iPhone 11 Review UK

iPhone 11 Review: Overview & Price

So the iPhone 11 has officially launched as has taken the smartphone market by storm as per, so you’re wondering if this phone is for you?

Well, you have come to the right place, in this Apple iPhone 11 review we go over everything you need to know about the phone, from specs to camera and everything in-between.

We even showcase the best Apple iPhone 11 contract deals here in the UK, ensuring that you get the best deal possible.

The iPhone 11 was unveiled along with the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max on September 10^th 2019.

The phone aims to replace and be the next level up from the iPhone XR, that being said they are extremely similar.

With it being the cheapest of the three phones released, we see no reason why the iPhone 11 won’t be just as successful as the iPhone XR.

The iPhone 11 price here in the UK is a hefty £729, but strangely it is much cheaper in the US at a more modest £560.

Is the iPhone 11 waterproof? Find out shortly in this review.

Here are some of the iPhone 11 specs;

• 3110mAh battery
• 4GB RAM
• 64/128/256GB storage with no microSD slot
• Dual camera setup
• IP68 water resistance

The iPhone 11 isn’t too much different from the more expensive iPhone 11 Pro, if you don’t mind missing out on an OLED display or an extra camera then the iPhone 11 is the wiser choice.

Let’s take a closer look at what the iPhone 11 has to offer…

iPhone 11 Review: Design & Display

So if you do happen to own the iPhone XR, or are familiar with the phone in anyway then you will notice that the iPhone 11 design is extremely similar.

The iPhone 11 was a super easy phone for Apple to make, being as it is identical to the iPhone XR.

It has the same shape, same size and the same notch positioning, Apple really didn’t need their design team to break a sweat with this phone.

One way you can tell the difference though is by the colours, the iPhone 11 comes in a new Mint Green, Lilac, as well as the usual Yellow, Red, Black and White.

We were lucky enough to get our hands on the Mint Green iPhone 11 for just over a week to conduct this review.

All of the buttons on the phone are exactly the same as the XR, with the same mute switch, speakers, and lightning port.

You get the gist, however, when flipping the phone over this is where it all changes.

Firstly the Apple logo has been moved south, it is more in the centre of the phone now rather than near the top.

As well as this the word ‘iPhone’ has completely vanished, Apple probably realised that most people know what their phones are now.

There is now a dual camera set up which is positioned the same, as the single on the XR but there is now another lens positioned directly underneath.

There is a slight camera bump which does get kind of annoying as the phone doesn’t sit still on a flat surface, so if you have it on a desk and try to use the phone, then it will be flopping all over the desk.

The iPhone 11 is waterproof as you would expect, with an IP68 rating which means it can survive being dunked at up to 1.5m for 30 minutes, as well as being resistant to dust.

Now the iPhone 11 is slightly thicker than the iPhone 11 Pro, only by a tiny 0.2mm but this is enough to notice when holding both devices in your hand.

This doesn’t stop the phone from feeling premium though, as the glass front and back panels sandwiched between an aluminium frame certainly do that job.

The phone does pick up fingerprint easily, especially in the mint green colour that we had for our review.

So we would definitely recommend investing into a case and screen protector to help keep your phone in good shape.

The iPhone 11 weighs 193g which is slightly heavier than the average smartphone weight which is somewhere between 140g and 170g.

This adds to the premium feel and helps with gripping the phone when using with one hand. 

That’s pretty much it for the iPhone 11 design, there isn’t a great deal that has changed besides the colours and the dual-camera set up on the back.

This isn’t a bad thing as the iPhone XR is and always will be a stunning handset.

The iPhone 11 has a 6.1-inch liquid retina LCD display, its not quite as good as the fancy OLED found on the iPhone 11 Pro but it certainly isn’t bad.

You won’t find the deep black and super vibrant colours like you would on an OLED, however Apple has calibrated the iPhone 11 display to ensure it is clear, sharp and bright.

The resolution of the display is 1792 x 828 pixels which are just over 720p, which doesn’t seem great but rest assured the display here is top-notch, as far as LCD’s go.

Now in 2019 most smartphone providers aim to bring their users and edge-to-edge display, which is why we were slightly disappointed to find a rather thick border around the edge of the iPhone 11.

