At $999, Apple unveils most expensive iPhone till date
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA: Apple unveiled the iPhone X, the latest version of its flagship smartphone, at the first news media event at the company’s new Silicon Valley campus on Tuesday. The $999 price of the highly anticipated phone — scheduled to ship on November 3 — makes it the most expensive iPhone ever.
Apple made significant changes to the iPhone screen with the X - pronounced 10, not “ex” - introducing a so-called edge-to-edge display that takes up the entire face of the phone.
It also eliminated the physical home button that had been a signature feature of the iPhone for a decade.
While the top-end phone was the most anticipated announcement Tuesday, Apple also introduced the iPhone 8, as well as its bigger sibling, the iPhone 8 Plus. In addition, Apple took the wraps off a new Apple Watch with cellular capabilities, called Apple Watch Series 3.
And Apple TV, the company’s set-top box that has never been a blockbuster hit, also received an upgrade.
At $999, the iPhone X costs $300 more than the iPhone 8 and $200 more than the iPhone 8 Plus.
While that will be too expensive for many people, the company said it saw the iPhone X defining a new era for the smartphone, much like the original iPhone did 10 years ago. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the device would “set the path for the next decade.” That is because Apple will most likely build on some of the iPhone X’s most notable features, including infrared facial recognition, wireless battery charging and sophisticated camera effects.
The iPhone X is the first redesigned iPhone in three years. It is essentially the same size and overall shape as the iPhone 7, but because the screen occupies all of the front of the phone, it is far larger than that of older models.
Whether people will adjust to the button-free system remains to be seen. For better or worse, Apple had used essentially the same interface for the iPhone for a decade. The learning curve will be interesting to watch. The feature in the iPhone X that had never existed on any other iPhone is infrared face scanning.
The technology, called Face ID, uses an infrared camera system on the front of the phone to scan the contours and shape of a person’s head to unlock the phone and authorize mobile payments. The technology works by spraying an object with infrared dots to gather information about the depth of an object based on the size and the contortion of the dots. The imaging system can then stitch the patterns into a detailed 3-D image of your face to determine if you are indeed the owner of your phone. Face ID was a direct response to the face-recognition feature in smartphones offered by Samsung.
The new iPhone 8 line includes the iPhone 8 and its bigger sibling, the 8 Plus. The phones have a six-core processor that will handle more complex tasks and 3D games more quickly and efficiently than previous iPhones. The phones generally look the same as their predecessors, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, with the exception of having glass bodies, as opposed to aluminum.
The models had a slightly higher starting price than their predecessors: The iPhone 8 starts at $699, up from $650 for older iPhone models.
Apple improved the phones’ cameras with new sensors and added new motion sensors to better support applications made for augmented reality, which uses data to digitally manipulate the physical world when people look through a smartphone lens.
Another notable new feature is the introduction of magnetic induction to the iPhones. Similar to Apple Watch, the iPhones can now be charged by being placed on a charging pad instead of having to be plugged in.