS, and a 12MP ultrawide camera with f/2.4. As expected on an iPhone, photos taken on this device through the primary camera are exceptionally amazing, pictures come out vibrant, and colors are accurate. Also, night mode on this device is pretty amazing, though it isn’t the best out there.

The ultrawide lens, on the other hand, takes almost as amazing photos as the primary camera. But using it at night isn’t recommended because it produces noisier photos than its primary camera and isn’t capable of taking night mode photos. Since there isn’t a telephotos lens on this device, portrait mode isn’t that polished, but at least it can take portrait photos of animals and objects now– a feature that the iPhone XR lacks.

Looking over the selfie camera, we also have 12MP with f/2.2. Exposure and skin tones are entirely on the softer side, but the overall quality is excellent. Portrait mode is also present again. It wasn’t that perfect, but it would suffice for social media postings. All of these cameras are capable of recording 4K at 60fps, and yes, it has slowfies.

Performance

I mostly use the iPhone 11 to edit photos and videos, and sometimes even make layouts. As expected from the A13 Bionic chipset, it can deliver any task you throw at it, may it be light to moderate multitasking down to playing graphically intensive games.

Battery

Now for the battery, it’s got a 3,110mAh battery with 18W fast charging support. Since I’ve got a pretty irregular charging cycle, my iPhone’s battery health went down to 92%, but I can still use it for almost a day without charging it in the middle of the day. The iPhone 11 also has wireless charging support, but I rarely use this feature since I find it slow, and can sometimes cause overheating.

Security

There’s only one mode of biometrics on this device, and that is FaceID. It’s a golden standard for facial recognition on smartphones because of its safety and reliability. FaceID on the iPhone 11 lineup is faster and also has a broader field of face detection.

Conclusion

Ever since I bought the iPhone 11, I haven’t experienced any issues with it. Performance is still A+, even though there are bugs from the beta version of the iOS 14 that I installed. The cameras on this device are great, but I wish Apple made night mode available to the ultrawide camera lens. If you’re interested in buying an iPhone 11, I highly suggest you wait for the upcoming iPhone 12 lineup if you want to save some cash since retailers will surely cut down the price of the iPhone 11.

What do you guys think about the iPhone 11? Do you own one for quite some time now? How was your experience with it? Let us know in the comments section below.