Three new Apple iPhones were announced in yesterday’s Apple event.
As well as a new iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, Apple also unveiled a top-of-the-range iPhone X at its event in California.
The iPhone X will be a super-duper iPhone with a full-glass front, OLED display, powerful facial recognition system and new dual camera with True Tone.
The iPhone X name was revealed in a leaked version of the Gold Master (final) version of iOS 11 over the weekend.
iPhone X design
Made of ‘the most durable glass ever’ it has a surgical steel (like a premium watch) band wrapped around it and comes in Space Grey or Silver. No jet black this time or that matt black that didn’t look so good.
iPhone X specs and display
The 5.8-inch iPhone X display is phenomenal, with 448 pixels per inch and a 2,436 x 1,125 resolution. It’s got HDR10 and Dolby Vision support and features Apple’s True Tone tech. And yes, it’s OLED this time.
The processor is Apple’s new A11 Bionic chip, just like in the iPhone 8. It’s available in 64 or 256GB versions.
Despite the new display, there’s also two hours more of battery life versus iPhone 7.
There’s also wireless charging just like the iPhone 8 via the Qi standard – Apple has a new AirPower charging mat that you can also charge your Apple Watch Series 3 on. That’s coming next year in addition to a wireless charging case for the AirPods.
The front of iPhone X has two cameras including one infrared camera for Face ID, more on that below.
iPhone X release date and pricing
The iPhone X release date is November 3. All the new iPhones will be waterproof and dustproof.
The iPhone X is from Rs. 89,000 for 64GB, so the 256GB iPhone X will be VERY expensive.
iPhone X Face ID and lack of home button
Face ID has been introduced, so you can now use it instead of Touch ID (we currently don’t know if we will have Touch ID as well but we assume not as there is NO HOME BUTTON). It’s a two camera system and you can use it for Apple Pay as well as unlocking your phone.
It’s been specifically designed so you can’t erroneously unlock – you have to be actively looking at the phone. It can recognise your face even if you wear a big hat, and will discount someone wearing makeup to resemble your face.
According to Apple, only one in a million people could unlock your iPhone X with their face, compared to one in 50,000 who might try to unlock your phone using a fingerprint, via Touch ID.
We’re really intrigued to find out how Face ID works in practice. Touch ID is so easy, so will it really be a worthy replacement?
With the home button gone, you can now swipe up from the bottom to multi-task or activate Siri vocally or via a ‘larger side button’.
iPhone X camera
Both the front and rear cameras have portrait mode. According to Jony Ive, the rear dual-camera setup has been completely redesigned and there’s now a Quad LED True Tone flash.
The ‘True Depth’ camera array features dual 12MP sensors, with f1.8 and f2.4 (wide angle) apertures. It seems very advanced, yet is mainly utilised in this presentation at least, for quite stupid things, such as tracking your face in order to animate an emoji. Woo!