iPhone 11 Pro review - the BEST camera on a phone

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Alright, it's iPhone time.Apple released three newiPhones all at once this year.The iPhone 11, the iPhone 11Pro, and the iPhone 11 Pro Max.Now, I honestly think theiPhone 11 is the phonemost people in the iOSecosystem should getif they're upgrading.So we've got a wholeother review of that phone thatyou should check out, too.But this, this is the Pro review.The dark mode, cash moneyreview for professionalswho use their phones to do pro stuff.Like taking telephoto photos.Actually, I have no idea whyApple called these phones Pro.They're basically just niceupdates to the iPhone XS,but I also think it's a wasteof time to argue about names.iPhone 11 Pro Max is a bad name.But you know what, it's a great phone.And I think Apple might have done it.This is the best cameraI've ever seen on a phone.Let's get into it.(calming music)The iPhone 11 Pro looks almostexactly like the iPhone XSfrom the front.It's a little heavier and thicker,but unless you're comparing them directly,you probably won't notice.I certainly didn't.You do get a much biggerbattery in exchangefor that extra size,which Apple says leads toa four-hour battery lifeincrease on the regular Proand a five-hour jump for the Pro Max.But it's surprisinglyhard to check that number.I'll get into why in a minute.The big difference fromthe XS comes on the backwhere Apple says the rearglass is now strongerand it comes in this frosted matte finish.It also integrates a glossycamera bump with three cameras.The whole back and the bumpis a single piece of glassthat's milled out.The iPhone 11 is the reverse.It has a glossy back andthe camera bump is matte.Now you know.I got a lot of questionsabout this matte finishand I think it's really nice,especially in this newmidnight green color.It didn't really pick up any fingerprints,but it does seem a tiny bit more slipperythan the gloss back of the previous phonesand the iPhone 11.But I also think most peopleare just going to stick this thing in a case,so it doesn't seem like a huge issue.A lot of people also askedme if this matte finishwill scratch easily, similarto the back of the Pixel 3,and so far the answer seems to be no.But we're going to have tokeep an eye on it over time.Apple's finally relented and includedan 18W USB-C fastcharger with the Pro phones.So you get a USB-C toLightning cable as well.Now Apple's USB-C chargeris not the smallestor prettiest charger out there.But anything is better thanthe slow 5W brickit's been including foryears, so I'll take it.So let's get into these cameras.Apple has a lot at stake here.Google and Samsung's camerashave been outperformingthe iPhone for a couple of years now.And Chinese phone makers, in particular,have been racing each otherto add an endless arrayof photography features.If you're in the US, you'reprobably locked into iMessageand no camera is goodenough to make you switch.But Apple doesn't have thatadvantage in big marketslike Europe and China.Everyone uses WhatsApp and WeChat,and switching from iOS toAndroid is much easier.So Apple's added a bunch of featuresthat first appeared on Android phones.There are three camerason the iPhone 11 Pro.The telephoto camera hasthe same basic sensor,but a faster f/2.O lens.The main camera has the same f/1.8 lensand a slightly better sensor.And there's the new superfun ultra-wide camera,which is basically twice aswide as the main lens and f/2.4.And the f/2.2 front camerais now 12 megapixels, up from seven,and has a wider 24mm focal lengthso it can pull out toa slightly wider anglein landscape for selfies.Apple's also updated itssmart HDR processing system,which I was not very impressed withwhen I reviewed the iPhone XS and XR.The iPhone 11 cameras are anenormous improvement over the XS,and beat the Pixel and GalaxyNote 10 in most of our tests.This shot of Verge videoproducer, Mariya Abdulkaf,outside in bright sunlightshouldn't be too hard for anycamera to do a good job with.And all these photos look basically fine.But zoom and do 100 percent cropand the improvement from the iPhone XSto the iPhone 11 main camera is stunning.The iPhone 11 is way sharper,with way more detail.I also think the iPhone11 does a way better jobthan the Note 10 and it'sa little better to my eyethan the Pixel 3.This improvement is due tosomething Apple's calling semantic rendering.Basically, Smart HDRrecognizes what's in the imageand renders it appropriately.I asked Apple to breakdown how it works for meand it basically goes like this:First, the iPhone startstaking photos to a bufferthe instant you open the camera app.So by the time youactually press the button,it's captured four underexposed framesand the photo you want.Then it grabs one overexposed frame.This is all basicallythe same as the iPhone XSand