Someone came to my house and happened to spot the iPhone X in my hand. The man was nothing short of amazed and almost forgot he had come to get some papers signed. He said he would buy it as soon as it became available. I reminded him that it cost between ₹89,000 and ₹1,02,000 but that didn’t deter him in the least. “That’s nothing for an iPhone,” he said, “An iPhone is an iPhone.” Who can argue with that kind of love! People queuing up for the coveted anniversary phone know exactly what my visitor means.
The demand for the new device is so high that Apple’s shares hit a record high on its launch. The poor iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are likely to left behind as fans give it their all and go for the iPhone X. For sure, it takes a different direction from the way Apple has been designing its iPhones so far.
The build is excellent and the phone’s weight and size seem to somehow feel just right. I was tempted not to use the device with a case, but yielded to my better judgment as all that glass is bound to be vulnerable with reports of people breaking the device at first drop coming in. In fact, I would strongly advise a flip case to protect the screen. The iPhone X’s almost edge-less display actually comes from Samsung (which is amusingly mocking Apple fans in a recent ad) making it Apple’s first OLED screen, but it has been modified by them to make the colours more realistic.
Brilliance on display Whoever’s done whatever, the screen does look luscious and is a beauty to look at every time you pick up the phone (which is when it wakes, incidentally). The one thing that can disturb the scenery is the now famous ‘notch’ or an area on the top edge of the screen. It disturbs the symmetry, but you can either get used to its presence or continue to let it drive you mad. Personally, I find myself often placing a finger over it to imagine how pretty the phone would be without it, but then I move on to forget it. The reason for that notch is that it houses several important components, not the least of which is Apple’s new “TrueDepth” camera, which is what enables the much talked about Face ID.
Your face is your password Replacing the earlier Touch ID, Face ID is one of the top features on this phone — and the most controversial. It was easy enough setting it up. Once you say yes to its use (and you really have to or you’ll see an incomplete set-up notification badge in the Settings) you just waggle your head around in two different sessions to register it. In my two weeks with Face ID, I find it a mixed bag. Sometimes it works in less than a blink. And sometimes, for no discernible reason, it presents me with a pin option. It has worked in sunlight, in near darkness, with dark glasses on, with eyes half closed, and sometimes not. The one thing that annoys me is that it requires a swipe plus the face recognition to unlock — it somehow feels like two distinct actions time-wise. Overall, Face ID is a slower process than Touch ID.
New ways to interact Once you’re ‘inside’ the phone, it’s very smooth and fluid, a characteristic it shares with the Pixel phones, in fact. You can see how powerful the iPhone X’s A11 Bionic chip is when you use the ‘animojis’ — Apple’s irresistibly silly animated characters. These are hidden in the iMessages app and use the TrueDepth camera to track your face and head movements and make them one with the cat, panda or whatever else you choose from the small collection available. These also record your voice and use your movements in a shareable format.
You can also gauge the speed of the iPhone X when you use the gestures that now replace the vanished Home button. Anyone with a previous iPhone may take a while to get used to these new ways of interacting with the device and may even get confused.
I didn’t find it a problem and never even thought about the Home button but I suspect this is because I use so many phones. Now you tap to wake up the phone, you swipe up to go to the Home screen, you swipe from a bar at the bottom to see all open apps and switch between them, and confusingly, you swipe from up to down to get to the Control Centre. This last gesture is the one thing I cannot ever remember.
Top of the line camera Currently, the cameras on all the top smartphones are battling it out for supremacy. But the truth is each one is superlative and excels in one way or another. The Pixel 2’s camera is ahead on a few attributes such as low light and video, but the iPhone X’s camera has its own strengths and scores highest on stills.
Image experts DXoMark have dubbed the iPhone X the current best for still images, in fact. If you’re upgrading from the iPhone 8 Plus you may not find a leap of a difference, but anything before that and you may appreciate the increased stability, especially with video, thanks to the OIS on all fronts on the iPhone X. The dual rear cameras are 12 MP with apertures of f/1.8 and f/2.4 and optical image stabilisation.
There’s a 2x zoom which works very well — marginally better than the iPhone 8 Plus. The Portrait mode does a good job of blurring background, but isn’t flawless, as is the case with all phones right now. The depth camera is used to help achieve six ‘Studio lighting’ effects, two of which black out the background, an interesting but hit-or-miss feature.
Price: ₹ 89,000 (64 GB), ₹ 1,02,000 (256 GB)
Pros: Welcome changes to design, perfect sizing, brilliant OLED display, new horizons to explore in AR, smooth, fast and powerful, top camera
Cons: Phenomenally expensive, notch on screen annoys some, apps don’t all scale yet, new navigation gestures could confuse at first, needs a flip case, camera protrudes, Face ID inconsistent.