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 releases. It couldn't be different with the iPhone XR, which will reach more than 50 countries this Friday and, therefore, Ma’s vice president of global marketing, 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 talking about the mission of the iPhone XR, which is to take 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 know that if we can bring that to the market (the iPhone X technology), we will need to grow the line and make it accessible to more people, ”said Schiller.
The conversation also touches on the question of the iPhone XR screen, an LCD panel with a lower resolution than its more expensive brothers, 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 mean nothing more:
I think the only way to judge a screen by looking 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 release almost two months after his brothers, Schiller dismissed it, saying that Apple is launching the device “when they are ready ”.
O Engadget He also asked if it would be challenging for Apple to sell the iPhone XR as an intermediate device, with intermediate resources, for the initial price of US $ 750, when several competitors, especially Chinese Xiaomi and Huawei, sell competitors with the same level of resources at US $ 500. or even less. Again, Schiller deconverted, stating in thinking 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 forecasts are good, however.
