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Phones · Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone XS

33owners with an opinion
57%of verdicts positive
11/9positive/negative since 2024
7 yrslongest happy owner
3happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and reliability; criticized for durability and comfort.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 6 years
I am excited for the features announced. My current phone is the iPhone XS, which in September will be 6 years since its release. Mind you, I try not to get excited for other releases when I made the decision to not yet upgrade my phone.
Likes itOwned 6 yearsStill going
I don't think it's an unrealistic expectation for a hunk of bleeding-edge electronics that costs ~$1k and you interact with for a couple hours each day at minimum. I've had an iPhone XS since 2018/09 (equidistant to 2030 from today), and have had no significant issues – my upgrade cycle is ~6 years, there is at least one of us!
Likes itOwned 5 years
Interesting, it seems to be a statement that's spread around, but the sources do seem to be lacking, e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/vp2e7p/us... RE: MacBook Pro dying close to a year right after it's warranty it over --> well now you're just trolling. My iPhone 15 pro battery still maintains 100% battery health a year after its manufacturing date. It obviously won't need replacing in 1-2 more years even if I "really really push it and are OK with constantly charging". I used an iPhone XS until last year after it was about 5 years old, 5x longer than your supposed device-dead date. I don't think this is unusual.
Likes itOwned 5 years
You change your phone every year? Because I have this Android phone sitting on my desk for development. When I bought it it was almost as responsive as iPhones (and much cheaper). 4 years later the UI is a lagfest [1]. Meanwhile, my iPhone XS is over 5 years old and almost as responsive as on day one. And I have major version OS updates to blame for the "almost", while the Android one got one major update and was lagfest even before that. [1] I don't even use it every day, Android development is kind of a side job once in a while.
Likes itOwned 5 yearsStill going
My experience does not align with this at all. I've been using an iPhone XS for nearly 5 years. Other than wishing it had a more powerful camera, I haven't felt the need to get a new phone at all. Sure, it's not as snappy as my wife's brand new iPhone 14 Pro, but I can easily live with it for another year or two.
Doesn’t like it
I tried running Kokoro on my iPhone XS (several years old), and it was slower than real-time. So, i wouldn’t expect it to be usable on a Kindle. But if you find a solution, please let me know.
Likes it
Old devices work just fine. I've upgraded my old iPhone XS last year to the latest and greatest 16 to see what changed (not much), the old one was still fast (in fact faster than a most upper-midrange Androids, its insane how much of a lead Apple has) and the battery was good. I considered selling it, but quickly had to realize it was worth almost nothing. Also, when treated right, computers almost never break. There's so much hand-me-down stuff, that are not much worse than the current stuff, that I think people even in the poorest countries can get an okay computer or smartphone (and most of them do).
Doesn’t like it
> with old iPhones My first iPhone was a 4S and i was astonished how correctly i'm typing. At least in English. I even managed to bully the spell checker into reasonably accepting both English and Romanian, back when they didn't have multiple languages at the same time on the keyboard. I'm not sure when it started to go downhill, but I was using an XS and it was at at least one more version after whatever XS shipped with.
Doesn’t like it
Similar -- I'm currently nursing a 13 mini (the lightning port barely works, so I'm on magsafe). and before that I had an iPhone XS I think -- that one I managed to break the screen (the only time I've ever done that, I dropped it in a metal elevator). I replaced the screen but it was never the same. So I didn't go 11 years on two models, more like 7 years or so. But I'm definitely not on the two-years-and-upgrade plan.
Likes it
I see this criticism of Apple all the time and it’s completely at odds with my experience. Our family iPad Pro is older than my 8-year old son, and still gets security patches. My wife’s phone is an XS Max, launched in 2018; iOS 26 is the first release that doesn’t support it - it will continue to receive security patches for the foreseeable future. My son’s school laptop is my old 8gb 2020 M1 Air, which continues to have stellar performance and battery life and could run Tahoe if I was crazy enough to want to upgrade it. My work machine is a 2021 M1 Pro that runs just as great as the day I bought it (thanks, Al Dente!). My 3 Apple TV 4Ks are I-have-no-idea-how-old but they are still being updated and just get out of the way like a TV box should. I have no particular love for Apple (or any other company), but they’ve always treated me well as a customer. I can’t really think of another tech co that seems to make people as irrationally angry. Is it their marketing? I hate their marketing too. But their products and support are great.
Likes it
I have an XS and wanted to upgrade. But I still don't see a super appealing reason. Battery still decent at 72%. Photos still good enough. browsing fast, apps fast... It is the best iPhone I owned (3, 6s). But yeah, spotlight is slow and the phone constantly runs out of storage, so apps need to be deleted before installing updates and least used apps are constantly removed. Additionally the screens are way better now and you do see the difference with photos made on an iPhone 16. I guess I'll upgrade late this year when I am sure the 17 (pro?) is a reliable piece of hardware, like my iPhone XS is.
