GREATNEW STUFF IPHONE X

FOR THE LOVE OF GADGETS Edited by LINDSEY SCHUTTERS

Here we go: this is the foreseeable future face of the iphone. Which also makes it the future reference design for the smartphone, given the device’s ubiquity. The departure from the much loved and maligned rectangle and circular home key design is a shock for long-time fruit aficianados, but the new all-screen front brings Apple in line with the market trend. That’s a weird reality for a company that shaped the smartphone market into what it is today.

Ditching the comfort of the home key in favour of an edge to edge display also ushers in an era of swipe gestures. These will be confusing at first and seem a bit pointless, given Samsung’s addition of a virtual pressure-sensitive home button on the Galaxy S8. You’ll get over it, though. This is what iphones look and act like now and it’s time you accepted that.

Big changes from the iphones 8 and 8 Plus is the now vertically aligned wide and telephoto dual lenses. Both cameras are also optically stabilised. But the story of the new iphones is one of the new-age processors. Neural engines built on top of traditional CPUS are a major turning point for the mobile phone market. We dive deep into the weeds of on-device artificial intelligence on page 24.

This is the best iphone yet and a bold new direction for the company, for better or worse. FROM R20 500, MYISTORE. CO. ZA