the Pixel 3,except the Pixel doesn'tgrab that overexposed frame.Second, Smart HDR and semantic renderingthen start looking for thingsin the photos it understands.Faces, hair, the sky, things like that.Then it uses additional detailfrom the under and overexposed framesto selectively processthe areas of the imageit's recognized.Hair gets sharpened, but the sky doesn't.It just gets de-noised.Faces get relighted tomake them look more evenand the iPhone knows tosharpen up your facial hair.Smart HDR is also less aggressivein flattening the photos.Highlights and faces aren't correctedas aggressively as beforebecause those highlights makephotos look more natural.But other highlights andshadows are correctedto regain detail.Finally, the whole image issaved and you've got a photo.This all happens instantlyevery time you take a photo,which is a testament to how powerfulApple's A13 processor really is.Here's that final image we just took.You can see how the iPhone11 preserves more detailthan the Pixel and Note inthe shadows and highlights,and just blows the iPhoneXS away in sharpness.The improvements to Smart HDR areapplicable across cameras.Here's a quick comparisonof the ultra-widesin the 11 Pro and the Note 10.The Note 10 did a betterjob exposing the sky,but the 11 is just a muchsharper photo with more detail.You can see the same thing with selfies.The XS Max has pulled up shadows so muchthat it looks a little hazy,while the iPhone 11 evenlypulls up shadows in Mariya's face,but preserves the contrastwith the background.The Note 10 did all kindsof goofy skin smoothingand the Pixel 3 looks great,but it has less detail than the iPhone.Just look at her eyelashes.Now there are places where the iPhone 11didn't win in our tests.The XS historically struggledwith backlit subjects.And while the 11 is adefinite improvement,this photo is really blue.And there's basically nodetail in Mariya's face.I think the Note actually didthe best overall job here.And I think the Pixel doesthe best job in low light,but the iPhone isn't bad.It's a lot better thanthe XS was last year.Apple's promised a newmode for these situationscalled Deep Fusion,which is supposed to ship later this year,but I wasn't able to test it.If it improves photostaken in this kind of light,then the iPhone will basically pull aheadin every situation.Apple also added a Night mode this yearand it's really impressive.It preserves a ton moredetail than the Pixel.It comes on automatically in the darkand suggests an exposuretime, which you can tweakor turn off if you want.The Pixel photo here looks more dramatic,but look a little closer.The iPhone has preserved all of the detailin the brick and graffiti,which is basically gonein the Pixel shot.Both of these Night modephotos look pretty similar,but look at all the extradetail in the bushesin the iPhone shot.Same with this shot.You'd never know that fence waseven there in the Pixel photo.I think the Pixel producesmore dramatic-looking shotsout of the camera, but I wouldrather have the extra detailfrom the iPhone.All in all, I think theiPhone 11 camera does betterin bright light thanthe Pixel 3 and Note 10,and the Night mode beats the Pixel 3more often than not.If this promised DeepFusion update improvesmedium- to low-light performanceas much as Apple says it will,the iPhone 11 will once againbe the smartphone camera to beat.Apple's also made videoon the iPhone 11 betterwith improved stabilization exposureand the ability to record 4K60 videofrom any of the three cameras.- But is it really that good?Let's put it to the test.Alright, so we're going tohead out in New York Cityand we're going to testagainst the Note 10,the Pixel 3, and the XS tosee who does video best.We started out at the waterand immediately you cansee the color differencesbetween the cameras.The Pixel leaned into the warm tones,while Samsung muddied the mid tones.And the iPhone XS leanedinto the blues of the sky,while the 11 Probalanced the warm andcool tones out the most.With the subject closer to the lensthe Note 10 kept the flowers the sharpest,while the iPhone XS blurredthe background the most.Okay, we've got to test theaudio on all these phones.I'll let you guys be the judge.Do I sound like the beautiful angel voicethat I have, angelic voice?Of course, the answer is yes.But on these phones, who's to say?In low light, Apple isn't afraidof underexposing the blacks,whereas Samsung andGoogle will bring them up.Now the 11 Pro does doa lot more smoothingto compensate for all of thenoise this typically creates.The front-facing cameraon the iPhone 11 Prodid a great job of balancing my skin toneand just the exposure in general.Even against this large neon light source.But it wasn't as sharp as the Note 10.Now all these comparisons are great,but chances are you won't berecording on all of these phonesside by