Not only this but the likes of Samsung, Huawei and others are moving away from a notched screen, a hole punch design seems to be in trend now.

Unfortunately, Apple has not followed suit with this and they still insist on a rather big notch at the top of their device, it is important as it houses the front-facing the camera, as well as face ID sensors.

One thing we love about the iPhone 11 display is how bright it can get; it can run up to 625nits of brightness, which is fantastic.

This ensures that you won’t be squinting at your phone when using it in broad daylight.

Just like last years iPhone XR the display here is superb, with accurate colours and great contrast.

Those that are passionate about a display or have previously come from an OLED may notice a slight difference, but as far as LCD screens go this is as close to an OLED as you will find.

There is a ‘True Tone’ feature which automatically adjusts brightness levels for you depending on how much ambient light there is, this works well and in when going into darker environments you won’t need to keep upping your brightness.

There is also a blue light filter that can be used to stop the display damaging your eyes in these scenarios; this is great for browsing social media at night.

The iPhone 11 display doesn’t support HDR10, or Dolby Vision which is both available on the iPhone 11 Pro, this is to be expected as the Pro models usually do have some neat extra features.

That being said the iPhone 11 display does have a 120Hz input pulling, which is fantastic for gaming as the display reacts super quickly to your finger.

As previously mentioned the iPhone 11 does have face ID, this essentially 3D facial mapping which works excellent as a security feature for your phone.

The face ID feature is super quick too, however it does require you to swipe up on the screen after you have been recognised which is very annoying.

We loved on the Samsung Galaxy S10 how it does this for you, so no need to keep swiping to unlock your phone.

As a whole, the iPhone 11 display is definitely the phone’s weakness, that is purely because it is an LCD.

It was hard to tell the difference and to the untrained eye, the display of this phone and the iPhone 11 Pro look extremely similar.

iPhone 11 Review: Performance

So what are the iPhone 11 specs like?

Well they are impressive. First of is the iPhone 11 audio, the phone has a set of stereo speakers which produce a high-quality sound and can go up to very loud volumes.

Again these aren’t quite as good as the ones used on the iPhone 11 Pro, but they are certainly not bad and listening to music through the phone without headphones connected is great.

At no points does the music distort or crackle. As the iPhone 11 has no headphone jack you will need to plug in a pair of wired headphones, or you can check out our Apple Airpods 2 review and check out Apple’s wireless buds.

See Related:

*Apple iPhone 11 Pro Review*
*Apple iPhone XS Review*
*Apple iPhone XR Review*

One thing that Apple has stuck with over the years is not including a MicroSD slot on their devices.

We guess it is because they don’t want any third party components being placed into their smartphones but this can become annoying if your someone who loves to take lots of photos and videos.

The iPhone 11 comes in either 64, 128 or 256GB of internal storage.

We do feel like this is rather stingy as the OnePlus 7 Pro, Huawei P30 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S10 all start at a reasonable 128GB of storage.

We would recommend opting for the 128GB model over a 64GB as we feel this can be filled up extremely quickly, with applications, videos and downloaded music the 64GB storage dwindles away extremely fast.

The Apple iPhone 11 features the brand new A13 Bionic chipset; this is backed with 4GB of RAM and makes the phone the fastest Apple has ever made.

The iPhone 11 performance is exactly the same as what you will find on the iPhone 11 Pro, and is unmatched by anything you will find in the Android space.

Apple says the iPhone 11 has 20% better CPU performance than last year, which makes for a ridiculously fast and snappy smartphone.

This is great for those that love to play games on their phone; we tested out a couple of our favourite MMORPG games such as Runescape and Minecraft.

The iPhone 11 handles these exceptionally well with no lag or stutter even on the highest graphic settings.

The phone does a great job at staying cool too as it features heat dispersing graphing layers, this means you can play your favourite games for longer without causing stress to the phone.

Throughout our testing of the iPhone 11 we found that the phone is extremely fast and responsive, this makes for a great gaming handset as it’s speedy and fluid to use.

One thing to note is that there is no 3D touch with this phone, so pressing harder on the display won’t bring up any extra menus, instead you need to long-press and wait for the new menus to show up, for things like live photos.

When it comes to software the iPhone 11 has had a nice upgrade too, as it features the brand new iOS 11.

