Apple has unveiled three iPhones and none of them was the 7S or 7S Plus, instead the company unveiled the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and the iPhone X (pronounced iPhone 10).
iPhone X is a massive leap forward for Apple, this is the first iPhone with an OLED display, no home button, a 5.8-inch nearly bezel-less display and – along with the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus – also has wireless charging.
“For more than a decade, our intention has been to create an iPhone that is all display. The iPhone X is the realization of that vision,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “With the introduction of iPhone ten years ago, we revolutionized the mobile phone with Multi-Touch. iPhone X marks a new era for iPhone — one in which the device disappears into the experience.”
Display
The 5.8-inch Super Retina display is the first OLED panel that Apple says “rises to the standards of iPhone”, with stunning colors, true blacks, a million-to-one contrast ratio and wide color support. The HDR display supports Dolby Vision and HDR10, something found in many top Android flagship smartphones sunch as the Samsung Galaxy S8 / 8+, Note 8 and LG’s G6 and V30.
iPhone X also has True Tone – first seen on the iPad Pro 10.5 – which dynamically adjusts the white balance of the display to match the surrounding light for a more natural viewing experience.
Following the smartphone trend for 2017, iPhone X has removed the home button – and TouchID – in order to bring about a nearly bezel-less display.
Face ID, which replaces TouchID, revolutionises authentication on iPhone X and uses a state-of-the-art TrueDepth camera system made up of a dot projector, infrared camera and flood illuminator, and is powered by A11 Bionic to accurately map and recognise a face. FaceID can be used to securely unlock iPhone, enable Apple Pay, gain access to secure apps and many 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 in 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.
Cameras
iPhone X has a new 7-megapixel TrueDepth camera that enables Face ID features wide color capture, auto image stabilisation and precise exposure control, and brings Portrait mode to the front camera for stunning selfies with a depth-of-field effect.
iPhone X also features a redesigned dual 12-megapixel rear camera system with dual optical image stabilization. The ƒ/1.8 aperture on the wide-angle camera joins an improved ƒ/2.4 aperture on the telephoto camera for better photos and videos.
A new color filter, deeper pixels and an improved Apple-designed image signal processor delivers advanced pixel processing, wide color capture, faster autofocus in low light and better HDR photos. A new quad LED True Tone Flash offers twice the uniformity of light and includes Slow Sync, which Apple says will result in more uniformly lit backgrounds and foregrounds.
The cameras on iPhone X are custom tuned for AR. Each camera is individually calibrated, with new gyroscopes and accelerometers for accurate motion tracking. The A11 Bionic CPU handles world tracking, scene recognition and the GPU enables incredible graphics at 60fps, while the image signal processor does real-time lighting estimation. With ARKit, iOS developers can take advantage of the TrueDepth camera and the rear cameras to create games and apps offering immersive experiences.
The new camera also delivers the “highest quality video capture ever in a smartphone” (according to Apple), with better video stabilisation, 4K video up to 60fps and 1080p slo-mo up to 240fps. The Apple-designed video encoder provides real-time image and motion analysis for optimal quality video.
Portrait mode with Portrait Lighting on both the front and rear cameras brings dramatic studio lighting effects to iPhone and lets you capture stunning portraits with a shallow depth-of-field effect in five different lighting styles.
The TrueDepth camera can be used for more than FaceID and amazing selfies, it can also bring emojis to life in a fun new way with Animoji. Working with A11 Bionic, the TrueDepth camera captures and analyzes over 50 different facial muscle movements, then animates those expressions in a dozen different Animoji, including a panda, unicorn and robot. Available as an iMessage app pre-installed on iPhone X, you’ll be able to record and send Animoji messages with your voice that can smile, frown and more.
“iPhone X is the future of the smartphone. It is packed with incredible new technologies, like the innovative TrueDepth camera system, beautiful Super Retina display and super fast A11 Bionic chip with neural engine,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPhone X enables fluid new user experiences — from unlocking your iPhone with Face ID, to playing immersive AR games, to sharing Animoji in Messages — it is the beginning of the next ten years for iPhone.”
iPhone X will be available in two colours – Space Gray and Silver – and two st0rage sizes – 64GB or 256GB.
The 64GB iPhone X will retail for $999 in the United States, while the 256GB will retail for $1 149.
Local prices and availability have not yet been confirmed.