side at the same exact time.So let's just talkabout the iPhone 11 Pro.The front-facing camera now records in 4Kand the \"slofie\" is exactlyhow you'd imagine it.You'll use it once and probablynever touch it again.The video from the rearcameras, though, is really good.Like, in perfect light, it'shonestly just impressive.Switching between lensesis pretty seamlessin terms of color accuracy and exposure.And you can use the dial methodor just tap the lenseson the screen to switch.Now you can't switch betweenlenses when you shoot in 4K60.So make sure you set 4K30 or lowerif you're going to be doing that.The ultra-wide angle lens looks super cooleven with the crazy distortion.But there is no image stabilization,which shouldn't be aproblem because naturally,the wider the lens,the less need for that.Both the telephoto and widelens keep your shot stableand pretty sharp for a sensor their size.The color is punchy and pretty saturatedand in perfect lighting,you, too, can have that \"shoton iPhone\" look.But in low light, even the iPhone 11 Pro,when viewed on a screenlarger than its own,succumbs to noisy blacksand haloed highlights.My big issue, though,why do I have to leave the camera appto change the frame rates?It's not intuitive andit's just time-consuming.Apple, just put it in the app.iPhones have always had great video,but the video on the 11 Prois the best I've seen ona smartphone to date.And the gap is only getting bigger.Enough of me, back to Nilay.- The screen on the iPhone11 Pro is a new OLEDthat Apple is calling theSuper Retina XDR display.There's still a notch andApple is still doing fancy, rounded cornersand uniform bezels,which no one else in the industryhas really managed to match.Those bezels are still pretty big, though,especially compared to somethinglike the Galaxy Note 10.This is the third year ofthe basic iPhone X designand Apple's competitorshaven't been sitting stillin trying to beat it.The big upgrades to thescreen are around brightnessand power efficiency.Basically, the screen can geta lot brighter than beforeand it also uses up to 15 percentless power, according to Apple.Now in typical situations,Apple says the iPhone 11 Pro displaycan go up to 800 nits of brightnessand that when you're watching HDR content,the highlights will peak at 1,200 nits.In normal situations, I don'tthink you're going to notice it.I've never had a problemlooking at my iPhone XS display outside.But it's a huge and obvious improvementwhen you're watching HDR movies.I never really bought the ideathat previous iPhonedisplays were Dolby Vision,but the iPhone 11 Prodisplay kind of pulls it off.It's hard to capture this on video,but it's just a lot brighter and punchieron the 11 Pro display compared to the XS.The Note 10 displaydefinitely looks as bright,but the iPhone's color processinglooks way more natural to me,especially with Apple'sTrue Tone system turned on.Of course, Apple and Googleare still in a fightover video codecs, so you can'twatch any 4K or HDR contenton the iPhone 11 Pro from YouTube.So this video is not in4K if you're watching on an iPhone.Sorry about that.Apple has also updatedthe audio on the iPhone 11and iPhone 11 Pro, with somethingthey're calling spatial audio.It's basically a surround decoder.If you're watching a Netflixmovie with Adobe 5.1 soundor game encoded in 7.1,you'll get virtual surroundfrom the stereo speakers.The iPhone 11s also support Dolby Atmos,which is a little silly forstereo speakers, but it's there.There's also standardwide stereo supportlike last year for everything else.All in all, the iPhonespeakers sound really loudand generally better than ever.There's no more 3D Touchon the iPhone 11 Pro,it's been replaced by whatApple calls Haptic Touch,which is basically justlong pressing on thingswith haptic feedback.In most places, you won'treally notice it's goneand some things are actuallya little easier to figure out.Opening the camera from the lock screenfeels the same to me.Rearranging icons on the home screenis a little simpler to figure outsince there's a contextmenu that pops up now.Peeking at links in Safariis a little different in iOS 13,but it's also a little simpler.The only place I truly missed3D Touch was the keyboard.You could press downanywhere on the keyboardto move the cursor around on the XS,but with Haptic Touchon the iPhone 11 Pro,you can only press andhold on the space bar.Now, I never really realizedhow many times a dayI used that one specific 3DTouch feature and I missed it.But if the trade-off is thatthere's more room insidethe case for a bigger battery,I'm fine with it.Apple claims the iPhone 11Pro lasts four hours longerthan the iPhone XS, andthat the iPhone 11 Pro Maxlasts five hours longer than the XS Max.As I mentioned earlier,it's really hard to test those claims.Apple doesn't run a strict battery testthat