Is the iPhone XR Unfairly Maligned? (Premium)

It’s been the best-selling iPhone since it launched in October. But the iPhone XR is, for some reason, still tainted by a sense of failure.

That’s not necessarily a paradox. We have multiple reports proving that the iPhone XR has underperformed when compared to Apple’s expectations. And Apple has indeed cut the production of this handset to meet the new normal. But the iPhone XR isn’t alone: The iPhone XS and XS Max have also underperformed, and their production has likewise been cut too.

Since then, Apple has doubled the trade-in value of older iPhones and has introduced lower monthly payment plans for newer iPhones to help prop up sales. We’ll see how effective these efforts are when Apple announces its earnings today, but it’s clear that Apple did everything it could over the past few months to shore up revenues as much as possible. Witness the never-ending sales on iPads, Macs, and other Apple products on non-Apple sites like Amazon.com. Well, almost everything. It could have reversed the 20 percent price hike it instituted in 2018, which I dubbed Apple Jacks. That Apple was the biggest victim of its own strategy is, yes, ironic.

But let’s focus today on the iPhone XR.

My initial analysis of Apple’s September 2018 iPhone announcement was that the iPhone XR was the sweet spot of the new lineup. Compared to the far more expensive iPhone XS and XS Max, the iPhone XR has a few major differences. Its display is made from older LCD technology which requires a backlight that necessitates a larger bezel. Its rear camera system utilizes just a single lens, unlike the dual-camera system we see in the XS and XS Max. Those are literally the only negatives.

There are other differences, of course. For example, the XR’s body is made of aluminum, not stainless steel, a cost-cutting measure that I don’t believe undermines the devices premium nature in any way. And the iPhone XR offers some advantages over its more expensive siblings: Where the XS and XS Max memory choices jump inexplicably from 64 GB to 256 GB, you can outfit an XR with 64, 128, or 256 GB, saving money and arriving at a more reasonable storage allotment.

These factors, combined with the iPhone XR’s much lower pricing, explain my “sweet spot” comments. Where the iPhone XR starts at $750—I almost wrote “just $750” there before regaining my senses; these are still very expensive handsets for most people—-compared to $1000 for the iPhone XS (and an insane $1100 for the iPhone XS Max.

Can you live with bigger bezels, an LCD display, and a single camera system? Or would you pay $250 more for the iPhone XS’s smaller (but still quite noticeable) bezels, slightly superior display, and dual-camera system?

Maybe that’s the wrong question.

With people holding on to iPhones for 3 years or more now, no one should buy the base unit. So the real price differential between the iPhone XR and XS is $350. That’s because an upgraded iPhone XR with 128 GB of storage costs $800, while the next-upgrade up for a 256 GB iPhone XS costs $1150.

$350.

As you may recall, I bought, reviewed, and returned an iPhone XS as part of a multi-handset review roundup I underwent late last year. My findings: While it offers no major improvements over the iPhone X, most upgraders will be coming from older iPhones and will find a lot to love. It is, I wrote at the time, “arguably the single best smartphone on the market today.”

I also bought and the returned an iPhone XR as part of that same review process. But I ended up not reviewing the handset, not because of any particular issues, but because I had hit a wall with new phones and felt—correctly—that nothing I was examining was good enough to make me upgrade me past my Google Pixel 2 XL. (Part of the reason was that Apple didn’t offer a no-SIM version at the time, too.) So that first impressions article is kind of just hanging there.

But I do need an iPhone, if only for testing purposes. I ended up purchasing a refurbished 128 GB iPhone 7 from Amazon.com for just $320, a major savings over the $550 that Apple normally asks for the same phone at its refurbished store. (As part of its broader attempts to jumpstart revenues, that iPhone is currently on sale from Apple for $470.)

I figured the iPhone 7 would get me through the next several months, and I was at least able to use it to test Google Fi’s new compatibility with iPhone and most Android handsets. But it’s a tiny phone, and given my preferences for larger devices, I started thinking about whether it would make sense to move to one of the newer iPhone models.

Helping matters, I had $600 in Apple gift certificates thanks to my recent MacBook Air (the older model) and iPad Pro trade-ins. That put me within striking distance for a 128 GB iPhone XR, which again costs $800. And still out of the running for a 256 GB iPhone XS, which costs $1150. I’d have to make up $550 to get to that one.

But as noted above, Apple has quietly doubled the trade-in value of its older iPhones. So that 128 GB iPhone 7 that I purchased for $320 was sudden worth $250 in trade-in at Apple. And $600 plus $250 is $850, almost exactly the amount a 128 GB iPhone XR would cost after shipping and taxes. Bingo.

Realistically, I’m paying about $70 to move from the small iPhone 7 to the larger and far more modern iPhone XR; that’s the difference between the $320 price of the iPhone 7 iPhone and its $250 trade-in value. Still. That seems reasonable.

But a bigger concern for me is all the negative press that the iPhone XR has received because of Apple’s broader problems selling iPhones. ZDNet says that Apple has “lost the plot with iPhone XR.” The Wall Street Journal claims that the iPhone XR is “the phone that’s failing Apple.” You get the idea. It’s kind of piling on.

But in reviewing my own writings about the iPhone XR, I find that I’m still in the same place as I was in September. That the iPhone XR is, indeed, the sweet spot in the new iPhone lineup. And is the only new iPhone that could be described as a value of any kind. Especially with the implicit price cuts that have come courtesy of Apple’s new trade-in deals.

So, I bought an iPhone XR.

Well, another iPhone XR, I guess. And I’ll hold on to this one. It’s a black 128 GB model that cost $846.94. As noted, I applied $600 in Apple gift certificates, bringing the price down to $246.94. And my iPhone 7 should net me a $250 credit card refund, meaning that I’ll come out ahead by $3.06. Well, not really: I did purchase an Apple iPhone XR Clear Case for $41.34 after shipping and taxes; that came out of my dwindling PayPal balance.

It looks like I will be able to review the iPhone XR after all.