Facts IPhone X

THE  NEW  IPHONE  X 

THE EDGE-TO-EDGE OLED SCREEN IS GORGEOUS

The most obvious standout feature of the iPhone X is the OLED screen, which the lucky few who’ve held it say is probably the most stunning smartphone screen they’ve ever seen. The edge-to-edge display is copied from past Android devices, starting more or less with the Xiaomi Mi Mix last year and making its way to global mainstream prominence in the Samsung Galaxy S8 back in April. But the lack of originality hasn’t stopped Apple from manufacturing a beautiful piece of hardware.

There are some weird quirks to contend with, like the controversial rectangular “notch” cut-out at the top of the screen, where Apple has stored a bevy of camera and sensor parts to perform tasks like Face ID and Animoji recordings. But Apple’s proprietary advantages include the coloration and brightness-adjusting True Tone display tech and a new Super Retina moniker that means the iPhone X sports a 2436 x 1125 resolution at 458 ppi across 5.8 inches of real estate. It’s also Apple’s first smartphone to come HDR-ready. All this adds up to an impressive display that is clearly the top differentiation between the iPhone X and the iPhone 8. Whether it’s worth the extra $200 or so is a harder call.

THE FRONT-FACING CAMERA IS MORE POWERFUL

Hidden inside the small notch cutout at the top of the iPhone X is a significant number of new camera parts and sensors that do more than just transpose your face onto an emoji cat or scan it to unlock your phone. The front-facing camera module now contains an infrared camera, flood illuminator, proximity scanner, ambient light sensor, speaker, microphone, 7-megapixel camera, and dot projector. All of that together combines into what Apple calls its TrueDepth camera, used for Animoji, Face ID, and a number of cool camera tricks.

Image: Apple

TrueDepth is what makes the iPhone X’s front-facing camera capable of performing the aperture-reduction trick in its Portrait mode, a feature just a year ago restricted to the back camera of only the iPhone 7 Plus. It also makes the front-facing camera capable of Apple’s new Portrait Mode effects, which lets you replicate more professional flash lighting. These won’t make too big a difference to most of us, unless you happen to be an obsessive selfie taker who’s been clamoring for DSLR-quality capabilities. But having the most cutting-edge mobile photography features at your fingertips could be a big draw to a sizable segment of the iPhone-using population, and a good reason to upgrade to the X.

Animoji are cartoon animals that replicate your face movements, expressions, and speech using the front-facing camera and 3D mapping sensors of the iPhone X. It relies on the very same TrueDepth components required by Face ID and is another perfect example of Apple’s marriage of hardware and software to yield something more advanced than the industry standard. Apple’s implementation here feels like a wildly fun and goofy blend of cutting-edge tech with selfie-obsessed excess, if not also a bit of an extravagant resource waste. (Yes, that $1,000 iPhone can turn you into a poop emoji.)

At best, the iPhone X will only sell as many units as Apple can manage to manufacture this holiday season, which won’t be all that many we can assume. So you probably won’t see animoji populating your iMessage chats all that often, or at all in the near term. It might be years before the feature has the platform breadth to be a commonplace form of mobile communication. Still, these novel camera and software advancements prove that Apple can still perform a bit of magic, even if it’s of the childish variety, at the intersection of tech and art.

Photo: Apple

5.8-INCH SCREEN MEANS MORE REAL ESTATE IN A SMALLER PACKAGE

Apple’s new edge-to-edge display on the iPhone X means you’re getting a larger screen in a smaller package, at least compared with the iPhone 8 Plus. If you take a look at the dimensions, you’ll see that the display, measured diagonally, comes to 5.8 inches. That’s actually bigger than the height of the device itself, which comes in at 5.65 inches.

The iPhone 8 Plus, on the other hand, has those signature giant bezels. That means it has only a 5.5-inch screen, at a lower 1920 x 1080 resolution and 401 ppi, in a device that stands 6.24 inches. If you’re someone who treasures screen real estate for everything from movies to games to reading the news, the iPhone X’s screen is in every conceivable way a superior piece of hardware.

FACE ID FEELS LIKE THE FUTURE

At first blush, Face ID may feel like a setback, and there’s validity to that view. We don’t yet know how secure it will be, or whether it will come close to the efficiency of Touch ID and fingerprint reading. It’s also evident that if Apple could have built a fingerprint sensor underneath the glass of the iPhone X’s OLED display, that it probably would have.

WATCHING LIVE FACE ID DEMOS MAKES IT FEEL LIKE THE FUTURE OF DEVICE INTERACTION

Still, it’s easy to watch live demos of Face ID and feel like it could be the future of technological interaction. We had similar apprehensions about mobile fingerprint readers when they arrived on the scene more than half a decade ago, before the tech became ubiquitous and beloved, and now it feels like we’re entering the next chapter in mobile security. (Naturally, like with the edge-to-edge screen, Apple didn’t arrive here first, but it’s conceivable its facial recognition tech will be superior to past implementations.)

There will be security kinks to iron out, for sure, and unpleasant law enforcement intricacies to dig into it, but the iPhone X’s ability to map your face, recognize it, and use that information intelligently is exciting. There’s a chance it will move beyond unlocking your phone, just as Touch ID became central to mobile payments on the iPhone. What that new use case looks like is anyone’s guess — artificial intelligence reading and responding to your emotional state, perhaps — but 3D face mapping will surely open up some interesting new possibilities down the line.

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge

As is the case with many Apple products, there are compromises, even with a device that costs as much as a mid- to upper-tier PC. For as many benefits as the iPhone X grants you, with its extra-large screen and new 3D mapping capabilities, there are as many drawbacks worth considering before you make such a hefty purchase.

It’s not just that last year’s model is so cheap — now only $549 — or that the iPhone 8 comes with the same processor. The iPhone X, because it ditches the home button and packs in so many aggressive forward-looking features, is bound to feel at times like it’s got a foot stuck in two different eras of technology.

So here’s where the most expensive iPhone ever made appears to falls short:

THE IPHONE X IS EXPENSIVE... VERY EXPENSIVE

The only aspect of the iPhone X perhaps more noticeable than its display is its price tag. Apple has set the starting cost for its flagship product, for the very first time, at north of $1,000, when you factor in taxes or the 256GB storage configuration. The device is even more expensive outside the US — customers in Italy, Russia, and Poland, for instance, will all have to pay around $1,600 for a 256GB version of the iPhone X.