Say hello to the future.
I’ve had iPhone X for just under a week. By the time I publish this, I’d imagine it will have been about a week if not more. I was one of the people who was awake for 8:01AM (in the U.K. - I feel for you East Coast!) on October 27 to pre-order iPhone X. It had been announced just under 2 months prior to pre-orders and had been preceded by literally *years* of rumours. The model I went with was the 256GB Silver (unboxing video). I initially received a ship date of November 13, which I was very happy with - initial rumours predicted this device would be like gold dust until early 2018. However, about 10 minutes later I was browsing the Apple Store, looking out of interest at the current shipping times (by then 5-6 weeks) and I noticed my nearest Apple Store suddenly had the model I wanted available for pickup on November 3. Of course, I then ordered one for in-store pickup and I was nothing but impressed with how smoothly the experience went. It was my first time using Apple’s in-store pickup option, and I just walked into the Apple Store at my pre-chosen window, and within literally 5 minutes I had my brand new iPhone X. At 12:05pm. On launch day. I was not expecting that. I am very, very happy with my choice of model so far. I also bought AppleCare+ this year - the first time I have done so on an iPhone; crack that glass back, it’ll set you back £556(!) for an out of warranty replacement. With AppleCare+, it’s a much more bearable £75. £199 for 2 years extended warranty and support was worth it to me, seeing as I had just spent £1149 on a phone. Right now, I’m sitting outside a café in Paris - despite the fact it’s freezing - writing this review on my iPhone X. I didn’t even pack my iPad Pro, let alone my Mac.
Design
First things first. iPhone X is stunning. I think it is gorgeous in every way. I even like the notch. The thing about the notch, love it or hate it, is that it distinguishes iPhone X from it’s bezel-less competition. Just as the forehead-chin-home-button layout has been so iconically iPhone for the past decade, the notch is now taking that place. I love that Apple decided to own the notch rather than hide it, and because of that decision, I love it. Front and back, just like X’s slightly older and less-expensive siblings; iPhones 8 and 8 Plus, are glass. Supposedly the most durable ever used on a smartphone. Whilst this information fills me with confidence, only time will tell as to how well the device holds up. Currently, for my travels, I have the phone in a tech21 BulletShield case and I have a Belkin Invisiglass Ultra screen protector on. As previously mentioned, I also bought AppleCare+. I’m not taking any chances. When I get home, I’ll swap the excellent BulletShield for a thinner, generic, clear silicone case - just to minimise bulk when I don’t need the added protection courtesy of tech21. The switch to a glass back this year is not only pretty, it also brings the benefit of wireless charging. More on that later. The stainless steel edge is striking and the white back is almost pearlescent. It really is a magnificent-looking piece of hardware. To me, whilst sleek, the Space Grey model is just downright boring compared to the Silver. Maybe that’s because I had a Space Grey 6 Plus, followed by a Jet Black 7 Plus, but either way, in my opinion, Silver is the better colour this year. I won’t comment any further on the Space Grey X as I have not spent enough time with one to do so fairly. However, here’s an unboxing: video. The iPhone X feels amazing to hold; it’s quite weighty and feels immensely premium - even more so than previous iPhones.
User experience
Software wise, everything is bit different to what has come before. Pretty much everything has moved around somewhat. For example, Notification Centre has had to learn to share with Control Centre at the top - swipe down over the notch or left ‘ear’ for notifications, swipe down over the right ‘ear’ for control centre. For the first few days of ownership, I had to stop and think before carrying out what would normally be a routine action. It’s certainly weird after owning an iPhone for 8 years, to have to momentarily pause and think about how to do something. This really is the start of the next 10 years as far as iOS is concerned. As Jony Ive has said, the iPhone X user experience is so dictated by software, in 12 months time, this thing could be completely different. I agree with him - that is truly fascinating. The Home Indicator bar fades away into the experience and I haven’t found it intrusive at all. I have already perfected the speed at which I swipe up and pause to get to the app switcher (it really is a quick swipe-and-pause you do not need to accentuate it), and swiping left and right between open apps using the home indicator is a massive bonus for iPhone productivity. In regards to the rest of the OS, iOS 11 on iPhone X behaves as if it is somewhat Plus-sized iPhone, somewhat baby iPhone. After using Plus-sized iPhones for the last 3 years, you’d imagine I would be disappointed in the lack of landscape home screen, or iPad-style landscape view in apps such as Settings. Not at all. I always primarily use my iPhone in portrait, so I have yet to notice that these features are gone. To my surprise, I didn’t need to readjust my muscle memory to the new, skinnier keyboard. I can see why both of these things would be an issue to some people. Despite having a 5.8” display, iPhone X feels smaller than an iPhone Plus is almost every way. The 5.5” iPhone 8 Plus is still the king of Apple’s phablet phones. One feature I was very glad to see still present on iPhone X is the ability to 3D Touch the stock iOS keyboard and activate a trackpad-style method of moving your cursor around. Not that I expected it to be missing - but Apple do sometimes do some strange things. One of the many benefits of the new True Depth camera system is the facial tracking used to create Animoji. I’m sure you’ve seen these on the Internet (Animoji karaoke is amazing), and my god I’ve been having fun with them over the last week. I think they’re a great way of showing off the tech packed into that notch, using a popular, current trend. Who doesn’t love emoji? Now, if you’re lucky enough to own an iPhone X, you’ve got the future of emojis! Best of all, you can send them to any of your friends, regardless of whether they have an iPhone X or not. You can send them natively to anyone on iMessage, or export them as a video to send elsewhere, such as WhatsApp or Instagram. I’m sure future iOS updates will introduce new Animojis - it was recently discovered that the tiger and the frog emoji were both candidates for an Animoji redesign but sadly never made the cut.
