iPhone 11 after 3 years

dhruvtalksstech
Dec 7, 2022
4 min read

The iPhone 11 came out in September 2019 and is a little over 3 years old. I would say a year or more is left in its lifecycle and that is why it is a great way to assess how far we have come in terms of advancements in technology and how the iPhone 11 held up over the years. My mother got the iPhone 11 in late 2020 for about 42K from an offline store. She was able to get the discount because of the holiday season and by using HDFC's card offers. Right off the bat, I would say the phone was a steal deal and it does not get any better than this. The phone was of incredible value for the price and is one of the best tech purchases that I have ever made.

A day after getting the phone, my mother accidentally spilled some tea on the phone. As advertised in the Apple commercial, the phone was fine and the speakers worked just fine. The display was responsive and there was no external damage. The phone was not always in the best condition. It was barely in normal conditions. There was always a lot of moisture and steam in the kitchen. It was kept on wet and dusty surfaces, held with wet hands, and a lot more. The body of the phone has held up very well. There are dents or scratches despite the torture. The screen has a couple of visible scratches but that's it. The earpiece does not work as well as it used probably because a lot of moisture and dust clogged up into the speaker.

The battery health is at 87% and like the 12 Pro in my house, has been at 87% for a very long time. My mother primarily uses the phone for Facebook, WhatsApp, calls, and a bit of browsing. She is able to end the day with at least 20-30% after using it for 3-4 hours. She got the Purple color and I feel it was the best color. The camera bump is very small like the 12 Pro's and does not rock the table very much. There is a dual camera system - a wide and an ultrawide camera. It was Apple's first time putting an ultrawide camera in their phone and that is why the finesse was missing. There was a considerable deterioration in photo quality when using the ultrawide and the selfie camera was mediocre even by 2019 standards. The photos from the selfie cam looked mediocre and grainy.

As a pro user, I often felt the lack of a telephoto lens which still continues to this day. The display was bad then and it is bad now. I still remember that photos looked so much better on my phone and I had the A50 at that time. Just the thought that an 18K phone had a better display than a 65K phone just did not sit right with me. The LCD panel was one of the most dated components of 11. The resolution was non-existent and the black bezels surrounding the display were so THICK. I do not have a problem with the size of the display which was a perfect 6.1-inches but the phone itself seemed very big thanks to the curved frame. This makes me appreciate the squared-off shape of the current iPhones even more because it is the most efficient way to pack stuff in the frame and actually enables making the phone smaller while fitting a larger display.

The phone came out with IOS 13 and can currently run IOS 16. It is going to get another 2 years of major OS updates. For people who bought the 11 when it came out in 2019, they will probably have to get the battery replaced in a month or two. I would not be surprised if a lot of people had already got the battery replaced. I don't like the glossy back of the phone because it gets a lot of fingerprints and does not feel expensive like the frosted glass on the Pro models. But for someone who just wants an iPhone and cannot spend $1000 on a phone, the iPhone 11 was the only sensible option for them. It came with a flurry of compromises and did not deliver people's expectations but still sold millions of units.

I would not recommend the phone to anyone now because it feels considerably dated and the phone was not bleeding-edge when even it came out. The phone may seem very cheap now but the price cuts every year are insignificant considering the tech ages much faster than the 10K price drop each year. The phone also would not be around for a lot of time as it is only going to get 2 more OS updates. For those updates, the phone is going to feel slow since the hardware is going to try to extract more from the processor than it can handle. The A13 Bionic was the fastest chip on the planet when it came out and can still handle tasks incredibly well but can feel a little sluggish and burned out, especially for intensive games like COD and Genshin Impact.