Dieter Bohn Watch our iPhone 11 reviews

Today’s the day when everybody’s iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 reviews dropped. Here’s Nilay Patel on the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max and also on the iPhone 11 review, which is definitely the phone most people should buy.

I’m also going to link you to the videos directly on YouTube, because our team outdid themselves here. We’re starting a little tradition of creating a practical effect to go with some reviews and this one is so good you’ll want to see how we created it.

+ iPhone 11 Pro review: the best camera on a phone - YouTube

+ iPhone 11 review: the phone most people should buy - YouTube

(MacRumors has an iPhone 11 Pro Roundup and an iPhone 11 Roundup, if you want more.)

I'll throw a few more iPhone 11 review thoughts under today's links below. :)

- Dieter

I didn't see any major Pixel 4 leaks today! But, uh, Google is still trying — and failing — to keep things a secret. For example, 9to5Google had a nice exclusive today, a new Google Nest Wifi with a Google Assistant.

+ OnePlus officially reveals 7T design ahead of September 26th event

This new trend of companies showing their own products to forestall leaks is officially here to stay. Google did it, Vivo did it, and Oppo too. My colleague Thomas Ricker pointed out to me that technically Vivo, Oppo, and OnePlus are part o the same company, so maybe the trend is just Google and one other company. Good point, but also this is going to keep happening. Why be coy about it? Heck, Google is putting the Pixel 4 in a Times Square ad now.

+ Mercedes-Benz quietly enters the e-scooter market

+ Amazon Music rolls out a lossless streaming tier that Spotify and Apple can’t match

Somebody asked me today if there’s a technical reason that Apple and Spotify aren’t doing this kind of audio and I think the answer is no. I also think that if Amazon actually manages to claw some marketshare away with this new service that one or both of them will be quick to pivot.

Expect Amazon to push harder to get more users on its music service and also to get more recognition that the service ...exists. I get the feeling that the company has a chip on its shoulder about it: it’s reportedly used by more than 30 million people, so Amazon thinks it should be in the streaming wars conversation more.

+ Facebook is reportedly teaming up with Ray-Ban on its smart AR glasses

+ I was all set to just make fun of NBCUniversal naming its streaming service “Peacock”...

+...but then they had to go and announce a Battlestar Galactica reboot. Which I am here for, especially since (spoilers) the end of the last series got a little too mystical for my tastes.

The thing to pay attention to in pretty much all of the iPhone reviews is the camera and video quality, and to note that the battery life is much better on the top-tier models.

One thing I wonder sometimes is if the industry is getting too focused on the cameras. It feels like maybe there’s a failure of imagination, an inability to see other places where phones could innovate more. Then again, the biggest shot a new hardware innovation this year was folding phones and those ...have not worked out super well.

I also think the cameras are an obvious place to focus because it’s a place where it’s easy to make and show year-over-year improvements. In the same way that a particular method of using machine learning went from being a promising academic paper to suddenly powering everything, it seems like Apple and Google are just getting started with computational photography.

The idea of taking multiple frames and treating them like data to be analyzed and combined is powerful, and there’s a lot more that could be done with it. It’s one of those moments where technology jumps ahead not through raw computational power, but through a clever way to use the computers we already have.

Once you see a new way of doing something, you start looking for other places you can apply it — and I am sure there are other ways photos can be made better.

That's why cameras on smartphones feel so vital: they are a place where smart people thinking differently about how to make computers do things can surprise us with their ingenuity. That happens with every part of a phone from the screen to the software, but it's so much more tangible with photography. 

Anyway, all this helped me figure out why I’m pretty disappointed that Apple didn’t get its “Deep Fusion” technology out the door ahead of the Pixel 4, it would have made for a great comparison. Presumably Google will be emphasizing photography at its event on October 15th — the Pixel 3 did just (finally!) get surpassed after all. The competition here is great for consumers, and I bet both companies know what they want to do next.

(Some of you who listen to The Vergecast podcast might be expecting me to wax on about the very idea of photography capturing a moment in time or just becoming a grand composite, especially since the iPhone 11 will be abandoning the base frame. Not gonna do it.)