Face ID
When Apple announced Face ID, I wrote about ‘Touch ID 2013-2017’. Whilst this was a bit of a light joke, I always expected Face ID to be just as good as Apple made it out to be during the keynote. It is. People had their doubts about Touch ID when iPhone 5s was introduced, and it turned out to be excellent, improving with iPhone 6s and becoming a standard feature of iOS. It even made its way to the Mac last year. I don’t know why anyone expected any different from Face ID. Apple have a lot of money at their disposal and they have sure as hell put a lot of money into this. The A11 Bionic chip features a new neural engine, and a computer vision array. This allows Face ID to learn your face as it changes. Face data remains in the Secure Enclave just like fingerprints used to. It can be used in lots of different lighting thanks to an IR sensor, and can also be used for apps and Apple Pay just like Touch ID. It turns out, if an App supported Touch ID - it will automatically support Face ID. The result is straight away, on day one, lots of my apps support Face ID right out of the box. Apple shared a statistic back in September at the keynote which revealed about 1 in 50,000 times Touch ID would unlock to the wrong fingerprint. This has improved to 1 in 1,000,000 with Face ID. From my experience so far, Face ID is learning my face, and recognition gets better every single day. Sure, very bright sunlight (unfortunately there’s a lot of that at this time of year when the sun is low in the sky) will occasionally result in Face ID not being able to make a match. It works perfectly in the dark, although sometimes lying on your side in bed will be a struggle. Now, Face ID works well from a flat surface, such as a table, provided the phone is sitting in a position which would be normal whilst using it flat on a table. The only time I find Face ID inconvenient is when the phone is lying in the centre of a table, and for whatever reason its just not convenient for you to pick it up. With Touch ID gone, if the phone is further away - aside from getting up and leaning over it - you will have to default back to using your passcode. I have a Qi charging mat in front of my iMac. If i want to unlock the phone whilst it’s on there, either I have to pull it off the charger and up to my face, or use the passcode. Whilst this is inconvenient, I am pretty certain Apple made the right move abandoning Touch ID in favour of the passive Face ID. I am excited to see if it will come to the rumoured OLED-notch-bearing iPad Pro redesign next summer.
Performance
You really don’t need to worry about this. Apple’s chip team are incredible. The A10 Fusion chip found in iPhones 7 and 7 Plus were already super-fast, and this year’s A11 Bionic chip is even snappier. I am almost scared to see what they will be capable of when they presumedly debut the A11X Bionic chip in the 2018 iPads Pro. The A11 is on a par with the current generation entry-level 13” MacBook Pro in benchmarks which really is incredible. Despite having an extra 2-cores this year, I haven’t really noticed a performance increase over my outgoing 7 Plus, yet my colleague instantly noticed it upon picking up my X and trying it out. He too, has a 7 Plus. As always, I expect the phone to get slightly slower with iOS 12 and if I still have it by then - iOS 13. The extra power over the 7 Plus will sure come in handy when that time comes.
Screen
iPhone X features an edge-to-edge display, which Apple is branding as 'Super Retina'. It's a stunning 5.8-inch OLED display, with a resolution of 2,436x1,125 equating to 2.7 million pixels. That's a pixel density of 458ppi. It also supports HDR (both Dolby Vision and HDR10), so both colours and lighting in videos look amazing. As with iPhones 8 and 8 Plus, we now have True Tone technology - which made its debut on the 9.7" iPad Pro in 2016. Sadly this year’s iPhones, 8 and X alike, do not support the ProMotion technology found on the 2017 iPads Pro. This is a massive shame, but hey, maybe that’s destined for the iPhone ‘8s’ and the iPhone ‘Xs’ next year. The LCD panels used on previous iPhone have always looked great, so initially I didn’t notice a major difference. Compare it side by side to an iPhone 7, you can notice the higher resolution, better colour temperatures and better colours in general. Compare it to an iPhone 6s, which lacks the P3 wide colour gamut introduced on the 7, it is worlds apart. The display on the 6s looks hostile and cold compared to the X. It really is quite harsh. DisplayMate tested the iPhone X display, and found it to be the best put on a smartphone to date. As expected from an OLED panel, blacks are deep and colours are vivid. It really is great to finally see an OLED display on an iPhone - it’s about time.
