iPhone 11 Re­leased

MISHAWAKA – Ap­ple has re­cently re­leased its new smart­phone, the iPhone 11, and proved two things in the process: the de­vel­op­ers still haven’t learned to count, and if there’s a price tag on some­thing, some­one will buy it. 

To be fair, the iPhone 11, at launch, costs less than its pre­de­ces­sor at its de­but: a $999 iPhone X upon re­lease ver­sus a $699 iPhone 11, ac­cord­ing to the web­site. Though the $300 price drop looks nice on pa­per, many con­sumers with func­tion­ing frontal lobes are won­der­ing if the iPhone 11 of­fers any­thing new. Not least be­cause, af­ter the 11’s an­nounce­ment, all the older iPhone prices took a steep dive, with the iPhone X sit­ting $100 lower than the newest ad­di­tion to Ap­ple’s phone-based fam­ily. 

So, in a few words, the iPhone 11 is sport­ing some new fea­tures. Most no­tice­ably the, by now, ex­ten­sively mocked dual cam­eras on the base ver­sion and the triple cam­eras on the Pro and Pro Max. These cam­eras can ap­par­ently record dif­fer­ent videos si­mul­ta­ne­ously, as well as add widen the shot of pic­tures. Now, this is a pretty use­ful ad­di­tion; older mod­els of the iPhone had cam­eras with field-of-view like the busi­ness end of a plas­tic straw. Not only have the peo­ple over at Ap­ple given con­sumers 200% more cam­eras than your av­er­age smart­phone, they have added new light­ing con­trols like “Night Mode.” On the sub­ject of Night Mode, the Ap­ple web­site says, “there’s no need for flash, col­ors are more nat­ural, and pho­tos are brighter.” Credit where credit is due: Ap­ple has op­ti­mized the snuff­ing out of its cam­eras. 

Not much else about the phone, on the other hand, dif­fers from the pre­vi­ous it­er­a­tion. The only piece worth not­ing is the new A13 Bionic chip in the phone, al­legedly the fastest of any smart­phone. With the new chip, Ap­ple has man­aged to re­fine a de­cent amount of the phone’s op­er­a­tions like Face ID and new hap­tic short­cuts and menus. The lat­ter mean­ing you re­ally ap­pre­ci­ate how smoothly you can slide from one Snapchat story to the next.  

Sum­mar­ily, if you’re a cor­po­rate ATM for Ap­ple, chances are you’ve al­ready bought this phone. If you are re­ally into pho­tog­ra­phy and videog­ra­phy, you might like this phone. If you’re a broke col­lege kid, who if asked could­n’t de­scribe the dif­fer­ence be­tween the iPhone X and 11 with­out sur­rep­ti­tiously check­ing the Ap­ple site like yours truly, you’re likely to pass on it. How­ever, if you de­cide to ig­nore your bills, you’ll have no prob­lem us­ing your new phone while you’re drown­ing in stu­dent debt. So long as you’re drown­ing at two me­ters or less. For no more than 30 min­utes. Per the wa­ter-re­sis­tance guide­lines. En­joy. 

Corey Bridge­man is a vol­un­teer stu­dent writer for The Bea­con and does tech­nol­ogy and game re­views.