Also of concern is how the iPhone X will fare over time. No matter how unscientific they might be, drop tests indicate that the finish here doesn’t lend itself well to wear and tear. After all, the stainless steel Apple Watch I’ve been using is a scratched-up mess. As a result, my iPhone X has spent much of its time inside an Apple case, but this certainly sees it lose points in the glamour stakes.
The iPhone X features the first new iPhone design Apple has debuted since the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launched in 2014 with new screen sizes. With the iPhone X, Apple has introduced a display that stretches from edge to edge and top to bottom with minimal bezels for an all-screen design.
Aside from a slim bezel that wraps around the edges of the device and a front notch that houses the front-facing camera, speaker, and sensors, display is all you see when looking at the iPhone X. There is no bottom bezel, no Home button, and no Touch ID fingerprint sensor.
With the elimination of the bezels, Apple has been able to pack a 5.8-inch display into a body that's not much bigger than the iPhone 8. The iPhone X measures in at 143.6mm tall by 70.9mm wide, and it is 7.7mm thick.
Comparatively, the iPhone 8 measures in at 138.4mm tall, 67.3mm wide, and 7.3mm thick, while the iPhone 8 Plus is 158.4mm tall, 78.1mm wide, and 7.5mm thick. As you can see, the iPhone X is larger than the iPhone 8, but smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus. It is, however, thicker than both devices, but is able to be comfortably held and used with one hand.
The gently rounded edges of the iPhone X's display meld right into a surgical-grade highly-polished stainless steel frame, which in turn flows into a new glass body for a continuous surface from front to back.
Glass is more fragile than the aluminum that's been used for the last several iPhone models, but Apple says the front and back glass in the iPhone X is the most durable it's ever made. The iPhone X has, however, been proven to be prone to shattering in drop tests and has been named Apple's "Most brakable iphone" by warranty site SquareTrade.
The iPhone X comes in Silver and Space Gray, with both colors offering an almost pearlescent finish thanks to a seven-layer ink process that has allowed Apple to introduce precise hues and opacity.
The edge-to-edge top-to-bottom Super Retina displayadopts OLED technology for true-to-life colors, deep blacks, and a million-to-one contrast ratio. It features a 2436 x 1125 resolution and 458 pixels per inch, the highest resolution and pixel density ever introduced in an iPhone. It supports HDR, wide color, 3D Touch, and True Tone for adjusting the white balance of the display to match the ambient lighting.
At 5.8 inches diagonally, the iPhone X has the largest display introduced in an iPhone yet, but with no bezels aside from a notch housing the camera and sensors, it fits comfortably in the hand. At 143.6mm tall by 70.9mm wide by 7.7mm deep, it's not much bigger than an iPhone 8, and it's smaller than an iPhone 8 Plus.
The glass body of the device is IP67 water and dust resistant and it enables support for inductive wireless charging for the first time. The iPhone X adopts the Qi wireless standard and can charge through the glass back using any Qi-certified charging accessory. Apple is making an "AirPower" accessoryto charge iPhone X, Apple Watch Series 3, and AirPods simultaneously, but it won't be out until later in 2018.
With an edge-to-edge design, there is no room for a Home button, so the iPhone X adopts a new user experience. A swipe up at the bottom of the screen brings up the Home screen, while a swipe and a hold brings up App Switcher. There's a Tap to Wake feature for looking at notifications, the side button can be pressed and held to activate Siri, and the Control Center is accessed by swiping downwards from the top status bar.
No Home button also means no Touch ID, so unlocking the device is done with a new Face ID facial recognition system. Face ID uses the TrueDepth front-facing camera system to create a 3D map of your face that's used much like a fingerprint for unlocking the iPhone, authenticating Apple Pay purchases, making App Store purchases, and accessing passcode protected apps.
Face ID uses infrared camera technology so it works in the dark. It also uses machine learning and detects your face with hats, glasses, beards, and other objects obscuring your face. Because it uses a 3D map of the face, Face ID cannot be fooled by photos, masks, or other facial replicas. As an added layer of security, Face ID is "attention aware" and unlocks your iPhone only when you're looking at it.
Face ID is powered by a state of the art dual-core neural engine built into the new A11 Bionic chip, data stored in the Secure Enclave and all processing done on-device. The A11 chip includes a total of six cores, with two performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, including the neural engine.
The performance cores are 25 percent faster than the A10, while the high-efficiency cores are 70 percent faster. An upgraded GPU is 30 percent faster, and there's 3GB of RAM in the device.
With a second-generation Apple-designed performance controller, all six cores in the A11 chip can be accessed at the same time, resulting in much improved performance, especially when it comes to multi-threaded workloads. The A11 also features a faster GPU, an Apple-designed image signal processor and video encoder, an A11 motion coprocessor, and the Secure Enclave for Face ID.
With efficiency improvements enabled by the A11 Bionic chip, the iPhone X offers two hours more battery life than the iPhone 7, but the battery falls short of the battery in the iPhone 7 Plus.
The same 7-megapixel TrueDepth camera that powers Face ID enables a new feature called Animoji. Animoji are 3D emoji able to mimic your facial expressions. The TrueDepth camera tracks more than 50 facial muscle movements and translates them to the Animoji, which can be used in the Messages app.
Apple's TrueDepth camera also introduces Portrait Mode for the front-facing camera and enables Portrait Lighting, a new feature for adjusting the lighting in a portrait image taken by the front or rear camera.
In the space either side of the notch you’ll find the battery indicator and time. Annoyingly, you can no longer see the battery percentage remaining or whether you have a pair headphones connected without opening the Control Center. The bigger annoyance is that the battery and signal indicators aren’t in line with the bottom of the notch, so they dip slightly below and look rather weird.
I do feel that the notch gives the iPhone X a bit of character and a distinctive look, something lost by the dismissal of the Home button. I’m sure Apple would get rid of it in an instant if it could cram this tech inside the bezel; but it does feel as though the company wants to use it as a distinguishing feature while it’s here.
