I love the XR but it just died. I’m back to using the max. The XR is so much more comfortable to hold. And it displays the same amount of screen content as the max.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone XR iPhone XR - Underrated
- Thread starter bluecoast
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It’s funny, I used 3D Touch a fair bit on my 7 but I don’t miss it at all on the XR. The camera and torch icons work ok on the lock screen. Ditto on the control centre. Notifications respond ok to it.
Sure haptic touch is about 1/2 a second slower than 3D Touch but it’s no big deal (for me).
I never used peek and pop and realise now that it was a demo feature more than an everyday usage feature (for me).
When I got the iPad Pro 2018, using that made me realize how 3D Touch is such a trivial feature. I don’t miss it on the iPad nor on the XR.
As I said in my op, I had a 7 and the size of the XR was a big worry. And that the XR wouldn’t be a big upgrade. I was more than pleasantly surprised by the XR.
The size and weight I quickly am getting used to. The size of the screen makes it worth it. And the screen is a significant upgrade from the 7. On paper it shouldn’t be but take it from me everything about it is significantly better. And True Tone is amazing and makes a huge difference. Not to mention the huge immersive Face ID screen.
Apart from that everything on the XR is better than the 7. The speed, camera, Face ID - and the battery life. It’s insane. This is the first iPhone I’ve ever had where I simply don’t worry about if my phone is going to die through the day. Unless you completely hammer it on LTE or game all day, it won’t.
It’s a huge upgrade from the 7.
Peek and pop has been brilliant for checking my messages, emails, just to briefly see the contents and then if I want open the whole document, then I can use the Pop feature. For me, I find that to be a pivotal feature that is just more ‘ease-of-use’, and then when third-party applications started supporting 3D Touch, then I found experience to be that much more convenient. For example, ‘Weather-bug ‘is an application that I use to check the weather surrounding my area, versus me opening up the whole application to navigate just to see the map, I can use 3D Touch to access the satellite map immediately versus taking unnecessary extra steps to navigate through the entire application.
This I largely agree with. Being able to upgrade from 64Gb to 128 with a small price increase was a boon. I tend to use around 90Gbs myself.
256 on my Max is probably overkill but I have all my music on there and it's pushing 110Gb so I'm glad I went for this option.
The XR is a terrific phone...if I didn't use it mainly as a backup, my main sim card would be in there.
Fair enough. I guess the issue with 3D Touch is that it’s turned out to be expensive (space, component cost is building touch layers into lcd and OLED ) power user feature, that everyone has to pay for whether they use it or not.
When the iPhone 6s launched in 2015, Tim Cook said 3D Touch was a very difficult feature to implement into the iPhone. The only problem with 3D Touch, is Apple never took the time to properly market it. It’s a great feature, but for the majority of consumers, it’s confusing to them, because they don’t have an idea of exactly how it’s intended to work properly. Which is really unfortunate, because of Apple had marketed this feature more thoroughly, I think it would be more useful and popular in that respect.
I spent the time to actually try to understand it and then forced myself to actually use it for an extended period. My conclusion?
IMO it died not just because it wasn’t marketed properly. It died mostly because it unnecessarily complexifies the interface to the point where consumers can’t be bothered. And because of that, neither can the developers.
Good riddance to 3D Touch.
I’ll be sad when 3d touch dies. It’s a great underrated feature and something that is unique to the iPhone. A lot of users on the forums complain about haptic touch not being a worthy replacement and that’s a reason I got the Xs, more than likely the last X series phone with the feature that will hold me over until the next redesign.
Should apple cut 3D Touch from all new phones going forward, will be interesting to see if they pass along those savings to consumers. I won’t hold my breath.
Should apple cut 3D Touch from all new phones going forward, will be interesting to see if they pass along those savings to consumers. I won’t hold my breath.
I’ve often wondered this. Even if Apple were to remove 3D Touch, perhaps a newer component on the iPhone could cost just as much, if not more, like the rumored ‘triple lens camera’ for example. That might cancel it out, where the iPhone does not drop in price. But that is a valid point and I’m curious to see the iPhone pricing this fall more than I am any new features.
Yes but it’s slightly slower as iOS has to register a long press which it then triggers as a haptic touch event. Whereas 3D Touch is a pressure triggered event of course. The experience is much the same when the haptic touch event is actually triggered though.
[doublepost=1554916958][/doublepost]
Hopefully the OLED screen replacement costs won’t be as high for haptic touch OLED phones.
Nice one, thanks for clearing that up. That’s the 3D Touch option I’ll miss the most when I get an XR but glad haptic still replicates it to some extent
When I upgrade my 8+ in a couple of years i’ll be looking at the XR variant as it currently offers everything I need from an iPhone. Hopefully they’ll keep LCD too and not bother going down the OLED route. I’ll be interested to see how they develop the software version of 3DTouch too to replicate peek and pop as this has become a fundamental feature I use pretty much every time I use my iPhone.
I’d say that the XR is probably like every other upgrade from the 6 onwards. If you feel like your phone is working for you there’s no need. However.. If you do upgrade you’ll realise how slow your previous phone was (probably not the 8 and 8 plus).
Who's doing the rating? And who cares?
My take is that all this fixation on minutiae in phones is more in the mind of the owner.
In the (real) world that I live in, nobody gives a flip about anyone else's phone, whether it's better or worse than someone else's. Most people I work around have a phone, use it, and get on with more important matters.
My take is that all this fixation on minutiae in phones is more in the mind of the owner.
In the (real) world that I live in, nobody gives a flip about anyone else's phone, whether it's better or worse than someone else's. Most people I work around have a phone, use it, and get on with more important matters.
Are you new to Internet forums?
Agreed: some people like big phones some like small phones some are happy rocking their iPhone 5cs with iOS 8 or 9! It’s all good.
Last edited:
You’re definitely misunderstanding the thread context, and I’m guessing you only read the thread title, thus is why you put your own interpretation into this. The reality is, the XR being discussed is an underrated phone in terms of what it has to offer, no one personally was talking about specifically ‘who cares about what someone else has for a phone’. If you read through the actual posts instead, you would see what everyone is referring to why it’s overlooked.