Likes it
Just buy a 5 year old iPhone - it's likely to be still better than the cheapo phone, and will get longer support as well, while being sold at rock bottom prices. I just replaced my iPhone XS, not out of necessity, but I wanted to see what the new ones were like. The 16 is barely better and I was suprised to find just how little the old one was worth second hand, considering it still runs circles around most midrange Android handsets.
Doesn’t like it
its not only about size but related to this smartphone weight. I find iphones quite heavy. Used to have iphone XS and now having iphone 13 mini and enjoying it more. Flip phones are even heavier.
Likes it
I’m often surprised that my iPhone photo app show old photos in the widget that look stunning and were taken with the iPhone XS and 11 PM. Night photos are better now but day photos stalled a long time ago. I find joy taking some shots with halide or photon in trueRaw where all processing is removed and grain is present. It gives an authentic look … so all HDR stuff is often too much
Doesn’t like it
There’s a diner in SF I frequent. I usually sit 15 feet from the door, on a busy retail corridor, with Verizon premium network access. My iPhone XS reports two bars of LTE but there’s never enough throughout for DNS to resolve. Same at my dentist’s office. I hope to live in a post slow internet world one day, but that is still many years away. (The XS does have an Intel modem, known to be inferior to the Qualcomm flagship of the era)
Doesn’t like it
The regular apple watch has some bugs that have been around for years, too. One of my favorite features is on the mickey/minnie watch face, they verbally tell you the time if you tap them..... except when they don't. Sometimes they just stop working until you power cycle the watch lol. Also phone calls to/from the watch seem to go through fits of random failure. Like at least once a week it'll inexplicably fail to get notifications or fail to answer phone calls. And then once a month I'll have to power cycle both the watch and the phone because they fall into a trap where any call in/out fails. I first noticed these bugs on my s4 and iphone xs. I'm currently using an s8 and iphone 13. Still got those bugs lol. Oh I thought of one more. Any iOS device with a home button and an alphanumeric password won't show you the keyboard when it first starts up. You have to hit the power button and then wake it with the home button to see the keyboard lol.
Doesn’t like it
Tbh even Apple had the idiotic idea of curved screens on some models. I'm still rocking an iphone XS with a majorly cracked screen. I haven't dropped it more than any other iphone i've had, but it's the only one I owned where the glass isn't protected by that straight metal edge. So ... crack crack crack. At least Apple seems to have given up on it.
Neutral
The tribal war thing over android vs iOS makes me laugh. It really is ridiculous. I have an iPhone XS and a Galaxy Fold 4, and have bounced around between android phone and iPhones over the years. I won't deny that there are some things Apple does better, but it's far from a night-and-day difference. The most shocking thing to me was playing around with a budget phone once, it was a like $150 motorola I bought for a family member. After setting things up on it, I seriously felt like I was missing almost nothing compared to my iPhone XS.... that i paid $1000 for... At this point the only reason I keep an iPhone is I really like my Apple Watch.
Doesn’t like it
If you have one of the idiotic models where the glass extends to the side, you just need to drop it on a hard surface. My iPhone XS is cracked now starting from two opposite corners. Funny enough, the touch screen still works perfectly, it's just the outer layer of glass that's gone so I plan to keep it 1-2 more years. [1] The newer and older models with a metal band around the edges should be more resilient. I'm probably dropping phones with the same frequency [2], but the older ones with the metal were just fine(tm) when i stopped using them, just the metal band dented in places. [1] I'd get it replaced but no way I'm paying Apple prices for this old phone, and the 3rd party repair shops warned me they may have to replace the whole display if the outer glass doesn't come off neatly and that will lead to iOS complaining it's not a genuine display onscreen. [2] or maybe more often, since the rounded edges all glass design is easier to drop...
Neutral
I buy very few big-ticket items new. Cars? Used, DIY repair for everything except tires, drive them 10-15 years until New England rust kills them. Computers? Work buys new but I try to skip an upgrade cycle. (I'm on a 2019 MBPro; prior to that was a 2013.) For home, I bought the kids open-box low-end gaming PCs (~$650ea) but for myself am using a perfectly usable Haswell-era Dell I bought on Craigslist for $75 and upgraded with an SSD. Phones? We buy 1-2 year old iPhones and run them usually through a second battery [DIY replaced]. (Kids and I are on the iPhone X (qty 2) and XS still.) For me, it's partly about saving money and diverting that money towards retirement, but it's also a matter of "I don't need or want to go through the shopping and upgrade process every 18-24 months; I have better things to do." I shop well/carefully but infrequently .