Ladies and gentleman, I bring you the iPhone X, which by the way was unveiled today at Apple's annual event which took place at their newly pristine headquarters at the Steve Jobs theater. Without dragging out the intro, lets get to it, here's everything you need to know about the Apple's newest flagship hand held device.
The Design
The iPhone X is breaking design protocol and going glass with its design, that's right, both the front and back of the device will be encased entirely in glass, with surgical grade steel that frames the smartphone. Like the last generation device, the iPhone X will be well protected with a IP67 rating under the IEC standard 60529, in less technical term, its still dust and water resistant. High rating and all, its still not enough protect from the sudden case of the drops, being that the entire device is covered in glass, you'll definitely need to protect it with a nice sturdy case. The iPhone X like past iterations retains its signature cure design with its rounded corners.
Standout feature ( one of many) with the iPhone X of course is the edge to edge display, which is starting to become an industry standard as you're seeing many smartphones go with this display design.
About That Display
Here's a first with Apple, the iPhone X Multi-touch display is now implemented with OLED technology . The Retina display, let me rephrase that, it is now the Super Retina HD display packs a mass amount of pixels measuring in at 2436 x 1125 resolution with the highest ppi ever on a smartphone at 458. The display also incorporated with True Tone technology that uses a highly advanced six-channel ambient light sensor who's main responsibility is to adjust the white balance on the display, matching color temperature of any light source that's around an individual. But wait, there's more, the iPhone X display now have true HDR (high dynamic range), you can now view movies and video content in full Dolby Vision.
The overall measurements of the display comes in at 5.8-inches, dismissing rumors that the iPhone X would crack the 6-inch barrier. Nonetheless, the smartphone is still a hand full.
The Camera, Yes The Camera
The pinnacle feature on any iPhone is by far has always been the camera, arguably the best on any smartphone, most would probably agree with me. The new iPhone X most certainly not disappoint in the image capturing department, at least on paper. In outlining some of its core features, the iPhone X sports a 12MP dual wide-angle and telephoto camera (f/ 1.8 and f/2.4 aperture) . The camera is capable of capturing 4K video, up to 60 fps.
The camera zoom in optically up to 10 times and have dual optical image stabilization for low light image capturing. Probably the best feature with the iPhone X camera is its ability to capture precise selfie shots with the new Portrait Mode feature. Sharp crisp up close facials with the blurred background made possibly by the new front facing TrueDepth camera which plays an important role in the iPhone X new biometric security feature which we'll get to in a few paragraphs.
Lets Talk Hardware
Aside from the design, the biggest improvement to both the iPhone 8 ( which was also revealed at the Event) and iPhone X is the hardware. I must say, I'm quite impressed with the components under the hood of Apple's newest hand held iteration, it packs a new A11 Bionic 64-bit chip which Apple claims to be the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphone. The new processor is featured with the neural engine that's said to have the capability to perform 600 billion operations per second, this should make for a very fluid interface.
The chip itself have two powerful working cores and four energy efficient cores, with a grand total of 6 working cores within the A11 processor.
Onto storage, the iPhone X will have just two storage flavors, 64GB and a whopping 256GB, still not present on the iPhone is the option to expand storage, that's right, SD card slot still not available .
No Home Button, No Problem
The iPhone X with its big bezel-less display follows right along the trend with the other smartphones on the market ditching the physical home button. To access the home screen, users simply just swipe up on the display.
Face Your ID
Since the new iPhone X minuses the home button, Apple welcomes a new form of biometric security, and that's facial recognition, or better known as Face ID. This is a new form of security authentication by Apple that scans your whole entire face using the TrueDepth front facing camera.
The camera itself and how it uses detail map of your face is pretty unique to say the least. The True Depth camera is composed of some heavy duty tech, it has a infrared camera that reads the dot pattern, and then captures an infrared image, then it relays data securely in the A11 Bionic chip to confirm any type of match. Then you have the Flood Illuminator which uses infrared light to aid in identifying the human face even under low light conditions. The Dot projector have a sum total of 30,000 invisible dots that is projected onto the face to create and build a facial map, Being that the facial recognition data is stored within the chip, iCloud is not needed.
Welcome To The Wonderful World Of Wireless Charging
The one feature that has always put the iPhone a tad below the Android competition is wireless charging. While most Android smartphones have enjoyed such feature for about five years now, the iPhone, well still resorts to the wires for its primary power boost. The time has come, the iPhone X has crawled out of the wired charging brick stone ages and welcomes in wireless charging.
The wireless charging is not only on the iPhone X, but its also featured on the iPhone 8 and 8-Plus. Wireless charging pretty much operates just like its Android rivals, it contains Qi wireless charging technology, which enables users to charge the device anywhere such as airport, cars and cafes. Of course what's an Apple iPhone without the added accessories, which have you covered with Belkin and Mophie wireless charging docks. On a side note, the iPhone X and 8's by default can still be charged using a hard wire. The wireless docks of course are sold separately.
What About Price and Availability?
Ah yes, this brings us to price, because such great technology comes a price tag that falls in the line of being hefty. The iPhone X is pretty hefty, in price that is at a astounding $1,000. Now if the price might be a bit to steep and it is, you can always resort to the next best thing and that's the iPhone 8 which will run you $699 and the $799 for the 8-Plus. All major carriers such as ATT$T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon will carry the new gen iPhones.
Apple is now accepting pre-orders for the iPhone X which will begin on Oct 27th, with shipping taking place on Nov 13th. Meanwhile the iPhone 8 and 8-Plus, pre-orders will begin on Sept 15th with market availability taking place on Sept 22.
Noteworthy!!! Both the iPhone 8 and 8-Plus will have the same internal hardware as with the iPhone X A 11 Bionic chip, 64GB and 256GB storage capacities.