On Tuesday this week, Apple had the official public unveiling for the new iPhone range, with one of the handsets on offer, the iPhone X, generating a particularly high level of excitement. As Apple is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, there was a consensus in the industry that they would release something a little special this year.
From the released specifications of the iPhone X, it looks like they have genuinely attempted to move the iPhone forward a leap this year. If someone is weighing up the iPhone 8 against the iPhone X, one important thing to note is the price of the new iPhone, which will be coming in at €999, so it’s not for the faint of heart.
In terms of the new features of the the iPhone X, the most apparent visually is the removal of the home button, which gives the front of the phone an edge to edge screen. This means that the phone has a screen size of 5.8 inches (.3 of an inch larger than an iPhone 7 Plus), but is a physically smaller phone.
For this larger display, Apple have used an OLED panel, which will give the phone a much improved display over previous models. As only Apple can, they are marketing this screen as ‘Super Retina’, but in real terms it’s a similar screen to what’s been installed in Samsung, LG and other phone for the past few years.
Another welcome addition if your an iPhone user is wireless charging, again something that has been relatively widely available in recent years, but this is a first for the iPhone. Due to the inclusion of this feature, it was necessary for a glass rear panel to be used, so the all metal body used since the iPhone 5 has been scraped for the ‘sandwich’ look of the iPhone 4/4s.
One feature which is an innovative one for a phone is the inclusion of facial recognition scanning to unlock the phone, something Apple claim is 20 times better than Touch ID. In all honesty, I would imagine that they are extremely confident about this technology, as they are secure enough to completely remove the fingerprint scanner as a feature.
Only time will really tell if this is the phone that it appears to be, but in all honesty, it’s the first iPhone that I am genuinely tempted to purchase.