Apple iPhone X
THE REBOOTED iPHONE WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR?
THE IPHONE X is the biggest gamble Apple’s taken in years. Losing key, reliable elements like the Touch ID fingerprint scanner and the Home button and introducing new methods of navigating and unlocking the phone (and charging a lot more for the privilege) seems risky for a company that was already treading new ground by doing away with the traditional 3.5mm headphone jack last year.
It’s a world away from the increasingly-tired designs that those who just want a new iPhone have had to make do with — so, finally, is the iPhone X the handset we’ve been demanding from Apple for years?
ALL SCREEN (WELL, ALMOST)
The X’s new 5.8-inch OLED display is the standout feature and, quite simply, it’s the best screen Apple has ever crammed into an iPhone. It’s leaps ahead of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus for so many reasons: the sharpness, the quality, the fact that it fills the whole front of the phone and the colour reproduction. OLED tech means you’re getting deeper blacks and more blinding whites, so everything from websites to the photos you take will look a little better. It’s not the sharpest or most colourful screen on a smartphone, but it’s clean, crisp and doesn’t suffer from terrible colour shifts when you move it around.
It’s also using a new, longer 18:9 aspect ratio — the same one we’ve seen flagships from Samsung, LG and Google using in 2017. But while the X’s display looks larger than the iPhone 8 Plus’ 5.5-incher on paper, it’s only marginally bigger in terms of actual screen real estate — it’s just stretched upwards.
The term ‘bezel-less’ has been bandied about for the iPhone X, but that doesn’t really tell the right story. Yes, there are slight bands around the edges of the screen, but they don’t mar the experience — they give the fingers something to land on, preventing accidental touches of the screen.
The notch at the top of the iPhone X is something that’s going to divide opinion, and that’s fair. Apple has taken this little chunk out of the top of the screen to house the new TrueDepth camera, and it encroaches on the display.
APP TEETHING PROBLEMS
While we’re talking about that longer screen, the 18:9 format is something we’ve seen on a number of other phones this year, and in the Android world, the apps are largely encoded to fill the display just fine. On the iPhone X, however, that’s not the case, with 99% of the apps we used packing massive black bars above and below the display, and those that were taking advantage of the aspect ratio displayed some glitches — Twitter, for instance, blocks out elements of your tweets.
NO HOME BUTTON, NO PROBLEM?
The iPhone X runs Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 11, but the lack of a home button means that all the latter’s functions have had to be replicated with gestures.
Swiping up from the bottom of the screen no longer launches the Control Centre, but rather serves as a home button. This does take getting used to, but quickly becomes embedded in the muscle memory.
However, beyond that, Apple has arguably made things a little too convoluted. To open the deck of running apps, for example, you need a ‘demi-swipe’ upwards... go too far and you’ll just access the home screen.
To shut down said apps, it’s no longer a swipe but a press then a swipe. This doesn’t feel intuitive at all — and the same can be said for the new gesture where you swipe right on the bottom of the screen to move between recently-used apps. It’s a nice idea, but hard to use intuitively.
If you’re using the iPhone X in landscape mode, though, you’re going to run into trouble. It appears that, without the notch there to separate them, the notifications panel takes up the bulk of the space at the expense of the more-useful Control Centre, and you’ll need to swipe from exactly in the top right-hand corner to get access to the latter.
ALL ABOUT THAT FACE
Apple’s removal of face buttons means that the old-reliable Touch ID fingerprint scanner has been replaced with new facial-recognition security, dubbed Face ID. The new system is simple to set up, with the iPhone X
WHILE THE X’S DISPLAY LOOKS LARGER THAN THE IPHONE 8 PLUS’ 5.5-INCHER ON PAPER, IT’S ONLY MARGINALLY BIGGER IN TERMS OF ACTUAL SCREEN REAL ESTATE — IT’S JUST STRETCHED UPWARDS.
encouraging you to put your face into view at the start; spin your head around a couple of times and you’re ready to go.
