The announcement Apple fans around the world have been waiting for is finally upon us. Yesterday, Apple announced the iPhone X - the latest model of its flagship smartphone line - alongside the new iPhone 8 and 8+. The ‘keynote’ was a typical Apple presentation, full of reason why the new device will change your life with a softly spoken British man telling all about its curves and edges. Here’s the big talking points from the launch event.
Wireless charging
In Apple’s classic move of doing something 2 years after other phones and calling it innovation, the iPhone X will support wireless charging for the first time. In an interesting twist, however, Apple will be selling a wireless charger that allows you to charge you iPhone, Apple Watch and Air Buds all at the same time, which makes it stand out from the rest.
Apple are claiming that the iPhone X (which has moved straight from 8 to 10 in a Windows-esque maneuver) will be the phone’s biggest redesign ever, with wireless charging being a part of that.
Face recognition
Getting your phone unlocked in new and interesting ways has been a trend for both Apple and Samsung in recent years, with fingerprint scanners being the previous big thing in smartphone technology. Now, the iPhone X has been designed to recognise your face, allowing you to unlock the phone just by looking at it. Samsung has also added this with its recent Galaxy S8, so it makes sense that Apple has also had it in the works.
Unlike the S8 though, Apple completely scrapped the home button and therefore the Touch ID. This means that you won’t be able to unlock your phone with the fingerprint scanner any longer - a feature that will surely be missed by some.
Bye bye bezels
The new hot topic in the world of smartphones is bezels - or lack thereof. The iPhone X is the latest phone to eschew them entirely, creating a phone that just looks like a screen you can hold. This a big change for Apple, which has previously had devices with very pronounced bezels compared to some newer Android phones.
The display has a few other tricks up its sleeve apart from extended size. It now boasts AMOLED technology, which Apple is calling ‘Super Retina’, making it much higher in fidelity than the standard iPhone model. This tech, which has been used in Samsung phones for a few iterations now, makes colours and blacks much deeper and visually impressive, so it’s about time Apple got on the bandwagon.
New camera tricks
The X will feature a new design of the dual-lens system found on the iPhone 7+ and 8+. Despite the new vertical look to the camera, users will still get 12 MP as they do with every current iPhone, though Apple boasts that the X has better camera sensors allowing for “deep pixels”. New Portrait Lighting has also been added, allowing for users to change the lighting of a photo before they’ve taken it. The camera juts out of the phone rather awkwardly, which seems like it will make it a pain to put down on a table without it wobbling or potentially damaging the camera. Though if you’re buying a £1000 phone and not buying a case for it, you’re asking for it.
The front camera is where the majority of improvements have been made, with ‘TrueDepth’ technology, giving you more control over depth of field as well as adding a speaker, microphone and face-mapping dot projector which allows for the FaceID unlocking.
You are the emoji
One of the strangest new features of the iPhone X has to be the addition of ‘Animoji’, Apple’s new system that allows you to animate emoji using your own face. If this sounds weird, it looks even weirder, with the demo on Apple’s site showing someone animated everything from a unicorn, alien and even the infamous poo emoji.
Users will be able to use these features on iMessage along with standard emojis and the stickers and special effects it implemented with the previous version of iOS. Whilst it may seem silly and a bit meaningless now, it does prove that the front-facing camera has enjoyed a genuine upgrade over the previous iPhone.
