Apple’s new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max will be available starting next Friday in its key countries. Unfortunately, Malaysia isn’t included in its first and second wave list but it looks like we won’t have to wait too long before it is sold here officially. Celcom and Digi have already started teasing the upcoming iPhone models on their respective websites.
On Celcom’s front page, it showed the standard iPhone XS official visual with a text “Check back later for availability”. Digi is doing the same thing as well but interestingly, they have also included a teaser for the iPhone XR.
The iPhone XR will only go on sale in first wave countries next month. Nevertheless, these are indications that Apple will be rolling out their latest devices in Malaysia very soon. If buying outright is too much, getting it on contract could be a better alternative as you’ll get additional subsidies from the telcos.
When the iPhone 7 was introduced in 2016, it took Apple 31 days to release it officially in Malaysia. For last year’s iPhone 8, it went on sale in Singapore on 22 September but we got it on 20 October 2018. We are guessing the new iPhone XS could go on sale sometime in mid-October next month.
It looks like Apple has been ramping up in production to ensure that there’s enough stock for a faster global rollout. At the time of posting, it has been 24 hours since pre-orders have started in Singapore and you could still pre-order most variants and have it delivered on 21 September. At the moment, it appears that the iPhone XS Max in Gold is the most popular. If you check out their online store, there’s now a 1-2 weeks wait for shipment for all 3 storage options.
To recap, the iPhone XS is an incremental update to the iPhone X and we expect it to be priced around the RM5,000 (SGD 1,649) range for the base 64GB model. New for 2018 is a larger iPhone XS Max that comes with a huge 6.5″ OLED display. That’s going from about RM5,400 (SGD 1,799) for the base 64GB model and it will go up to about RM7,000 (SGD,2349) for its largest 512GB variant.
The iPhone XR is a cheaper alternative under RM4,000 that has a 6.1″ IPS LCD display. It uses the same A12 Bionic chip as the XS and XS Max but it comes with just a single 12MP f/1.8 main camera at the rear. For a quick recap, you can watch our video below or check out our post on the 10 things you should know.
