As well as artists promoting their new work, Apple executives also have the practice of going on a real press tour on the occasion of the company’s major launches. It couldn’t be different with the iPhone XR, which will reach more than 50 countries this Friday – and for that reason, the vice president of global marketing for Apple, Phil Schiller, sat down with the Engadget for a chat about the new device.
The interview starts by elucidating (or not) one of the big questions surrounding the cheapest iPhone: what the hell does “XR” mean, anyway? Well, to the disappointment of many … not much. According to Schiller, Apple’s letters never mean anything specific, but for him, there is a certain meaning in the designations of the new iPhones:
I love cars and things that go fast, and R and S are letters that denote sports cars that are really special.
The executive continues to talk about the mission of the iPhone XR, which is to bring the new technologies brought by the iPhone X to a new audience (who is not willing to spend US $ 1,000 on a new smartphone): “We knew that if we could bring that to the market [a tecnologia do iPhone X], we would need to grow the line and make it accessible to more people, ”said Schiller.
The conversation also touches on the issue of the iPhone XR screen – an LCD panel with a lower resolution than its more expensive siblings, which, despite being classified as a Retina screen, does not bring the pixel density of other recent Apple devices. According to Schiller, there comes a point when these numbers simply don’t mean anything anymore:
I think the only way to judge a screen is to look at it. If you can’t see the pixels, at some point the numbers don’t mean anything. They are arbitrary.
When asked if the challenges of mass producing a custom-cut and shaped LCD panel would have been the reason for the iPhone XR’s launch almost two months after his brothers, Schiller dismissed it, saying that Apple is launching the device “when they are ready ”.
THE Engadget he also asked whether it would be challenging for Apple to sell the iPhone XR as an intermediary device, with intermediate features, for the starting price of $ 750 – when several competitors, especially Chinese Xiaomi and Huawei, sell competitors with the same level of features to the US $ 500 or less. Again, Schiller dismissed it, saying he did not think in these terms:
We don’t think about categories. We think the iPhone X experience and technology is really wonderful and we want to make it accessible to as many people as possible, and we want to do it in a way that we still produce the best smartphones.
If Schiller’s (and Apple’s) intention is to materialize, we will have to wait the next few months to find out. The predictions are good, however.