Camera
iPhone X features a new 12MP camera sensor with dual OIS on both the wide angle lens and the telephoto lens, meaning less noise in those zoomed and low-light photos. The camera is very similar to that of iPhone 8 Plus, but that doesn’t have OIS on the telephoto lens, a bit like the 7 Plus last year. There have been updates to Portrait Mode, including better edge detection in iOS 11, the ability to use HDR and the Quad LED True Tone flash in low light conditions. Also new is ’Portrait Lighting', with preset choices that you can swipe through to get interesting light effects on your subject. Apple has made it very clear that these are real time lighting effects - made possible by the neural engine on the A11 chip - and not just filters. You can actually change the applied effect after the picture has been taken, so you’re not stuck with your original choice. I’m a big fan of ‘Studio Light’ and ‘Contour Light’, but in some conditions, the latter can make skin tones look a bit cartoonish for my liking. ‘Stage Light’ and ‘Stage Light Mono’ are very cool when they work, and realistically, you won’t be using them too often, as they completely black out the background. Slow-mo video has seen its first update since iPhone 6 in 2014, now recording 240FPS in 1080p HD. More importantly, iPhone X can record 4K resolution video at a silky-smooth 60 frames-per-second. This has never been done on a phone before (besides iPhone 8) and is usually reserved for pricey cameras. The video it produces is stunning. You need to be using Apple’s new High Efficiency HEVC video format to shoot in 4K60, which is supported in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra. If like me, you have a Mac that’s older than mid-2015, you will not be able to view HEVC videos higher than 1080p/240fps, even if you have High Sierra. That’s a bit of a bummer for me, as my main Mac is a Late 2012 27” iMac, which is where I keep all my photos. I’m only going to be recording on this phone at 4K60, so until I am forced to upgrade my iMac, I’ll either have to copy my videos onto my 2016 13” MacBook Pro from my iMac and view them on there, or not at all. The new selfie camera remains at 7MP but now features both Portrait Mode and Portrait Lighting. Obviously, the pictures taken here aren’t nearly as spectacular as the those taken on the rear camera, but wow portrait selfies are impressive.
Battery life & charging
Apple claims battery life improvements of 2 hours over iPhone 7. Even coming from iPhone 7 Plus, I’ve noticed significant gains in battery life. It’s fairly impressive that Apple have squeezed such long battery life into such a small phone. The OLED display is more efficient than the outgoing LCD panel, and further optimisation in iOS 11 has helped make this possible. Of course, iPhone X’s glass back allows for wireless charging using the Qi standard. Whilst I think it’s excellent that Apple are using an industry standard - I share a £14 Spigen charging mat with my Dad and his 8 Plus - I cannot wait for AirPower to arrive in 2018, despite rumours saying that Apple’s wireless mat will cost $199. Wireless charging works as expected, you just put it on the mat and that’s that. iPhone X is designed to charge at a maximum speed of 7.5W, which is currently limited to 5W, the same as the included wall adapter for your lightning cable. However, iOS 11.2 will unlock the ability to charge at the full 7.5W when that is released in the next month or so . 7.5W however, is still slower than charging via a lightning cable and Apple 12W power adapter. At the end of the day, wireless charging is a late but welcome edition to iPhone, and it’s excellent that you can use pretty much any wireless charger you can find online, in hotels and on public transport. My £14 charger will do me fine until AirPower comes out, but if you’re not bothered about charging your iPhone, Watch Series 3, and AirPods at the same time, and you want something more substantial than the cheaper offerings, Apple are selling both Belkin and Mophie charging mats online and in store for £54.95.
What could've been done better?
My only gripe with iPhone X is the lack of a 120Hz ProMotion display. For whatever reason, Apple decided not to include this buttery-smooth technology introduced on the iPad Pro this past Summer. As soon as the keynote finished, I was immediately disappointed by this. I think it’s a shame seeing as everything else about this premium, flagship phone is just about as good as it could be - it really is a showcase of Apple’s finest tech. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Razer released the first smartphone with a 120Hz display - this could have been Apple. I fell in love with ProMotion the moment I saw it on the 2017 iPads Pro, and I think this was a massive missed opportunity here by Apple. Sure, don’t put it on the mass-market iPhone 8, but the £1000+ flagship should have it. I’m sure we’ll see ProMotion on an iPhone next Autumn.
A very exciting future.
iPhone X is probably the best hardware Apple have ever released. If you think £1000 is too much for a phone, you’re right - but you shouldn’t think of these devices as phones anymore. The elderly MacBook Air retails for £949 and iPhone X starts at £999, when you think about the tech packed into that notch alone, let alone the rest of the phone, I think the price is justifiable (well, almost, but this is Apple we’re talking about - the price will never be fully justifiable). If you don’t ‘get’ the iPhone X, then the iPhone 8 is the phone for you, as it is most people. Sure, some things might be considered a step backwards to the casual user - Face ID is considerably slower at unlocking your phone than the second-generation Touch ID sensor. The people who should buy iPhone X are the people who install betas. People like myself) who would much rather have a less refined, new, exciting technology in their day-to-day lives than a refinement of what we’ve had for the last decade (iPhone 8). iPhone X is a glimpse into the future - a very exciting future - but right now it’s meant for those who adore tech, not just anybody who is looking for a new iPhone.
:))