iPhone X Apple’s latest hits the market – at a cost.
Spending more than $2000 for a smartphone is undeniably hard to imagine, but after holding the iPhone X it almost feels worth it.
The phone looks, feels and operates like a luxury item — and with that hefty price point that is how consumers will have to treat it.
I got to hold and operate the phone only really briefly, but I’ll be thinking about the 5.8 inch (14.7cm) edge-to-edge screen for a while.
The OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display shows off colours and contrasts in high definition. And the advanced front camera revolutionises how the phone works.
It scans your face and measures it every time you look at the phone.
The display bar where the camera sits is more than just a camera. An IR camera measures the depth of your face and 30,000 infra- red dots are thrown on to your face to enable the Face ID to work.
And it does work. My face wasn’t recognised by the phone, but its owner demonstrated it for me and it worked seamlessly.
The Face ID requires “user intention”, so you have to be directly looking at the screen to unlock the phone. Just passing it in front of your face with your eyes closed or your face looking off to one side won’t unlock it.
The technology in the front display and front camera also enable animojis, animated versions of the popular emojis that wrap around your face and mimic your words and expressions. While the jury is still out on whether anyone would actually use them, I was impressed by how much detail and expression the animated icons could capture.
Doing away with the home button allows Apple to really show off the Super Retina display.
“For more than a decade, our intention has been to create an iPhone that is all display. The iPhone X is the realisation of that vision,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer.
The use of the swipe-up to return to the home screen was quite intuitive. Your thumb floats to the bottom of the screen naturally to where the home button once was, so it didn’t feel too unfamiliar. The multi-tasker can be found here as well.
The feature of wireless charging doesn’t interest me too much, because you still have to plug the wireless charger into a wall.
For some people the price tag won’t be a problem, but I imagine for many people it will be a bridge too far, however good the phone is.
The phone’s success will be in whether Apple can capture the people who sit somewhere in between. The people who haven’t updated their smartphone in a while because they haven’t been inspired by what’s been on offer. From a first impression, I’d guess the iPhone X will be able to do that.
Sophie Ryan travelled to California courtesy of Apple.