Three flavours of the iPhone on its 10th anniversary

For this most high profile of events in Apple history, guests headed to the Steve Jobs Theatre at Apple’s headquarters at the Apple Park in Cupertino, founded by Steve Jobs a decade ago and still in the process of being completed . It’s the first time an event has been held at this venue with Apple CEO Tim Cook dedicating the theatre to Jobs, remembering his genius and his ability to inspire talent for Apple.

Highlighting the innovations of the previous versions of the iPhone, first launched ten years ago, Tim Cook, later helped by Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, presented the iPhone 8 duo — the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. These two devices, although described as a huge step forward for the iPhone, are clearly iterations or upgrades of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The smaller of these is 4.7 inches and the larger, 5.5 inches.

Coming soon after September 22, the two 8s will be in space grey, silver and a new shade of gold. The phones are made of glass, back and front, held together securely by metal. This time, they catch up with a trend that has been on several Android phones — water and dust resistance. The glass finish was described as being made using a seven-layer colour process for precise hue and opacity. As has been the case with some of Apple’s other devices, the Retina HD display comes with True Tone, the display’s ability to sense the light around and adjust accordingly for better eye comfort and to make it seem more like reading from a paper. The phones’ stereo speakers, already deep and loud in the previous version, will see a 25 per cent improvement.

These two new iPhones may not look dramatically different from the iPhones we know, but come with a new chip, the A11 Bionic, and are expected to work much faster, handling 3D applications, machine learning frameworks and more because of the new chip. Photography will also be faster and more powerful because of the A11 chip. The chip features a six-core CPU design with two performance cores that are 25 per cent faster and four efficiency cores that are 70 per cent faster than the A10 Fusion, meant to result in better performance and energy efficiency, according to Apple. The chip also integrates an Apple-designed GPU with a three-core design.

The cameras on the iPhone 8 Plus are particularly designed to enable AR experiences. They work with gyroscopes and accelerometers for motion tracking. The 12 MP camera comes with a larger and faster sensor, a new colour filter and deeper pixels. Apple promises faster autofocus in low light and better HDR photos and much better colour range. Video capture will have better video stabilisation, delivering 4K video up to 60fps and 1080p slo-mo up to 240fps. The iPhone 8 Plus features dual 12 MP cameras and introduces a new Portrait mode with Portrait Lighting, with which the user can light up a subject’s face, for example, using different lighting styles.

The two phones will come with wireless charging and will work on iOS 11, which brings a host of new features to make a significant difference to the way the phones will be used. They will now come with stepped up storage of 64 GB and 256 GB and will reach India around September 29 at Apple-authorised resellers such as Brightstar Telecommunication India and Redington starting at approximately ₹64,000.

If fans wanted an entirely new phone, all they had to do was wait for that “One More Thing” moment when Tim Cook revealed the actual anniversary phone, the iPhone X (pronounced Ten). True to rumour, the iPhone X was shown to be a device with an edge to edge display, a feature that has now been present on many Android smartphones including budget ones.

Apple believes the iPhone X is not just a new era for the iPhone but the future of the smartphone. This 5.8-inch phone shares many features of the iPhone 8s including the A11 Bionic chip, wireless charging; but has a better display Apple calls Super Retina, the first OLED panel on an iPhone. The HDR display supports Dolby Vision and HDR10, which together are meant to make photo and video content look brilliant.

The iPhone X comes with Face ID authentication using a new ‘TrueDepth’ 7 MP camera system made up of a dot projector, infrared camera and flood illuminator, which maps and recognises a face. These depth-sensing technologies work together to securely unlock the iPhone, gain access to secure apps and more new features. Face ID projects more than 30,000 invisible IR dots. The IR image and dot pattern are pushed through neural networks to create a mathematical model of your face and send the data to the secure enclave to confirm a match, while adapting to physical changes in appearance over time. All saved facial information is protected by the secure enclave to keep data extremely secure, while all of the processing is done on-device and not on the cloud to protect user privacy. Face ID only unlocks iPhone X when customers look at it and is designed to prevent spoofing by photos or masks.

iPhone X also features a dual 12 MP rear camera system with dual optical image stabilisation. The f/1.8 aperture on the wide-angle camera joins an f/2.4 aperture on the telephoto camera for both photos and videos. A new colour filter, deeper pixels and an improved image signal processor for better processing, wide colour capture, faster autofocus in low light and better HDR photos.

Apple is making a big push into Augmented Reality. The cameras on the iPhone X are tuned for AR experiences. Each camera is calibrated, with new gyroscopes and accelerometers for accurate motion tracking. With these new features, iOS developers are expected to take advantage of the TrueDepth camera and the rear cameras to create games and apps offering new experiences.

The new camera also supports 4K video up to 60fps and 1080p slo-mo up to 240fps. A Portrait mode with Portrait Lighting on both the front and rear cameras brings studio lighting effects to the iPhone X as well and allows users to capture portraits with a shallow depth-of-field effect in five different lighting styles.

IOS 11, coming on September 19, will bring in a new way of using the new iPhones as well as bring some of the features in the operating system to older but recent devices. Much of the navigation will involve swipe-ups to call up control centre, multi-task and even turn off apps. There is no longer a physical home button on the iPhone X.

The iPhone X will be available in silver and space grey in 64 GB and 256 GB models starting at ₹89,000 from Apple-authorised resellers from November 3. The 256 GB version is said to cost a whopping ₹1,02,000.

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