A day with iPhone X

In 2007 Apple reinvented the phone. Ten years later they’ve reimagined iPhone.

I haven’t felt this much excitement regarding a gadget since the introduction of the original iPhone. It’s not because of Face ID, the edge-to-edge OLED display, or Portrait Lighting. It’s not because of the improved processor, wireless charging, or improved augmented reality. iPhone X (pronounced “ten” not “ex”) is more than just an upgrade, it’s the future of iPhone.

It’s worth every penny.

Hyperbole aside, this phone feels great. It’s high quality, it’s beautiful to look at, and it’s incredible that Apple fit an iPhone Plus–sized, bezel-less display in an iPhone that’s barely bigger than a standard iPhone 8. It’s not perfect, but it’s the most fun I’ve had playing with a device in years. It’s easily the best device I’ve ever purchased and it’s worth every penny.

Unboxing

Unboxing the iPhone was what I’ve come to expect from Apple products. Great packaging, minimal documentation, and some fruit-shaped stickers. The box itself is pretty cool and features an embossed printed image of the phone complete with reflective bezels.

Other than the stickers and documentation, inside the box you’ll find a power brick, a lightning to USB cable, lightning EarPods (with adapter), and a quick guide. Oh yeah… and a shiny new iPhone.

Design

Apple’s been known for premium, thoughtful design for years. Steve Jobs was infamous for wanting his products’ insides to be as beautiful as their outsides. That being said, not every product has been perfect in the premium-feel department. For example, iPhone 3G and 3GS were well designed phones, but their plastic backs could sometimes feel cheap. And some models of iPhone have simply held up better than others.

The all new, glass-front-and-back design feels extremely premium and is reminiscent of iPhones of yesterday while being just different enough to feel like you’re holding the future.

Of course, some people worry the new design is too fragile. Glass and steel are some of my favorite product materials. I find it somewhat funny when people worry about glass breaking; in my opinion, if you pay $999+ for a phone, you should probably make an effort to treat it well. That being said, if your prone to breaking phones, I’d highly recommend Apple Care+ with this one.

It’s what makes the iPhone X different—and Apple has always been about different.

But what about that “notch” everyone is talking about?

I thought it might be weird, but to be honest most of the time I forget it’s there.

It’s similar how you don’t notice other hardware intrusions when you’re looking at a screen. Even when it does catch my eye, it doesn’t seem ugly or out of place.

Sure, in a perfect world it wouldn’t be there. But only because in a perfect world the screen would truly be edge to edge. Hopefully someday we’ll get an all-screen design, but for now the speaker and camera array cuts into the display; I think it was the right choice.

I’ve imagined a notch-less design and concluded the current solution is a proper step in appreciating the evolution of technology. With OLED, each pixel lights up individually and can also turn of independently of each other—resulting in blacks that are completely black. Because of this, watching movies in widescreen result in the notch disappearing completely (unless you expand them to fill the screen).

In situations where the notch is visible, it seems to give the phone character. If anything, write the notch off as a status symbol or part of its identity even. It’s what makes the iPhone X different—and Apple has always been about different.

Display

Incredible. Is one of the many adjectives that come to mind when I think about the iPhone X’s display.

As mentioned earlier OLED is really amazing because each individual pixel generates its own light. It results in a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and it looks… incredible.

It’s also the highest resolution display ever in an iPhone. Apple calls it a “Super Retina” display, it’s their marketing lingo for saying these pixels are freaking tiny. The display is 5.8" diagonally and 458 ppi (pixels per inch), resulting in over 2.7 million pixels in the palm of your hand. It’s fantastically sharp.

OLED isn’t perfect. It suffers from hue shifts (mildly annoying) when viewing from different angles to “burn ins” (much more problematic) when an image is left on the display too long. Additionally, RGB is hard to get right on OLED displays.

But this isn’t just any old OLED display. It’s a custom Samsung display custom fabricated to meet Apple’s stringent demands. Apple—being Apple—found a way to deal with the RGB issues and hue shifts. They use sub-pixels to help with antialiasing caused by the custom diamond-shaped pixels Apple uses to lessen the color shift when viewing the display at an angle. After manufacturing, each display is calibrated individually to ensure color exactness.

TrueTone has been added to the iPhone (like the iPad Pro) to display colors, such as white, more naturally. The display adjusts automatically depending on the surrounding real-world lighting conditions. This gives the display a more natural, almost printed-on-paper look; slightly adjusting the graphics for the environment, just as objects in the real world look different depending on lighting.

Overall the display is truly amazing, especially when watching 4K HDR/Dolby Vision movies in a dark room where parts of the screen disappear into the darkenss (I’m looking at you Spider-man: Homecoming).

Goodbye Home Button

The Home Button has long been a key identifier of an iPhone, but with iPhone X the home button is MIA.

Now we get a controversial notch and a whole lotta screen. But how do we navigate the new system? With a stylus? Nope… gestures. The new gestures feel natural and take less than a few hours to get used to; then it’s like they’ve always been there.

Swipe up for the Home Screen, down for Reachability (if enabled), left and right to switch between apps, and up with a slight pause (no need to be dramatic) to bring up the app switcher.

Apple has finally made it harder to close apps. If this confuses you, let me explain: you should avoid closing your most-used apps unless they aren’t responding as expected.

Apple’s memory management is very good and closing/reopening apps affects battery and performance. On iPhone X when you need to close an app simply hold on it (when in the app switcher) and a red circle with a white minus sign appears. You can either tap this circular icon or swipe away apps like it’s 2013.

