Welcome to the launch of the iPhone XS

and the XS Max.

This is gonna be a fun one.

Of course, not only do we have the S model update

to the standard iPhone X, but we also have

the much larger Max edition.

I think a lot of people were kind of expecting this

when the iPhone X first came out,

but what you're getting here is something that is

much closer to the iPhone 7 Plus, 8 Plus in size.

Open this guy up, and what we're going to find is

probably the exact same thing that you'd find

with every iPhone since the dawn of time;

some paperwork with our obligatory

Apple stickers and the Max.

This is actually the first time I've held the Max.

It's big; it's pretty big.

On top of having a Max edition available,

there's also a new gold color for the XS

as well as the XS Max.

I'm usually not a fan of gold.

I have to say though, this doesn't look so bad.

It's a little bit more of a, what would you call it?

It's like a taupe.

I guess call it a Band-Aid color.

- [Male Voice] What is a taupe?

- Taupe, it's brownish,

but a lot of beige.

- [Male Voice] Beige.

- Even though it's a much larger phone,

you know what else we're gonna find in the box?

The same five-watt charger that they've

been shipping since 2007.

Yes, my friends, even though you've got

a massive battery and a huge display,

it's still going to take you like, what,

two, three hours to charge the phone.

For real, it's totally ridiculous that they ship

such a tiny, cheap adapter in the box

when they actually sell other alternatives

which will charge the iPhone much faster.

If you wanna shell out $50 for the USB-C adapter

and another 20 for the USB-C to Lightning cable,

you can get your phone charged much, much quicker.

But instead, they put this in the box, so yeah.

What I like to see on my $1,000-plus phone.

The XS also does come with Apple earpods.

As a surprise to no one,

there's no headphone jack here.

Instead, it does take advantage of Lightning.

I don't know why that flopped open like that.

What you're not going to find here is

a headphone jack adapter.

Yes, my friends, the thing that's been included

on iPhones for the last couple years,

that 35-cent part to manufacture little adapter

that will make your headphones work on your iPhone,

not included in the box.

That's gonna run you another 20 bucks.

Or is it 15?

- [Male Voice] I thought it was 10.

- Is it 10?

It's still $10; no, they should include it.

I don't mind the idea that they are still

shipping a Lightning cable with USB-A,

but this is an expensive phone.

Why are they cutting out things?

Why are they removing things when

they should be making it better?

If we open up the standard XS,

what we're going to find is a phone that is

very, very similar to the X.

What I'm mostly curious about, though,

is the actual size difference.

Put the XS side by side with the Max

and you do get a much, much larger display.

Whereas this has a 5.8-inch panel,

you're getting a full 6 1/2 inches.

Do you remember the days where a seven-inch phone

was called a tablet?

Look at the difference, man.

This is the original iPhone versus the Max.

That's ridiculous.

But you know what, it kind of works.

I feel like everyone's gotten onboard with

the large phone train, and a big reason we're here

is because of the good old Galaxy Note.

Even though we have such a larger display,

the actual footprint of the iPhone XS Max

isn't really all that much larger than, say,

an iPhone 6 Plus, 7 Plus, what have you.

It is going to be a little bit

shorter than the Note,

but it's not as crazy as I was anticipating it to be.

When it comes to telling the iPhone X

apart from the XS, they're very similar

except for one major difference.

If you look on the bottom of the phone,

where the X is nice and symmetrical with

the speaker and the microphone,

the XS has a little bit of an antenna line

which cuts that short.

The main reason for this is that it should

give you better reception.

We're actually going to test that a little bit later.

Supposedly we're going to be getting more antennas

for better Wi-Fi, as well as LTE reception.

But it looks a little ugly.

Not sure how this passed Jony Ive and the boys.

There's also a slight difference in

the size of the camera bump.

To illustrate this, I have a XS Max in a XS Max case.

You can see that it goes pretty much fully around

the camera, but if you put an iPhone X

in a XS case, you can see it's going to be

a little bit misshapen, specifically on the bottom.

It doesn't quite line up.

Most iPhone X cases should work

with a XS and vice versa, but you might wanna

keep an eye on that.

The camera bump is going to be just a little bit bigger.

One of the big upgrades this year is

the A12 Bionic chip.

They've claimed some pretty decent

performance improvements, but the first thing I've

noticed as soon as I open up Geekbench

is we have more memory.

Before, we had three gigs of RAM on the iPhone X,

but this year we have four gigs on both

the XS as well as the Max.

Interesting.

Whereas the X is a little bit slower than

the XS Max as well as the XS,

it's by a pretty small difference.

The single core is a little bit higher,

but the multi-core is actually very similar.

The days of saving 50% CPU performance every year

might just be over.

Although to be fair, these are still the fastest

phones I've ever tested, so yeah.

One of the bigger upgrades this year

is with the camera.

The main shooter has been upgraded on both

the XS as well as the Max with a larger sensor,

and it also has Smart HDR functionality.

Wow, look at the difference in range.

So with the XS, we're actually getting all of

the detail on your face, whereas the Max is

blowing out not only Matt's face in the background,

but also stuff like your cheek.

The portrait mode also does look a fair bit better.

Not only do we have that better dynamic range,

but we're also seeing that it's a little bit

more accurate as far as cutting people

out of the photo, and the ability to adjust

the depth of field after the fact is really nice.

It's not perfect; definitely has some more work to do,

but it does look a lot more natural than the X

as well as the 8 Plus.

So is the iPhone XS Max worth it?

You're gonna have to stay tuned, my friends,

because we're going to be doing

an entire video all about that.

Make sure to subscribe and stay tuned,

otherwise you're gonna have to spend $1,100

on a phone you might not like.