New Apple iPhone Lineup Personal Thoughts

On September 12th Apple announced their new 2018 iPhone lineup - The iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max and iPhone Xr.

These are my personal thoughts regarding the lineup, warts and all:

1. Evolution, not revolution - It seems Apple has settled on the new notched design across the lineup, and the only upgrades we get is slightly better (and bigger) screens, slightly better cameras and slightly better performance. Having said that, the Apple "s" models have always been about incremental updates and nothing ground breaking. I would be OK with this incremental update if Apple would have kept the prices lower, which is a segue to the next point!

2. Priced to break the bank - The highest priced iPhone model is the 512Gb iPhone Xs Max - a cool 1449$ before taxes! And though it has a massive 512Gb of internal memory, DAMN that price! Should you be angry with Apple? Well, yes... the prices are relatively high for this years' "s" models - last year with the iPhone X, Apple said that the high price is due to the innovative way they developed the screen to be bezeless, well we are a year later and most smartphones coming out are bezeless so what the hell Apple? We have bezeless smartphones with same OLED technology and almost half the price like the Oneplus 6 and soon the Oneplus 6T. With that announcement Apple has also killed the iPhone X so you can't get the same design and most of the features with a lower price point now that it is last years model... at least not directly from Apple.

3. Should you upgrade? If you have last year iPhones (either iPhone X or iPhone 8/8 Plus) - No way, performance isn't that better, the camera is only slightly better and if you have the iPhone X - the design is the same. If you're coming from the iPhone 6s and prior, and you don't want to break the bank - I would suggest the iPhone 8 which is still being sold directly from Apple with a 100$ price decrease. In case you have an extra 150$ you can spend - go for the iPhone Xr in mid-October - it has most of the Xs features but takes a hit in the screen quality and camera, the Xr is the best option for mid-tier budget. I can't recommend the new Xs lineup with those prices... I really want to - and if you're an avid Apple fan you wouldn't mind the price.

4. The last thing that concerns me is in the case that the Xs lineup will be a hit and sell well - we might see other manufacturers making the same decision and making their flagship smartphones 1000$ plus... which is very bad for us consumers.