Hands-On With iPhone X

This is in no way a review, because I’ve only gotten to spend about half an hour with the new iPhone X, which hit retail stores today. But I did want to share some first impressions of the new phone now that I’ve had a chance to experience it in person. Wow. This is a remarkable product!

The Screen

Simply put, the iPhone X’s Super Retina Display (Apple’s first ever OLED display in an iPhone) is stunning. When you see a white background on the screen (such as the background of a web page), it actually looks like real paper. Like you’re looking at something tangible, not a backlit display behind glass. If you move it off-axis by tilting it to one side, the colors will shift toward the blue end of the specturm. I suspect that if you have True Tone disable this would be hardly noticable. (But you should have it enabled because it looks amazing.) While it’s certainly not accurate to refer to the iPhone X’s display as “bezel-less”, pushing the screen all the way out to the edges makes for an incredible window into the software. While the iPhone X’s “notch” is not ideal, I like that they went with the design compromise that allowed for the display to reach all the way to the top corners.

Face ID

I didn’t get to experience unlocking the iPhone X with my own face, but I did see a couple of other people do so, and it worked flawlessly. I think I would love Face ID personally. The demo units in the Apple Store have a “Face ID Demo” app where you can simulate the experience of setting up Face ID. Basically it takes you through a task of moving your nose around in a circle so that the True Depth system can scan your face in three dimensions. It makes you repeat that process once. It’s very quick, and neither time did I have to stop and start the process over again. This process is much better than the up/down, up/down process of setting up Touch ID.

Interaction

Due to its display extending into every corner, there’s no room on the iPhone X for a Home button. There were two or three times during my brief testing today that my thumb instinctively tried to stab a button that isn’t there. I suspect that would go away quickly though. Instead of a Home button there’s a Home bar at the bottom of the screen. Swipe up on it and it takes you back to the Home screen. Slide left or right on it and you switch between apps. Swipe up and hold and you’re taken to the familiar multi-tasking app switcher. Swipe down on it and you enable Reachability. To me it works great for every one of those tasks except for Reachability. There’s very little room for you to swipe down given how close the Home bar is to the bottom of the display. Need to enable Siri? Hold down on the (now much larger) sleep/wake button on the right side of the iPhone X. Need to get to Apple Pay? Double-press that same button. Need to power off the phone? Hold down the sleep/wake button along with either of the volume buttons for a few seconds.

Design

iPhone X has quite simply the most beautiful design of any iPhone to date. It has a heft to it (due to the front and back glass) that is quite pleasant. It’s just barely larger than the standard-sized iPhone, but because the display goes edge-to-edge, it’s actually larger in diameter than the display on the Plus-sized iPhone. Now you can have the more manageably-sized iPhone while still getting the best iPhone camera available. No more compromises there. iPhone X comes in two colors: Space Gray and Silver. After the iPhone X was announced I wrote that I would choose the Silver model if I were buying an iPhone X. Now that I’ve actually seen them in person, I stand by that. The Space Gray model is actually quite black in person. So if you didn’t like Space Gray before because it was too light, you’ll love the new Gray. But I think the Silver model looks better because all of the colors contrast nicely. Unlike it’s Gray sibling, the Silver model has a polished silver stainless steel band. It looks really, really nice.

The Camera

I didn’t get the opportunity to spend any time with the back camera, but I did experiment with Portrait Mode using the front camera. As you can see from the example photo I took, it does an amazing job. The only thing that challenged it was my glasses. My glasses are fairly large with thin frames, and I had to get that far back from the camera to prevent it from trying to blur out the edges of my glasses. By the way, that photo is completely unedited, though I did apply one of the new Portrait Lighting effects. I’ve already seen some amazing Portrait photos that people have taken with the back camera.

Summary

If you’re on the fence between the iPhone 8 or 8 Plus and the iPhone X, and you have the means, I can’t recommend the iPhone X highly enough. It is the future of the iPhone, and it’s a wonderful future.