That’s all you need to do, and as long as the iPhone X can see your eyes, nose and mouth, you’ll be able to unlock your handset easily. And we really do mean easily — Face ID has far, far exceeded our expectations for the new biometric technology. We’ve used facial recognition on other phones many times, and it’s been erratic enough that we generally end up going back to using the fingerprint sensor.
That’s not an option here, of course, with Apple having ditched that Home button and Touch ID sensor, but it’s a relief to say that Apple’s facial recognition tech is leagues ahead of anything else on the market right now — it proved almost flawless in our testing.
We say ‘almost’, because it’s not completely without issue — there can be a very-slight delay to unlocking at times, and you need to be looking at the handset to make it work. That basically means you need to be holding it, so if you’re a fan of laying your phone on your desk and unlocking it with your fingerprint... well, you’ll just have to adjust.
Another issue with Face ID as against Touch ID is when using Apple Pay. Where previously you’d approach the reader with your thumb over the home button and it would instantly verify the payment, with the iPhone X, you’ll need to double-tap the side button to activate Face ID, have it register your face, and then it’ll be ready to pay. It’s not a tough system to master — after a single attempt, we were able to replicate it time and again — but it’s not as easy as before.
A FINE SHOOTER
The camera on the iPhone X is very similar to the one on the 8 Plus, with a few differences. While both have a dual 12MP sensor array (for taking zoomed-in pictures or capturing depth perception) the iPhone X has an f/2.4 aperture, where on 8 Plus, it’s f/2.8, and only the wide-angle lens has optical image stabilisation.
The front-facing TrueDepth camera, a 7MP affair, can sense depth incredibly well, so the new Portrait mode — debuted on the iPhone 8 Plus — can be to take excellent selfies. Not only will this blur the background, you can also use the Portrait options to change the lighting of the scene, or cut yourself out of the picture altogether and place yourself on a black background. Although these effects don’t always hit the mark, when they do work, the iPhone X’s camera is out of this world. The overall speed of snapping and quality of the iPhone X camera is strong, as you’d expect from a flagship handset from Apple with the new A11 Bionic chip inside. The camera could do with booting a touch faster from the lock screen, however (although you can now 3D Touch the photography icon to load the camera, rather than swiping).
Video capabilities on the iPhone X are also among the best on the market, with the 4K recording at 60fps delivering clear, fluid images, albeit images that will take up a fair bit of space on your device.
SPEED AND LONGEVITY
There’s a powerful engine at the heart of this iPhone, with the A11 Bionic chip running in tandem with 3GB of RAM. That doesn’t sound like much RAM, but it’s the most Apple has ever chucked into a phone, and it shows in the speed of use.
If you look at the Geekbench scores, which assess the raw power of the processor, the iPhone X is one of the most powerful phones on the market, only rivalled by the iPhone 8 Plus. And while you can’t judge how good a smartphone is based on its scores, we’ve seen nothing during our tests to suggest this is anything other than an incredibly powerful phone.
The battery on the iPhone X is a tad larger than the iPhone 8 Plus’, and it generally holds up quite well. With intensive use, you can blaze through it in a day — or 12 hours — but in light to moderate use, we managed to get home of an evening with somewhere between 20% and 40% battery left, which is a tad better than on most other iPhones we’ve tested, including the 8 Plus. If you’re someone that suffers with an iPhone that drains quickly, you’ll be pleased with what’s on offer here, and most days, you’ll get home with plenty of power to spare.
REDEFINING THE iPHONE
The drastic changes made with the iPhone X were a huge gamble from Apple, but they’ve ultimately paid off — mostly. Losing the home button and drastically altering the design was a dangerous move, but one that was sorely needed after years of too-similar iPhones. The premium design, extra power and all-screen front mix together to create — by far — the best iPhone Apple’s ever made. It’s impossible to give a perfect score to something that costs this much — but this is the closest to smartphone perfection Apple has ever come.