Apple announces the flagship iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max

Apple today announced the 2019 iPhone models during its special event at the Steve Jobs Theater. The high-end version this year, like last year, comprises two new models — the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max — as successors to the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, respectively.

The new Super Retina XDR display, a custom-designed OLED, is a pro display with the brightest display ever on an iPhone. With up to 1,200 nits brightness, the Super Retina XDR display has wide color support with system-wide color management and True Tone. The contrast ratio here is 2 million-to-one with true blacks for more vivid viewing experience.

The Pro devices have a textured matte glass back and polished stainless steel band, featuring the “toughest glass ever” in a smartphone. iPhone 11 Pro models are rated IP68 for water resistance up to 4 meters for up to 30 minutes underwater. Apple says the devices could easily stand everyday spills including coffee and soda.

Apple’s A-series chip continue to evolve every year, and this year is no exception. iPhone 11 Pro models sport the same A13 Bionic chip, which Apple touts as the “fastest chip ever” in a smartphone. The chip features up to 20 percent faster CPU and GPU performance than the previous A12 chip, housing over 1 trillion operations per second. Apple says the chip has new Machine Learning Accelerators and a faster Neural Engine for real-time photo and video analysis.

All of these performance improvements come at a negative cost of battery life, meaning the new iPhones offer more battery life than its predecessors. iPhone 11 Pro offers up to four hours of battery life than iPhone XS, and iPhone 11 Pro Max offers up to five hours more than iPhone XS Max. And that is worth an applaud, I know.

iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max both feature a square-shaped camera arrangement with three lenses against its predecessor with the dual-camera setup. It certainly looks uncomfortable to look at, but we will get used to it gradually.

The camera arrangement on iPhone 11 Pro introduces a triple-camera system with all-new Ultra Wide, Wide and Telephoto cameras integrated into iOS. Apple claims to have “highest quality video ever” in a smartphone with this camera system on iPhone 11 Pro.

Each camera in the triple-camera system records 4K video with extended dynamic range and cinematic video stabilization. The Ultra Wide camera can shoot action videos using its wider field of view and large focal plane, and captures four times more scene. Among all these capabilities, users can easily zoom between each of the three cameras in a smooth transition. The Audio Zoom feature matches the audio to the video frame accordingly.

With Night Mode on iPhone 11 Pro, Apple has made a drastic improvement to indoor and outdoor low-light photography offering brighter images with natural colors and reduced noise, thanks to the new Wide sensor with 100 percent Focus Pixel.

Portrait mode takes a leap with the implementation of the triple-camera system. Users can now choose Wide and Telephoto framing while taking Portrait shots, which gives a wider field of view and is just perfect for taking portraits of multiple people.

The Telephoto camera features a larger f/2.0 aperture to capture 40 percent more light compared to iPhone XS. There’s also a new feature called Deep Fusion, which does work with computational photography, as Phill Schiller mentioned during the event.

Coming later this fall on iOS 13, Deep Fusion is a new image processing system enabled by the Neural Engine of A13 Bioni. It uses advanced machine learning to perform pixel-by-pixel processing of photos, optimizing texture, details and noise in the photo.

The notch has a new TrueDepth camera system with 12-megapixel camera lens and a wider field of view to capture selfies. The TrueDepth camera can now record 4K videos at up to 60fps and 120fps slo-mo videos.

In addition to the camera hardware, iOS 13 on iPhone now offers powerful video editing tools with the ability to rotate, crop, increase exposure and apply filters to videos instantly. iOS 13 launches on September 19.

iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max come in gorgeous midnight green, space gray, silver and gold finishes, starting at $999 and $1,099, respectively. The devices will be available for pre-order beginning at 5am PT on Friday, September 13 and in stores beginning Friday, September 20.