The company’s most important smartphone in years does not disappoint, with Face ID and an all-screen design that spells the end of the home button
After four years of the company recycling the design of the iPhone 6, the iPhone X is a breath of fresh air. The beautiful OLED screen takes up pretty much the whole front of the device. It’s one of the best displays I’ve ever seen on a smartphone, and while it’s not quite as bezel free at the sides as Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and Note 8 devices, it’s a giant leap forward for Apple.
Two concessions were made for the all-screen design. The most obvious is that there is no home button, axed after a decade of service. You might miss it if you have muscle memory from mashing the button every two minutes, but I don’t. There’s also no Touch ID fingerprint scanner, as it has been replaced with Face ID facial recognition technology – more on that later.
To get back to the home screen you swipe up from a line at the very bottom of the screen, which feels much more fluid and engaging than hitting a button. You’re meant to swipe up and hold to get to the stack of recently used apps, but I found it quicker and more reliable to use the BlackBerry OS 10-esque swipe up and right (or left) gesture.
The second concession is equally controversial – the so-called notch. At the top of the screen there’s a cutout in the display that houses the earpiece speaker, the selfie camera and various sensors for the TrueDepth camera system that facilitates Face ID. Those bits have to be there somewhere; most manufacturers just have a piece of the phone’s body extend left to right, squaring off the screen, which I think is a better compromise.
It’s something people will either straight-up hate, or simply not notice most of the time. My money is on the latter, even though it does look a little bit stupid when watching full-screen video.
Specifications
Screen: 5.8in Super Retina HD (OLED) (458ppi)Processor: Apple A11 Bionic
RAM: 3GB of RAM
Storage: 64 or 256GB
Operating system: iOS 11
Camera: Dual 12MP rear cameras with OIS, 7MP front-facing camera
Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fiac, NFC, Bluetooth 5, Lightning and GPS
Dimensions: 143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7 mm
Weight: 174g
The iPhone X runs Apple’s latest software, iOS 11.1 and for the most part it is exactly the same as iOS running on any other modern iPhone, including the iPhone 8.
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Beyond the disappearing home button, there are a few other differences from regular iOS. The keyboard doesn’t sit right at the bottom of the screen, floating about the width of my little finger up the screen with a large grey area below.
The notch at the top means that the status bar doesn’t really exist anymore. The time and location services indicator is now on the left, and the battery, wifi and cellular signal indicator sit on the right. But there’s no space for icons such as the rotation lock, Bluetooth, alarm and battery percentage icons because of the notch. I miss the do not disturb icon the most – I keep missing messages and calls because I’ve forgotten to turn off DND in the morning without a visual reminder.
Status icons still exist, but they’re tucked away in the new control centre panel, which is now pulled down from the top right edge of the screen. Some might struggle to reach control centre up there, but it’s much more like Android’s version, which has been under the notification shade at the top of the screen for years. Pulling down anywhere just left of the cellular signal status reveals notifications.
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