Apple iPhone XR isn’t cheap, but here’s why it’s cheaper than iPhone XS

Apple's iPhone XR is a more intriguing smartphone than the two premium iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max devices. Dubbed as the 'low-cost' iPhone, Apple's new smartphone will be available for a starting price of ₹76,900 and goes up to ₹91,000 for the top-end model. The prices are relatively lesser than iPhone XS and iPhone XS which are available at starting price of ₹99,900 and ₹1,09,900.

The significant price gap between iPhone XR and iPhone XS model makes us curious how and why this model is lesser expensive than the other two. Even though iPhone XR looks more or less the same as the other two phones and even has similar specifications, there are some subtle changes. Let's take a look at them.

Apple's iPhone XR comes with a larger 6.1-inch all-screen display with notch featuring Truedepth sensor. The display, however, is an LCD IPS panel which was used on the older iPhone 8. Apple iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have an OLED screen, a premium display quality which was used on the last year's iPhone X.

Apple has not included 3D Touch in the phone. Rather it offers a haptic feedback experience to mimic 3D Touch. In case you didn't know, 3D Touch is a pressure-sensitive feature that was launched in 2015 with iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. The technology recognises degrees of the pressure and shows features accordingly. The feature has been copied in many Android phones.

With LCD display, iPhone XR delivers lesser resolution 1792x828-pixel resolution at 326 ppi and 1400:1 contrast ratio. In comparison, iPhone XS has 2436x1125-pixel resolution at 458 ppi pixel density.

iPhone XR also comes with a single camera setup as compared to dual-camera setup on other two phones. Apple's iPhone XR has a 12-megapixel camera with f/1.8 aperture. Fortunately, except for an additional sensor, iPhone XR retains all of the software and hardware features like optical image stabilisation and 4K video recording at 24 fps, 30 fps or 60 fps.

There's a minor yet very important difference that unlike iPhone XS, iPhone XR comes with older IP67 certification, which offers water resistance maximum depth of 1 metre up to 30 minutes. The other two phones have better IP68 certification for water and dust resistance.

While the base models of all three phones come with 64GB built-in storage, Apple is offering a 128GB storage mid variant as opposed to 256GB storage for iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.