One new feature of the iPhone 11 is a system-wide ‘Dark Mode’, this can turn all of the white menu’s into black ones, we are used to doing this on our Samsung Galaxy S10 to save power when we are running low.

However with this phone being an LCD panel it doesn’t save any juice, but it still looks cool.

Now with iOS 11, the new iPhone has smarter mini-notifications.

For example, changing the phones volume will now bring up a nice bar that you can easily slide along rather than a chunky box that takes up a ton of space on your screen.

This sounds small but we feel it increases the user experience and the way you interact with the phone.

Another noticeable upgrade from last year’s iPhone XR is the face unlock tech, it now has a much wider field of view which results in you being able to unlock your phone from much further away.

You still need to have your face in the shot of the unlock camera but it is much better than it was on the previous iPhone X which was released two years ago.

The iPhone 11 also has a new way of typing which is fantastic for one-handed use, the phone predicts what you are going to say next and learns what is the most likely word.

Therefore all you need to do is swipe your phone and the phone can string up some nice sentences ready to sent to your friends.

As well as this there are brand new memoji stickers too, not that we used them anyway but they are there nevertheless.

The iPhone 11 now lets you change Wi-Fi networks from within the control centre, which is really useful as you no longer need to dig into the settings and spend your time finding the network.

The iPhone 11 software is impressive, with tons of new features to play around with which make using the phone so much easier.

There are a ton of new filters in the camera app, for example, new intensity sliders to help make your image the best it possibly can.

This is the same for video footage too, so with just using the iPhone 11, it is easy to produce some impressive home videos.

iPhone 11 Review: Camera

Throughout this Apple iPhone 11 review we found that the camera was one of the most impressive areas of the phone.

The camera department is where the new iPhone 11 has had the most noticeable upgrade; it now has another camera that is situated directly underneath the usual single camera that can be found on the iPhone XR.

So the iPhone 11 camera set up is now a 12MP f/1.9 OIS main lens with an additional 12MP f/2.4 ultra-wide-angle lens.

On the iPhone 11 Pro you also get a third telephoto lens too, which produces some amazing results.

Shooting images on the iPhone 11 results in some fantastic results, especially in daylight. 

The primary shooter has impressive detail and very low nose, with strong dynamic range too.

That being said we do feel like images produces aren’t quite as punchy as images produces on Huawei phones, as Apple seems to maintain a realistic look rather than oversaturating images.

There is some over-sharpening on the main camera too, contrast does lack as well.

One great feature about shooting images with the main lens is ‘capture outside the frame’.

When taking a photo with the main camera the phone will also take one with the ultra-wide too, so if you have left anybody out of the frame the phone will detect this and suggest the wide-angle photo.

This feature also works for videos too, so it essentially means that the phone takes videos and photos with both lenses at the same time, just in case you don’t happen to like the one from the primary shooter. 

Another awesome feature of the iPhone 11 camera is that portrait mode now works with other objects too, and not just human faces.

So it doesn’t have to detect a human face to the fake shallow depth of field.

Shooting in the dark on the iPhone 11 is easy too, as we now see a dedicated night mode that does well to draw in ambient light to increase the detail of the image.

The night mode is very similar to the one seen in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, it works exceptionally well and really lights up images that are shot in low light.

To shoot images at night the phone asks you to hold the phone steady for 2-5 seconds, so the shutter can stay open for as long as possible.

The iPhone 11 then takes multiple photos at different exposure levels then brings them all together to bring you the finished product.

If you do happen to own a tripod or something to mount the phone on, you can increase the capture time to 30 seconds, allowing the phone to draw in as much ambient light and take as many shots as possible before stitching them together for your finished product.

With you needing to hold the phone steady for a couple of seconds, this does mean that it is almost impossible to take night modes shots at a moving object or even someone that it moving slightly.

Thanks to iOS 11 you can also hold your shutter button down in order to take video footage, previously this used to burst images which can still be done by sliding your finger left.

This quick video option is great for those that love to upload a video to social media, or capturing events quickly.

As it takes a matter of seconds to start recording from unlocking your phone.

The iPhone 11 camera has a cool new feature called ‘Deep Fusion’, this works by snapping nine photos before you even press the shutter button, the phone then goes through the images on a pixel by pixel basis to determine how to best optimise and light the image before you take it.

