MANILA, Philippines – It’s finally happened: you can now put more than one sim card in an iPhone. The new iPhone XS and XS Max’s dual-sim capability was finally confirmed at Apple’s September 2018 keynote, months after the rumors started to circulate. 

While the dual-sim feature has been around for a long time in Android phones, Apple took its sweet time before adapting the convenient feature. 

For the uninitiated, the dual-sim feature allows a user to use two different sim cards from either the same or different telecommunications carriers on the same phone. This is extremely useful for people who keep separate numbers such as those who use one strictly for business and the other for personal contacts. 

The two phones will also have an eSim feature in supported networks, which allows a user to use several numbers without having to switch out sim cards physically. 

The XS and XS Max are the successors of last year’s iPhone X. They will carry an A12 Bionic chip, the follow-up to the A11 Bionic. The A12, which is the world’s first 7-nanometer chip for mobile devices, allows the phone to open apps 30% faster than before; perform 5 trillions operations a second compared to the A11’s 600 billion operations a second; carry a maximum built-in storage of 512GB like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9; and improve efficiency of its neural network and algorithms. 

The A12 Bionic chip also benefits the camera system allowing it to process multiple layers of a photo faster than ever before. With the added power, Apple said, the phone is able to produce better-looking and more natural photos than its predecessors. The XS and XS Max are equipped with a 12MP, f1.8 camera and a 12MP telephoto f2.4 camera on the rear. On the front is a 7MP one. 

The XS has a 5.8-inch screen while the Max has a 6.5-inch one, both premium OLED displays allowing for deeper contrast, and pixel density.

The chip also allows a user to adjust the blurred out parts of a photo also known as the bokeh in post-processing similar to some recent Huawei flagship phones. 

The XS starts at $999 with 64, 256 and 512GB variants while the XS Max starts at $1,099 dollars coming in the same variants. Both phones will be offered in the US and other select countries initially on September 14, with a wider global rollout through the months. – Rappler.com