Every September, year after year, Apple announces its next year of flagship smartphones along with some other products as well. This year saw the advent of the new iteration of the iPhone, which comes in three forms – the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max. That last one is certainly a mouthful, but it is what it is. All three will begin shipping from the 20th of September, and you’ll be able to pick them up from your favourite carrier – be it Vodafone, Three, Eir, or otherwise.
iPhone 11 – Starting at €829
The iPhone 11 is arguably the most interesting of the trio, as it represents a new direction for the Cupertino-based mega-giant. It retails at an incredibly low price for an Apple flagship – €829, to be exact – and features pretty much everything you’d want from a smartphone. It has the company’s new Bionic A13 chipset, a new ultra-wide camera lens, night mode, smart HDR, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and HDR10 support. You could argue a lot of these have been available across Android smartphones for a while, but it’s hard to disagree that Apple tends to do things with a certain level of flair and polish to them. I’m as much an Android fan as the next guy, but I understand the appeal of Apple products.
The iPhone 11 serves as a baseline for the next two products, and both the Pro and the Pro Max has everything here on offer too. There are a few things the regular iPhone 11 doesn’t get though, which will become quickly apparent in the upper-tier devices.
iPhone 11 Pro – Starting at €1,179
The iPhone 11 Pro’s primary aim is to be, well, the more “professional” phone. It has an OLED panel (much better colour contrast), telephoto lens for 2x zoom without quality loss, 512GB of storage option, and a higher screen resolution. OLED panels do a look a lot nicer – especially when paired with a higher resolution display – though the rest may not be worth it to you. 512GB of storage is a lot, more than pretty much anyone could ever need. Apple also says the battery lasts up to 4 hours longer than the regular iPhone 11, though that doesn’t really mean anything. When a company says how many hours their battery lasts, that’s typically under ideal conditions.
iPhone 11 Pro Max – Starting at €1,279
The insanely named iPhone 11 Pro Max is, as the name suggests, the biggest of the three. It’s a 6.5-inch Super Retina XDR display, with what Apple says is the longest battery life they’ve ever had in a phone. Again, that doesn’t really mean anything. It has all of the same hardware and software traits as the iPhone 11 Pro, just bigger.
