The new iPhones are disappointing. Apple hasn’t been innovative or ground breaking for at least the last three iPhones (X), and for the three before that (7).

The iPhone 11 model year was safe, there aren’t any major jumps or risks taken they are largely the same phones that people bought last year. Apple themselves know this, as they did last year. The proof comes when Apple discontinued the iPhone X on their site and in their stores last year, and they did the same with the 11 this year.

Last year’s iPhone XS and XS Max were disappointing, but Apple fans and people who are into tech didn’t really think of it because it was an “S” year.

The new model year phone will come out with a number, the iPhone 5 we’ll say. This phone will be specced fully out for the industry standards at the time and will push the envelope with a new design in some way. The next year, is when the “S” year applies.

The “S” year Apple will only make another version of their proprietary operating system, iOS, and there will be marginal updates at best. With the iPhone 5, the big selling point was the inclusion of the fingerprint scanner on the home button. In years like 2015’s iPhone 6S, the improvements were to the build quality, and that was it.

The iPhone 11 looks to take the place of 2018’s iPhone XR. The XR was the “budget” variant that started at $750. Just for transparency, the word “budget” is in quotations because there are phones like the OnePlus 6T exist, that gives you better specs and a better product for around the same $700 price tag.

The 11 comes with a 6’1 IPS LCD display, that has a 1792-828 resolution display and 326 pixels per inch. What that means for my non-nerds is that once again, Apple has made a display that isn’t OLED, and that isn’t HD and it’s 2019. The 11’s display is only 625 Nits bright, which is well below industry standards. The 11 has a 3110 mAh battery and 4GBs of Ram.

For comparison, in March Samsung released their budget phone the Galaxy S10e. The S10e had an HD display with 438ppi, 5’8 inch AMOLED display. The e also shipped with 6GB of ram and a 15 Watt charger in the box, compared to the 11’s 5 Watt charger.

The iPhone 11 Pro is the standard model this year. I’m going to get my first gripe out of the way now so it’s over. Apple, it is 2019 you should not be shipping any phone, but especially not your $1000 flagship with only 64GB of internal storage, especially when it isn’t expandable via a micro SD card slot.

The rest of the phone is pretty standard, Samsung-made OLED display, 800 nits of brightness, 2436-1125 resolution , and a triple camera setup.

The one thing Apple deserves props on is the fact that the Pro models of the iPhone are going to ship with 15 Watt fast chargers in the box, and even then it’s still 10 Watts behind the competition, and about four years late.

The iPhone 11 Pro Max would be a great phone if we were looking at it in a vacuum. However, Samsung released their super specced out flagship device with Galaxy Note 10 Plus only a month ago.

The Max has a 6’5 inch all-screen OLED panel, that has a 2688-1242 resolution display that carries 458ppi. The Note 10+ has a 6’8 inch Quad HD+ display that is also all-screen with a resolution of 3040-1440 and 498ppi.

The Max’s screen is still great, but the 10+’s screen is just superior.

The Max has a triple camera setup, with the three cameras being Ultra Wide, Wide, and telephoto lenses. The 10+ has a quad camera setup wide, ultrawide, telephoto, and 3D VGA cameras. The Max battery size is 3110mAh, and the 10+ is 4300 mAh.

The processors are pretty much the same power, with the iPhone’s A13 Bionic chip probably being just a tad more optimized. The max ships with 4GB of ram and 64 or 256 GB of storage, non-expandable/. The 10+ ships with a whopping 12GB of ram and 256 or 512GB of storage, with the option to add an SD card of up to 1TB.

Apple knows that the phones are way too similar to warrant spending another $1100. They just don’t want you to know. And, if this trend of tired of tired ideas continues, it will be no surprise that sales will slip and many more will look for alternatives to a company that used to be cutting edge but now is just disappointing.