The iPhone XR sits between the iPhone XS (left) and an iPhone 7 Plus (right).

iPhone XR review — A decent smartphone for mobile games

I’ve been looking around for a smartphone game to show off my Apple iPhone XR, and I’ve found it in Command & Conquer: Rivals, the new real-time strategy game from Electronic Arts. It turns out it’s also a good game to show off what the iPhone XR can do. I’ve played with both the game and the phone for a while, and I’m enjoying both.

The new game has good audio and gorgeous graphics, as well as fast-action head-to-head combat with other human players. It’s been called a Clash Royale clone, as it has the same basic one-versus-one multiplayer action. But the audio is better and so are the graphics. I like how the rock-paper-scissors strategy works and how you have a wide array of weaponry to use against your rival in a kind of military chess game. The explosions are tiny on the mobile screen, but they’re first rate when it comes to quality.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.