The iPhone 11 is a very good phone. It is not a "Pro" phone, and it is not the most innovative smartphone available. But it starts at $699, even less than the $749 starting price of last year's iPhone XR, the handset to which it's the clear successor.
The non-Pro 11 has the same processor as its more expensive siblings and has a camera that puts it on par with competing devices from other manufacturers. If you can manage to wade your way through the mucky waters of Apple marketing terminology and distinguish what it is from what it's being positioned as, you too will find that the iPhone 11 is a very good phone.
This is a review of that phone. Along the way, I'll offer some comparisons notes on last year's iPhone XR and XS, as well as the new iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max. But if you're more interested in this year's new Pro models, you can read about those [and their cameras] in a separate review.
Dollars and Sense
The iPhone 11 costs $699 for a base model with 64 gigabytes of internal storage. For years, Apple offered a paltry 16 GB of storage on its base models—barely enough to install the usual array of basic apps. But now 64 GB is the new 16 GB, which means it’s not much. Bumping up to 128 GB will cost you $749, the starting price of last year’s iPhone XR, and 256 GB will cost you $849.
Apple is heavily promoting trade-in deals for old iPhones that could bring the price of the iPhone 11 down as low as $399. But only phones in good condition will earn you top dollar at trade-in. According to Apple’s website, my working iPhone 8 Plus with shattered glass can be recycled “for free” [while Apple reuses some of the parts] but won’t get me a cost reduction on a new phone. [There are other ways to sell your old iPhone.] If you’re looking for something even less expensive, last year’s iPhone XR now starts at $599. These are good prices for iPhones.
The iPhone 11 Pro with 64 GB costs $999 and creeps up to $1,349 for 512 GB of storage. The iPhone 11 Pro Max starts at $1,099 and costs a whopping $1,449 for the maximum amount of storage. But, hey, this hefty phone will make up for the weight lost in your wallet … right?
Even Samsung’s biggest and highest-end phone, the Galaxy Note 10+, costs less than the maxed-out 11 Pro Max, topping off at $1,199 for 512 GB of storage [though a 5G model costs more]. LG's G8 ThinQ and V50 ThinQ phones cost less. Huawei’s P30 Pro costs less; so does the the OnePlus 7 Pro. And Google’s Pixel 3 XL is now just a mere $599, although that model will be outdated once new Pixels arrive in October.
Size Matters
A lot of what I wrote about last year’s iPhone XR still applies to this year’s new iPhone 11. It is a remarkably similar rectangular package of aluminum and glass and liquid crystals. The iPhone 11 has an anodized aluminum frame with slippery glass on the front and back. Apple claims this is the most durable glass it has ever used in its phones, and since I have yet to drop this phone like I have with almost every other iPhone I’ve owned or borrowed, I can’t vouch for this. [Yet.]
The Apple iPhone 11 might be the cheapest of 2019/20’s iPhones but that doesn’t mean it’s a cut-down product. Despite costing £330 less than the next model up in the range, it’s just as fast, just as good looking and just as capable as its pricier siblings. If you’re buying an iPhone in 2020 and can’t stretch your budget to above a grand, the iPhone 11 is absolutely the phone you should buy.
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Apple iPhone 11 review: What you need to know
There are some differences between Apple’s new phones this year but they’re not hugely significant. The iPhone 11 has one fewer camera – it lacks the 2x telephoto of the Pro models – but it has exactly the same primary and ultra-wide cameras.
Video of Apple iPhone 11 Review – What You Need To Know
It doesn’t have a Super Retina XDR display – “just” a 6.1in IPS Liquid Retina screen – although that screen is still very impressive and supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision. It isn’t quite as water-resistant as the iPhone 11 Pro handsets, either.
However, you get a wider choice of colours, with black, green, yellow, purple, red and white versions available and the internals are nigh on the same as its more expensive brethren, too. The iPhone 11 employs the Apple A13 Bionic chip, accompanied by 4GB of RAM – only the storage options differ.
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Apple iPhone 11 review: Price and competition
The key advantage that the Apple iPhone 11 holds over its siblings is the price. At £729 SIM-free for the 64GB model, it’s not only £320 cheaper than the cheapest iPhone 11 Pro and £70 less than what the iPhone XR launched at last year. A tacit acknowledgement from Apple, perhaps, that it has pushed the prices of its phone a touch too far.
