The iPhone XS and XS Max are just too damn expensive and Apple knows that. Why do we think that? Simply because according to a report from Reddit (via MacRumors), it appears that Apple is targeting owners of older iPhones with emails asking them to upgrade to the iPhone XR, the more affordable iPhone out of the trio of handsets the company launched last year.
As it stands the iPhone XS is priced starting at $1,000 which is admittedly a lot of money for a phone. The iPhone XR on the other hand is by no means cheap, but at $750 it does hark back to the early days of the iPhone when they were priced around that range. It does require certain compromises, such as giving up on OLED in favor of LCD, and also ditching the dual camera design in favor of a single camera that achieves similar effects via software.
The reports are also claiming that these emails are apparently customized, and are different from user to user depending on which iPhone you are registered as having (this is based on your Apple ID account). For example some iPhone 6 owners were reporting that they received emails about a $200 limited-time trade-in offer. The email also talks about how much faster the iPhone XR is compared to their model.
Recently some analysts have suggested that Apple probably needs to make price cuts, particularly to that of the iPhone XR if they’re hoping to sell more units of it, but like we said, at $750 it still isn’t what many would consider cheap, plus for $79 to replace the battery on their current iPhones and squeeze out an extra year, many seem to have done just that.