However you will need to wait until later on in the year for this feature to be released, we don’t know why it wasn’t released with the launch of the new phone but it is certainly something we are looking forward to trying out when it does eventually launch.

The ultra-wide camera on the iPhone 11 is pretty basic as far as ultra-wide cameras go.

There is no auto-focus or OIS that is a little disappointing, but quality-wise we see that it matches the main camera, which is great.

There is some slightly visible noise but this is to be expected from an ultra-wide lens.

The lens works by increasing the field of view quite dramatically, which results in an image that fits much more in than the regular main cam.

One of our favourite things to do with the ultra-wide lens is to shoot group photos with friends, as it’s easy to fit everyone into the shot without having to bunch up together.

Around the front of the phone, there is an 8MP selfie cam, this lens can produce some impressive selfies when shooting in daylight.

This lens will impress those that love to use Snapchat and Instagram; there is now a cool feature that allows you to use the wide-angle lens to take slow-motion selfie videos, we aren’t sure why anyone would want to do this, but the option is there if you wish.

Colours from the selfie camera are accurate, with the dynamic range being great too.

The selfie cam can now take 4K video at up to 60fps that is stabilised too; this makes it the perfect camera for vloggers.

Speaking of video recording the 4K footage shot from the main cam look fantastic, there is low noise and sharpness is spot on.

Colours look true to life, and we love that you are able to record with the ultra-wide lens to capture more in the footage.

As a whole the iPhone 11 camera is impressive and it is certainly a big upgrade from the previous iPhone XR, the ultra-wide angle lens is great and we love the photos it produces in day or night.

The dedicated night mode on the iPhone 11 is great too, it can turn images that would usually be black and dull into a well-lit photo that is social media-ready.

iPhone 11 Review: Battery Life

The iPhone 11 has a 3100mAh battery that is slightly bigger than the iPhone XR.

However, battery life is much better than the one seen on the iPhone XR due to the new chip in the iPhone 11.

We have to say that the iPhone 11 battery life is one of the best we have ever seen, the phone has more than enough power to get you through a full day of intense usage and much more.

The battery here is even better than the one used in the more expensive iPhone 11 Pro, we suspect this is due to the iPhone 11 having an LCD display which takes up a lot less power than the more thirsty OLED in the iPhone 11 Pro.

The phone does support 18W fast charging as does the iPhone 11 Pro, but for some reason, an 18W charger doesn’t come with the phone.

Apple only supplies its users with a 5W charger, which charges the phone from 0 – 20% in half an hour.

Whereas the 18W charger would see it have over 50% in the same amount of time.

There are rumours circulating that the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro both feature Qi charging, however, Apple has disabled the feature in its software.

So before you go out and purchase the iPhone 11 just note that as of yet the phone does not have Qi charging.  

iPhone 11 Review: Summary

So should you buy the iPhone 11?

Well if you aren’t too bothered about a super bright OLED display or having an extra camera on your phone, then yes.

The iPhone 11 is the phone that offers value for money, as it brings lots of the features of the more expensive Pro model but for a cheaper price.

Given the price that the Apple iPhone 11 can be attained on a contract deal here in the UK, we do feel that it is currently slightly overpriced.

With a stylish design that has an iP68 water resistance rating and a new dual-camera set up which features an impressive ultra-wide lens.

The iPhone 11 is a new and improved version of the iPhone XR, and if you own an XR then you know first hand the value that the phone provides.

The iPhone 11 specs are impressive and make the phone run lightning quick with no latency whatsoever even when playing demanding games.

Battery life is one of the best we have seen in any smartphone, period.

Thankfully the iPhone 11 is waterproof, which allows you to submerge the phone in up to 1.5m of water for 30 minutes.

This is down to the new chip that Apple has used in this phone, which reduces power output to keep the phone running for longer.

The only downside here is that Apple does not include an 18W fast charger in the box, which is clearly a cost-saving factor, so you will need to purchase one of these yourself, unfortunately.

Apple iPhone 11 (128GB) - White 

Overall the iPhone 11 brings a lot to the table, with a friendly, easy to use design with plenty of performance power too.

We hope you have enjoyed our iPhone 11 review, feel free to leave a comment and share if you liked this review.

You can also check out the best iPhone 11 deals at the top of this post, and can see our other mobile phone reviews here.