iPhone XS and XS Max review: Apple is underselling A12 chip performance, which is just margins off the best desktop CPUs; camera performance lags competition
It's been a little over three weeks since Apple unveiled the new iPhone XS, XS Max and the XR. The new flagship line …
Context & Ripple Effects
AnandTech's silicon verdict closes a three-year arc that began when its iPhone 6s review crowned the A9 the best SoC in any phone. With the A12 now measuring within margins of the best desktop CPUs, Apple's lead has grown from best-in-phone to best-in-class against PCs — yet the same review flags the camera as lagging the competition.
That split verdict lands mid-cycle: The Verge's earlier [[a:933555|XS and XS Max review praised display, speakers, and battery life while calling the camera very good but not great]], and the cheaper iPhone XR ships with the same A12 and cameras. The chip is no longer the differentiator between Apple's own tiers — or arguably versus rivals.
First-order effects
- Apple's own marketing is underselling its strongest asset: reviewers measuring the A12 near desktop-class performance give Apple a silicon story it isn't fully monetizing in how it positions the XS line.
- Buyers comparing the XS against the XR face nearly identical processor and camera hardware, pushing the decision onto price, size, and display quality.
Second-order effects
- With the A12 gap closed on raw compute, Android competitors can no longer win the spec-sheet fight on CPU performance, so differentiation shifts to the exact area this review flags as Apple's weakness: camera processing.
- The XR's lower price for the same chip cannibalizes the XS's premium justification, pressuring Apple to widen the feature gap between tiers in future generations.
Third-order effects
- If mobile SoCs keep converging with desktop CPUs, the smartphone arms race structurally moves from processor benchmarks to imaging pipelines and on-device AI acceleration, where the review says Apple currently trails.
- Sustained custom-silicon leadership reinforces Apple's vertical-integration moat — control of the chip becomes the durable advantage even as individual features like cameras see-saw year to year.
The trend: Smartphone competition is migrating from raw SoC performance, where Apple's custom chips have built an unassailable lead, toward computational photography and tiered product segmentation.