Photographer Austin Mann always manages to put Apple’s latest iPhone cameras to the test. This time around, he was given early access to the iPhone XR, and took it down to the Grand Canyon to test out:
Hey from the Grand Canyon!
My wife and I have spent the last few days on the road in our Airstream around the southwest (mainly Grand Canyon NP, Petrified Forest NP, and White Sands National Monument) and have had a great time shooting with the iPhone XR along the way.
With the beautiful new LCD display, Smart HDR, and Single Lens Portrait Mode, there’s been a lot to test.
My main questions about iPhone XR: How are the portraits? How’s the screen? How’s the battery?
I hope you enjoy the adventure as I set out to find these answers.
Mann says the iPhone XR screen is “is definitely the brightest, most vibrant, and all around impressive LCD I’ve ever worked with.”
He says he enjoyed the wider portraits with the 26mm compared to the 51mm lens on the iPhone XS. In some low light situations, the iPhone XR camera outperformed the iPhone XS, thanks to the former’s faster wide angle lens at f/1.8 (allowing for more light), versus f/2.4 for the latter.
Mann confirms Portrait mode on the iPhone XR only works on human faces, and not animals or other objects. Even with this limitation, the iPhone XR can also take some really great pictures:
Image credit: Austin Mann
His review falls in line with what other reviewers thought about the iPhone XR—it’s a fast, capable phone like the flagship iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, but this time around it has the best battery life of any iPhone he’s ever used.
Click here to check out more images from Mann’s iPhone XR review. The iPhone XR launches in Canada this Friday.