we can just repeat.Instead, it's getting that numberby taking its huge dataset of iPhone usageand applying it to a model of the new phone.So you'll notice that the onlyhard numbers Apple publishesare like hours of video playback.Simple tests of a single task,which isn't how anyone uses a phone.All that said, the batterylife on the iPhone 11 Prohas been impressive.I've been using an 11 ProMax as my primary phonefor the past week,and it has consistentlyrun for 12 to 14 hourson a single charge.And about 10 hours of screen-ontime, off the charger,is reported in battery settings.That is a huge improvement over my XS Max,which generally runsfor eight to nine hourson a single charge.The smaller 11 Pro hasbeen just as impressive.That's the phone Beccaused for her testingand it still had 50 percent of its battery leftthe morning after she shother part of the review.It turns out a slightly thicker phonewith a bigger battery wasthe right move after all.Inside the new iPhone 11 Pro,there's the new A13 Bionic processorwhich, as usual, benchmarksfar above the competition.There's a lot of headroomhere for things like AR, games,and high-end photo and video apps,but it's not like the A12 Bionicin the iPhone XS is slow.Most of this extra power will be usefultowards the end of this phone'slife, not the beginning.Face ID is a little bit fasterand works at more angles,but it's not particularly dramatic,it just works a little bit better.I think this is the bestkind of iterative update.It made a thing thatwas already pretty gooda little bit better,and anything that makessecuring your phonea little bit better is great.And most intriguingly,there's a new chip inside theiPhone 11, it's called the U1,which does precise positioningusing an ultra wideband radio.Apple says the forthcoming iOS 13.1 updatewill allow you to just point the phoneat another U1 deviceto put it at the top of your AirDrop list.But none of that worksyet, so we'll just have to see.(calming music)Obviously, the iPhone 11 Pro runs iOS 13and I have to tell you,iOS 13 is pretty buggy.I saw all kinds of glitches and crashesduring my week of testing, andiOS 13.1 is already in betaand scheduled for wide releaseby the end of this month.So it really seems likeApple just squeakedthis thing out the door andis racing to fix bugs.I asked Apple about some of these glitchesand they told me they'realways fixing bugsand iPhone owners generally auto update.But if you're on thefence about upgrading,you might want to wait untilsome of these bug fix updatesactually ship.Assuming all the bugs get fixed,the biggest new featurein iOS 13 is Dark Mode,which is very nice.But otherwise, this is alot of tiny little updates.There's a swiping keyboard now.Reminders is a much better app.There are better photo editing toolsand you can edit videos as well.Apple Maps keeps getting atiny bit better every year.Siri's voice is slightly smoother.It's a lot of little thingsthat add up into a big update,but if you handed thisphone to someone using iOS 12,they might not even noticeunless Dark Mode was on.The iPhone 11 Pro starts at$999 with 64GB of storage,which doesn't seem likequite enough for that price.And the 11 Pro Max starts at $1,099.You can spec the Pro Maxall the way up to $1,449with 512GB of storage,which means that you canpay an awful lot of moneyfor this phone if you want to.If you're in the iOS ecosystemand it's time to upgrade,it's a pretty tough choice this year.The standard iPhone 11offers almost everythingyou get from the Pro for $699.And I think most peopleshould get the iPhone 11.You'll still get the improved main camera,the fun new ultra-wide lens,the A13 processor, and iOS 13,and all the rest.The extra money for the Probasically buys you a far superior display,a telephoto camera, andimproved LTE performance.And if you want a smaller phone,the iPhone 11 Prois a little bit smallerthan the iPhone 11,which seems a tiny bit unfairto people who want a smaller phone.The entire lineup isstill pretty big, though.So if you're hoping forsomething to replacethat aging iPhone SE,you're not going to loveany of these options.I'm very picky about displays and cameras,so I'm going to get an iPhone 11 Pro.In fact, the cameras onthe iPhone 11 and 11 Proare so improved that I think they're worththe year-over-year upgradefrom last year's modelsfor the first time in a long time.Add in the improved batterylife and the iPhone 11 Prostands out as a majorstep forward from the XSand one of the bestflagship phones of the year.Or it will be, when Apple fixes iOS 13.Hey everybody, this was obviouslythe iPhone 11 Pro review.We also reviewed the iPhone 11,that was a fun collabwe did with Dieter Bohn.Watch both videos, they'reboth on the channel,and then let me know which of these phonesyou think you're going to buyor if you're waiting for the Pixel 4.\n"