iPhone 11 review: has a terrific battery life and excellent camera, and is the best phone for the average consumer, but iOS 13 is buggy
This was not a hard review — Video by Becca Farsace, Alix Diaconis, Phil Esposito, Andrew Marino, Grayson Blackmon, William Joel, Owen Grove, and Mariya Abdulkaf
Context & Ripple Effects
The Verge's iPhone verdicts have been building toward this one for a year: the iPhone XS and XS Max were dinged as expensive in 2018, leaving the 'best phone for most people' slot effectively open.
The iPhone 11 claims that slot on battery and camera alone — and the claim sticks. When Apple shipped the iPhone 12 a year later, The Verge found its battery life still inferior to the iPhone 11's despite a higher price, and the iPhone 13 generation only restored the excellent-battery verdict in 2021.
First-order effects
- Average buyers choosing in fall 2019 get a clear default: the iPhone 11 beats the pricier XS tier on value, with buggy iOS 13 as the main reason to hesitate.
- Early adopters absorb the software risk — the hardware verdict is settled, so iOS 13 stability becomes the deciding factor for launch-window purchases.
Second-order effects
- Apple's own next launch gets benchmarked against this review rather than against spec sheets: the iPhone 12 arrived more expensive with worse battery, which kept the iPhone 11 alive as the value pick in Apple's lineup.
- Each subsequent review inherits this one's yardstick — camera quality and battery life become the axes every new iPhone is scored on, from the 12 through the 13.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, annual iPhone releases function less as upgrades than as re-pricing events, where the prior year's model becomes the consumer benchmark and each new review either defends or cedes the 'best for most people' title.
- Software quality emerges as the swing variable in these verdicts: hardware differences between generations narrowed across the XS-to-13 span, leaving OS polish and price as what actually separates a rave from a qualified recommendation.
The trend: Annual iPhone reviews now serve as rolling benchmarks, with each generation judged against its predecessor on battery, camera, and price — making last year's model the de facto value standard.