As for other Home Button functions, they’ve been reimagined as well:

• To access Siri say “Hey Siri” or press and hold the Side Button.
• To turn off your device (or access emergency options) press and hold the Side Button and either volume button simultaneously until the options appear; slide to power off.
• To contact emergency services or emergency contacts discretely, do the same as above but continue to hold. You can also enable an option for quickly pressing the Side Button five times in a row. You can turn off the warning sounds in Settings.
• To take a screenshot press and release the Side Button and volume up button simultaneously.
• To perform a soft reset (aka hard reboot), quickly tap volume up, volume down, and then hold the Side Button until the phone restarts and the Apple logo is displayed.

Face ID

When early rumors revealed Apple would be replacing Touch ID with Face ID, I remember thinking there’s no way. Touch ID is amazing and has been an iconic feature for the past four years. All that is about to change. Once you’ve used Face ID you’ll never want to see Touch ID added to an iPhone again. It’s that good.

I can’t imagine ever wanting to go back to Touch ID.

Setting up Face ID

Face ID is easy to set up and in my experience responds quicker than Touch ID. During setup, move your head in a circle twice and you're done.

Just as with Touch ID, Face ID data isn’t sent to Apple’s servers. Instead, it’s stored as mathematical algorithms within the iPhone’s Secure Enclave along with some reference images used to adapt to augmentation (like wearing glasses or getting a haircut).

Magical

Apple likes to throw the word “magic” around a lot, and Face ID is one place it might not get used enough.

While having both would be nice, I’d take Face ID over Touch ID if given the choice. Compared to Face ID, Touch ID can feel slow and unnecessary. With Face ID your phone knows who you are and is attention aware. When you’re looking at it, notification sounds are dampened and the display doesn’t dim; if configured, notifications hide details from others while locked and expand when you look at them; and when you’re ready to open your phone just swipe up or tap a notification and you’re in.

A few people think users should be brought to the Home Screen automatically when the phone unlocks, I personally disagree. I don’t want my iPhone to “open up” every time I look at it. Sometimes I just want to check the time, swipe for the camera, read my notifications, or bring up Control Center. I think the current implementation of swiping up for Home Screen works great and is pretty much instant.

How does it work?

The “magic” behind Face ID obiviosly isn’t really magic, but sometimes it feels like it. In reality, the system uses a flood illuminator to bathe the subject’s face in infrared (IR) light and then uses a dot projector to project 30,000 individual dots on the subject’s face. For security purposes the dots aren’t uniformly spaced.

The TrueDepth camera uses the dots for advanced facial mapping. 2D reference photos are taken in a random sequence (random for even more security) and then converted to an algorithm used for comparison later.

Each time the user looks at their phone, a comparison is done between the new scan and the data stored in the Secure Enclave. If it’s a match the phone unlocks; if not, they’ll be prompted for the PIN or password.

Purchases

On-device purchases using your iPhone work similar to Touch ID, but rather than resting a finger on the Touch ID sensor, the user double-clicks the Side Button to confirm their purchase.

Using Apple Pay is as easy as double-clicking the Side Button, selecting an available card, and tapping the reader after Face ID verification (generally happens fast).

Cameras

The front TrueDepth camera array can be used for FaceID, but it also handles basic facial mapping allowing fun things like Animoji and improved Snapchat masks. Keep in mind this doesn’t utilize the secure face data or the same level of technology used for authentication.

Animoji

Animoji is a lot more fun than I expected. My sons and I have been sending them to everyone and I’m surprised nobody’s blocked my number because of it. Animoji Karaoke is becoming a trending topic on Twitter and it’s easy to see why: It’s fun!

The world can often be too busy and serious, Animoji puts smiles (and frowns and gasps) back on our faces (or on 1 of 12 emoji faces).

It works well and it’s a lot of fun. Sure it’s a gimmick, and it’s not a reason to buy a new iPhone, but it is a good example of what to expect from developers using facial mapping in the future.

Improved Optics

The new cameras have better f-stops, dual-optical image stabilization (OSI), and an improved image sensor. Apple is known for its great cameras and the iPhone X is no exception. It may not be a huge leap from iPhone 7, but it’s still one of the best available in a smartphone today.

Portrait Lighting

I’ve enjoyed Portrait mode on my iPhone 7 Plus, and I’m looking forward to iPhone 8’s and iPhone X’s upcoming Portrait Lighting; however I haven’t played around with it enough yet to offer a review of this beta feature.

Wireless Charging

Wireless, or inductive charging, isn’t new (not even in smartphones); but it’s new to iPhone and thankfully Apple chose to go with the Qi (pronounced “chi”) standard.

It definitely helps make the device seem more modern, magical, and convenient. It’s really nice being able to top off my phone at my desk or in my car; and placing the iPhone X on my nightstand before bed seems natural

While wireless charging isn’t revolutionary, it’s a nice convenience that cuts down on time spent fumbling for the cord. I think many users are sure to enjoy it.

Other improvements

With its upgraded processor and graphics the iPhone X doesn’t just look new, it plays the part. It doesn’t lag and feels snappier than ever despite new UI features — such as swiping between open apps — that are likely more tasking on the processor than on previous iPhones. The X feels all new from the ground up and definitely feels like the future of the smartphone.

Summary

I’ve only had the phone for a little over a day and I can easily say it’s the best phone I’ve ever owned. There are still some things I’d like to see in future updates; like active face tracking (for scrolling and automatic orientation lock) and a standalone Animoji app. For now, this new iPhone is nearly perfect and I’m excited to see where we go from here.

So who should buy this phone? Well, if you’re looking to upgrade but don’t want Face ID or an OLED display, the iPhone 8 is probably a better fit for you. But if you want to feel like a kid at Christmas again and experience the future of iPhone today, iPhone X might be what you’re looking for.

Apple may be the largest company in the world, but it seems like they’re still making magic happen. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

This is my first post on Medium please let me know if you like it. I look forward to your comments. Thank you for reading!