Even at £729, though, there’s plenty of tough competition around for the iPhone 11. The OnePlus 7T Pro is £699 and gets you a larger, smooth 90Hz AMOLED display than the iPhone 11. The outgoing Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus is worth a look, too [the S20 phones are a tad more expensive this year]. This phone one-ups the iPhone 11 with an extra camera, more storage and a bigger more elegant notch-free AMOLED screen. It costs around £770.
If you don’t mind missing out on the S10’s telephoto camera, you can also choose the Samsung Galaxy S10e, which nets you a saving of around £100 at current prices but, other than the lack of telephoto camera and a smaller 5.8in display it’s largely the same as the S10 Plus.
Our favourite alternatives and where to buy them:
- Apple iPhone XR | £629 | Carphone Warehouse
- OnePlus 7T Pro | £699 | OnePlus.com
- Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus | £679 | Carphone Warehouse
- Samsung Galaxy S10e | £670 | Carphone Warehouse
Apple iPhone 11 review: Design and new features
From a distance, the iPhone 11 looks pretty similar to the Pro and Pro Max. It has that same square camera plinth at the rear in the top left corner, and the back is one piece of glass, so there’s no ugly trim surrounding that square.
Like its pricier siblings, the iPhone 11 looks a lot nicer when you get it in your hand than on the billboard ads but it isn’t quite as pretty as the Pro models. The only part that’s matte glass is the camera bump – the rest is finished in bog-standard gloss finish. And instead of a polished stainless steel frame, the 11 has anodised aluminium running around its perimeter.
As I said, though, the standard iPhone 11 still looks pretty good and, from the front, it’s barely distinguishable. As with last year’s iPhone XR, the black border surrounding the display is a touch thicker than the 11 Pro’s, but the notch is identical [some might say “just as ugly”] as before. The buttons, speaker grille and Lightning charging port are in the same places, too.
You have to read the technical specifications pretty closely to find out what you’re missing out on with the iPhone 11, although it’s not much. Water-resistance is inferior: you can drop your iPhone 11 up to a depth of two metres for up to 30 minutes, where the iPhone 11 Pro can be submerged up to a positively Cousteau-like four-metre depth for 30 minutes. I’m not sure what advantage the extra depth resistance conveys other than the ability to drop the phone in an Olympic diving pool and have it survive, though.
READ NEXT: iPhone 11 Pro review – Very nearly the perfect phone
Apple iPhone 11 review: Display
Along with the lack of a telephoto camera, the display is the biggest point of divergence between Apple’s iPhone 11 and the pricier models. Instead of an OLED display capable of a peak brightness up to 1,200cd/m2 – and effectively perfect contrast – the iPhone 11 has a mere IPS display that can peak at 625cd/m2 with a claimed contrast ratio of 1,400:1.
Tested with our X-rite colorimeter, it very much lived up to Apple’s claims, peaking at 567cd/m2 with a contrast ratio of 1,563:1. Colour reproduction was exceptional, too, with highly accurate sRGB gamut performance for web-based images and graphics.
Next to the iPhone 11 Pro, the iPhone 11 takes a noticeable hit to vibrancy and detail when it comes to watching HDR video content. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very good – as good as the HDR playback on the OLED Huawei P30 Pro to my eyes. Sat next to the iPhone 11 Pro playing the same scene from Netflix’s Marco Polo, however, the iPhone 11 looked flat and lifeless by comparison. The difference isn’t subtle – it’s stark and clearly obvious to anyone who has a pair of working eyes, and isn’t colour blind.
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Apple iPhone 11 review: Performance
At this point, you could simply stop reading because the display is really the only qualitative difference between the iPhone 11 and the Pro. Performance-wise, it’s just as quick and the cameras that it does have produce images and video that’s just as impressive.
Put into context of its immediate competition, however, the iPhone 11 looks even more impressive than the Pro with better benchmark results across the spectrum than any other smartphone available.
And while you might think such levels of performance in a phone are over the top, remember that there are everyday applications that can take advantage of it. The iPhone’s extended dynamic range 4K video mode, for instance, needs every bit of this horsepower. Impressively, it shoots 4K, fully stabilised, at 120fps, capturing each alternate frame at different exposure levels and combining them for a pseudo-HDR effect at 60fps.
