Apple is launching its first iPhone with an OLED display, the first model with an ultra-wide screen, and the first without a physical home button. It’s called the Apple iPhone X, and it’s a new high-end model that will join the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus in the company’s lineup.
It’s also that funny looking model that’s been showing up in leaks for months. As expected, it has slim bezels on all sides… but a huge cut-out at the top of the phone for the camera system. But Apple is explaining that the cut out contains the True Depth camera system needed for a new feature: Face ID.
The new phone doesn’t come cheap though: Prices will start at $999 for a model with 64GB of storage. There will also be a 256GB model.
Since the iPhone X lacks a home button, it also lacks the fingerprint sensor embedded in the home button on earlier models. So the new login system uses an infrared camera, a dot projector, and other components to unlock your device when you’re looking at it, even in the dark and even if you’re wearing a hat, glasses, or a new hairstyle.
Apple says Face ID is even more secure than the Touch ID fingerprint sensor… with only about a 1 in 1 million chance of a stranger being able to unlock your device with facial recognition. Face ID works with Apple Pay and third-party apps as well as device unlocking.
The iPhone X also has an Apple A11 Bionic chip with a neural processing engine for on-device face recognition.
Apple demonstrated the phone’s new features at its new product launch event today, and the iPhone X was clearly the star of the show. But while the new device certainly has a striking design, I couldn’t help but notice how the camera cut-out looks fine on the Apple home screen or other apps where the time, battery, and wireless notifications wrap around the camera… but it looks kind of ridiculous in devices with a white or light background, and even weirder when viewing videos or other apps that run in full-screen, where a black bar would probably make more sense than a camera cut-out.
Another change due to the lack of the home button comes in the form of a software change: you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to go to the Home Screen from any view.
The phone has a 5.8 inch, 2436 x 1125 pixel display with 458 pixels per inch, which is the highest pixel density of any iPhone to date. Apple calls it a “Super Retina Display.”
Like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the iPhone X has glass on the front and back. The iPhone X has a surgical stainless steel band around the sides, and the phone will be available in grey and black color options.
The iPhone X has 12MP dual rear cameras, both with optical image stabilization, and a quad LED flash.
Apple says the phone supports the  Qi wireless charging standard, which means you can use existing third-party chargers. But Apple also plans to launch its own wireless charger in 2018. It’s called AirPower and it’s a single charging pad that can charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and Apple AirPods wireless earbuds all at the same time.
The company says the iPhone X also offers up to 2 hours more battery life than the iPhone 7.
The Apple iPhone X goes up for order October 27th and ships on November 3rd.
Think $999 is too much to pay for an iPhone? Apple’s iPhone 8 models will be available this month for $699 and up. And Apple is continuing to offer older models with starting prices as low as $349 for the iPhone SE.
It looks good, but we’re nowhere near the impact of the original iPhone – to be fair, it’s not realistic to think they could out-do themselves 10 years later when smart phones have become so common-place.
Frankly I felt like I was watching Apple unveil the Samsung Galaxy S8 Edge, “deja vu”.
So now I can unlock anybody’s iPhone X by showing it to their face… Is that right?
Only slightly different than a fingerprint scanner, but I wonder how many people really care about that sort of thing.
I wonder if it works if someone does that when you’re sleeping? (Again not that different from a fingerprint scanner, except that you wouldn’t need to try multiple fingers.)
$999 for a phone with 64GB storage.
Every year I think that there’s no way people are going to keep falling for the stuff Apple releases at the prices they release it at… and every year I’m proven wrong.
Meanwhile, Apple does this behind everyone’s back. I wonder how bad iPad Pro sales are currently. I know for certain they don’t move fast at the local Best Buy like the Surfaces do.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/12/apple-raises-ipad-pro-prices/
I wonder how resistant in practice Face ID is to twins…
Good question. I know a couple of twins–I wonder if one of them will buy this phone?
There’s one thing that concerns me a little: swiping up to access the home screen.
I’m not sure if anybody else has experienced this but whenever I’m in WhatsApp or any other app that happens to be displaying the keyboard when I try swiping up (to access the widgets to turn on/off wifi, Bluetooth etc in the control panel or whatever Apple choose to call it) it more often than not interpreted those swipes as taps of keys on the keyboard instead. Getting that panel to be displayed often turned out to be a frustrating experience.
If the same problem exists with the iPhone X then it will be even more annoying as it means not being able to easily get back to the home screen (or at least not do so as conveniently)
Is my math off, or is it actually taller than normal, not wider, assuming portrait mode? When I think of a phone being wide it tends to be the shorter distance I am thinking of.
And related to that, it is actually taller if you only measure from the lowest part of the top of the screen?
That they focused on animojis as a key feature shows the state of apple today.
So…
– Wireless charging (finally)
– An AMOLED screen, that is sightly above FHD resolution, and has about 500 pixels in an unusual cutout place.
– Dual 12MP camera and an IR supported front camera, kinda like a built-in Kinect.
– Usual better CPU, more RAM, yadda-yadda
– still no headphone jack. So brave!
– Costs and arm and a leg and the blood of your firstborn son
– all the big words (amazing, best, never ever, revolutionary), kinda like a Trump press-conference except Apple had been doing this before Trump did.
Welp, I don’t get that “must have it” vibe. It’s a nice, very expensive phone that’s still gimped by the lack of a headphone port.
Edit:
Oh, yeah! How could I forget!? Animojis! The End of Times is upon us!
I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until there’s a “fix” for that. https://liliputing.com/2017/09/hacker-builds-iphone-7-headphone-jack.html
Yeah 🙂 Maybe there’ll be one to remove animojis too!
I’m not angry with Apple for dropping the jack, because honestly I never ever considered getting an iPhone myself. It’s unnerving because all the other companies follow the “trend” set by Apple, so they also started to drop it, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc… If Apple were to jump off a cliff, they would jump off as well. It has been said several times by far more smarter people than me the past year, why it’s a bad move and why the lighting and the BT solutions are all inferior to good-old jack. Let’s just accept that for the next few years all the flagship phones will be shot in the leg by this “brave” “trend”, and hope my current phone can hold out until in a brave move Apple reintroduces the “legacy compatible, all-new, incredible, 360 degree physical headphone connector”.
You have a hundred other brands you can buy, why hung up on Apple?
I never owned an Apple device in my life, but all have a choice. So buy what you want instead of moaning about other people’s choices.
hmmm….lot of wow words….1 n 1 million, Bionic chip, Neural processing engine, Super Retina Display…. I always hate filtering their press releases to figure out what it actually is/does.