The iPhone X was in the rumor mill, very often, in the days leading to its launch. It just got unveiled by alongside its more simple brothers the iPhone 8 and the 8 Plus. Here’s is everything you need to know about the phone that marked iPhone’s tenth anniversary (the X means ten in Roman numbers).
Full screen AMOLED display
The display as expected was a full screen, bezel-less panel that only has a cut-out at the top. It is of AMOLED variety, a first for an iPhone, they are calling it Super Retina Display. To make it truly up to today’s display standards, the company made it HDR10 and Dolby Vision certified, so you can now watch those HDR videos on Netflix and etc. The screen has been capped at 5.8 inches which makes it bigger than the one on the iPhone 8 Plus, but it occupies a much smaller body. It has a resolution of 1,125 x 2,436 and a contrast-ratio of a whopping one million to one thanks to OLED technology.
Security: Face ID, no fingerprints at all
Now that the display took up the space of the home button that harbored the fingerprint reader, users will be forced to use the Face ID. It uses the camera and sensors on the top cutout of the front panel to do it’s magic. A depth camera system will use neural networks to read 30,000 points on your face to be able to distinguish you from intruders. This will be possible thanks to an infrared sensor, a flood illuminator, dot projector and the front camera; reading your face possible even in pitch darkness will be supported as well. The system is much more secure than TouchID, with a failure rate of 1,000,000 to 1 versus the 50,000:1 of fingerprints. This kind of assurance is key since Face ID will be used in Apple Pay and other security apps. The neural networks are adaptable such that they will be able to let you unlock your phone while wearing glasses and even a hat. However, the company warned that identical twins can fool it.
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Camera: Portraits on both front and rear
The dual camera implementation from the iPhone 7 remains. This time round, it has been made brighter with bigger apertures, f/1.8 for the regular shooter and f/2.4 for the telephoto, the quad LED flash system will now support slow sync.
More improvements come in the videos shot, the iPhone will be the first mobile to shoot 4K at 60fps (other phones max out at 30fps). 1080p or Full HD recording has been bumped to 240fps for awesome slo-mo videos if needed.
The front camera is still 7MP. However, due to the Face ID tech, it can take now take portraits. In fact, you can not only get the background blurry, you can even make it completely dark.
Under the hood: Apple A11 CPU is a powerhouse
Apple finally jumped into two tier processors. The new A11 CPU has six cores, 2 are high performances and the remaining 4 are battery efficient. In addition, there is a bionic neural engine chip that can perform 600 billion operations per second to make face recognitions work instantly.
3GB of RAM will make multi-tasking a breeze, while internal storage will come in two options 64GB and a huge 256GB.
Operating system: No home button; swipes take over and animojis overhaul emojis
As we said earlier, the iPhone X has no home button. If you have used an iOS device before, you know that the button is the central command for the fundamental navigation features such as going home, multitasking and more. Apple has replicated those actions using swipe.
To go home: swipe up from any app
To go to the multitasking panel: swipe up and hold.
To access siri: A side button is now present like for Bixby in the Galaxy S8.
Control panel: has been moved up top
Animojis were introduced as well, they change the facial expressions of the emojis you are using by recording you from the Face ID, sounds can be included as well. So now the monkey face can frown, and the cat face can have eye brows up (yes, even the poop face can change expression). The new iOS 11 will be running the show in a familiar manner in the rest of the system.
Battery
Now that all three iPhones come with glass construction, the company was able to build in wireless charging that aligns with QI standards; means that you can use other charging pads to power up your iDevice. Apple foresees a future where charging points will be all over the world, on café table (already happening), in cars, office furniture etc.
A special multi-charger coming next year will be able to fill up your Apple watch, Airpods earphones and the iPhone all at a go. It will be called AirPower, it will be the first of its kind.
Oh and thanks to the AMOLED screen, the iPhone X has two extra hours of battery life above what the new iPhone 8 has. The fast charge has also been incorporated, 50% charge in 30 minutes. In typical Apple’s fashion, the exact mAh capacity of the battery is not mentioned.
Price and availability: This futuristic tech doesn’t come cheap
The 64GB model will cost $999 but the 256GB version’s price is yet to be announced. Am guessing it will be $150 to$300 dollars more. Pre-orders start on October 27th while shipping begins on November 3rd. You have two colors to choose from, silver (more like white) or space grey (black).
A video to summarize it all