Battery life is reasonably good, too. As you might expect with a larger battery than the Pro [3,110mAh vs 3,046mAh], the iPhone 11 lasts a bit longer, but not by much. In our video rundown test, it ran for about an hour longer, reaching 18hrs 36mins before needing a recharge. That’s a big improvement on the XR, and mirrors the same gains on the 11 Pro as the XR was better than the XS last year.
Apple iPhone 11 review: Cameras
The iPhone 11 has a brilliant main camera and it’s supplemented by a pretty good ultra-wide-angle camera as well. It’s worth mentioning this again for good measure: it’s the exact same setup as found in the 11 Pro and the 11 Pro Max but without the 2x optical telephoto.
These cameras both deliver 12-megapixel images. The main one has an f/1.8 aperture, phase detect dual-pixel autofocus and optical image stabilisation [OIS]. The ultra-wide-angle camera has an f/2.4 aperture and a field of view equivalent to a 13mm full-frame lens.
Both are capable of capturing fully stabilised 4K video at 60fps and, as described above, the A13 Bionic chip now allows the iPhone’s extended dynamic range mode to be used at 4K 60fps, too, where before it was limited to 30fps.
The long and short of it is that the cameras on the iPhone 11 are very, very good. The new night mode beats anything any rival can muster – not even the Google Pixel 3 and 3XL come close. This might change once the Pixel 4 arrives in mid-October, but Google is going to have to go some way to beat it.
Here’s a small handful of comparison images, showing there’s absolutely no difference between the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro. [If you want to see how much better the 11 is than the Pixel 3XL, check out the camera section of my iPhone 11 Pro review.]
Once you do this, though, you will see a small jump when transitioning from one camera to the next – from 0.9x to 1x zoom and back again – and you’ll also see a noticeable difference in quality between the two cameras. Again, this isn’t a problem for Apple, per se, particularly in comparison to other smartphones whose video zooms are significantly more steppy than the one on the iPhone 11 models.
And it’s not just the image quality that has been improved with the iPhone 11. As part of the update to iOS 13, the camera UI has also been updated. There’s a new zoom wheel, some of the core options [flash, Live Photo, timer, filter effects] have been moved and are now accessed by swiping up on the mode switcher, and you now get a preview of the ultra-wide angle view to the left and right of the main preview window. You can also have the camera capture images from both ultra-wide and primary cameras simultaneously, giving you the chance to recompose in the revamped Photos app post-capture.
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Apple iPhone 11 review: Verdict
You’ve probably worked out by now that the Apple iPhone 11 is a pretty good phone, even if there are distinct differences between it and the iPhone 11 Pro. Specifically: the display isn’t anywhere near as good, it doesn’t look quite as nice, isn’t as waterproof and lacks the telephoto camera.
But £729 for this isn’t half bad for an Apple phone and there’s certainly far less of the “ouch” factor of the £1,000-plus Pro models and, for that matter, the recent Samsung Galaxy S20 phones. Yes, while you certainly can buy an Android phone that can do most of what this can with better battery life and more cameras for the same or less, the iPhone 11 still holds its own when it comes to outright performance and camera quality.
Indeed, I can see the iPhone 11 giving Apple’s smartphone sales a significant shot in the arm this year. It’s miles better than the iPhone XR and not massively more expensive, even now that Apple has reduced the price of the XR to £629.
Is iPhone 11 64GB a good phone?
It's running the latest version of iOS 16, is fully expected to get iOS 17 later this year, and should keep getting updates through 2025. Apple's software support remains the best in the industry, and it's one of the reasons why its older smartphones are still worth recommending years after release.
Is the iPhone 11 worth buying in 2023?
Conclusion. Overall, the iPhone 11 is a solid device that offers an outstanding balance of design, performance, and features. It still holds well in 2023 and is an excellent choice for those seeking a reliable, high-performance device at a more affordable price than the newer models.
Is 64GB OK for iPhone 11?
64GB: limited storage spaceWith 64GB, you'll have enough if you use your iPhone for WhatsApp and calls. In addition, you have space for some social media apps and light games. You can use streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify and you don't record 4K videos.
What are the disadvantages of the iPhone 11?
Here are some of the iPhone 11's cons..
Notch and Bezel Issues. Sumber: Tech Made Easy. ... .
5W Built-in Charger. Another shortcoming of the iPhone 11 is its built-in charger, which only supports 5W charging. ... .
No OLED Panel and HDR Technology. The iPhone 11 features an IPS LCD screen rather than an OLED display. ... .
High Price Tag..