Apple reveals high-spec iPhone X

Apple has unveiled the hotly-anticipated iPhone X at a press event at the Steve Jobs Theater, sporting a radical redesign for the iPhone brand.

With the absence of the ever-present Home button and Bezel, the new device celebrating the 10th anniversary of iPhone certainly looks different. With a gorgeous 5-8-inch edge-to-edge OLED display (1,125 x 2,436, 458ppi) and glass back-plate, the device certainly stands out from the crowd for aesthetics. The new Super Retina display supports HDR and True Tone.

Because there is no Home button, a gesture (swipe up from bottom) instead is used to return to the Home screen from any app. A larger side button can be used for a variety of things, such as summoning Siri. You can also summon Siri with voice command as before.

The feature change prompting the most buzz is the inclusion of Face ID facial recognition technology, which is yet unproven for mass deployment in smartphones, especially when compared to the success of Touch ID (deployed since iPhone 5S) and similar fingerprinting scanning features. Face ID can be used as an iPhone unlock mechanism by simply looking at the phone, for iTunes purchases, for Safari Autofill, third party apps and to determine when you are looking at the screen to avoid premature dimming. It is enabled by an array of censors on the top of the iPhone screen

Your face data is protected and is not sent to remote servers. Additionally, much work has been put in to protecting the system from being compromised. Apple claims there is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of another person unlocking your device with their face. You can also backup with a passcode too.

Since the leak of the iOS 11 code last week, we also expected to find wireless charging hardware built-in to the iPhone X, and were not disappointed. It supports Qi open wireless standard, providing support for a wide range of third party products for wireless charging. Additionally, Apple is producing its own charging mat for a variety of its devices that will support wireless charging called AirPower.

Under the hood, iPhone X can exploit 3GB of RAM and is driven by a new A11 Bionic chip with two high performance cores, and four high-efficiency cores.

iPhone X runs iOS 11 which includes some interface changes. Battery, cellular network signal and wireless network information is featured in the top right corner, except while charging when a larger battery icon obscures the rest. In the top left corner, the current time is displayed with differing background colors based on device activity (e.g. red for recording, green while on a call.)

Apple iPhone X will cost $999 with 64GB storage. A 265GB version will also be available. Orders start on October 16, and the device will be available from November 3.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 12 Sep 2017 14:56

ronatola

What's the world coming to?!
$1000USD to make a phonecall and send a text.
All the other stuff is bloat, and the mindless masses have been conditioned to think it's all necessary for the basic standard of life.

12.9.2017 18:15 #1

sleeepy2

12.9.2017 20:05 #2

PraisesToAllah

Oh AfterDawn! 4 separate highlight stories for Apple. Where are your stories for the Samsung S8 and the new Note 8?

12.9.2017 20:08 #3

Bozobub

Originally posted by sleeepy2: Originally posted by ronatola: What's the world coming to?!
$1000USD to make a phonecall and send a text.
All the other stuff is bloat, and the mindless masses have been conditioned to think it's all necessary for the basic standard of life. Good thing you saw right through that, oh Enlightened One.
Yes, it is. And your snark doesn't invalidate a thing ronatola just said.

13.9.2017 10:39 #4

hearme0

Originally posted by ronatola: What's the world coming to?!
$1000USD to make a phonecall and send a text.
All the other stuff is bloat, and the mindless masses have been conditioned to think it's all necessary for the basic standard of life. Yup!

And now they're trying to justify these prices by stating "It's really a small powerful computer in your hands" NONSENSE. IT'S A PHONE!!!

Yeah, one can surf the web but the shit that phone manufacturers bolster up to account for the massive price increase are things that seriously come SECOND or as a byproduct of the phone's original use......AS A PHONE. Like camera tech. Often the software is increasing the price. And who cares if the screen is AMOLED or Retina or seriously bright LED with high pixel counts! A nice bright and clear as a bell display can be had w/o the hefty pricetags that come with OLED and Retina.

Add to that, all the morons out there that want NEXT YEAR'S PHONE will not be able to upgrade (which keeps all cellular users in a perpetual increased payment plan FOREVER) until 18 months or when the phone is paid off by like 80%. Then they'll jump into the next 1100 dollar phone.

It's so ridiculous. I ditched my cell 4 yrs ago and even as a network engineer, I'm not regretting my decision because all ya'll doing this "jump" or "Next" feature after paying 1000 dollars for a phone and then doing it all over again the following year are truly being taken to the cleaners.

But...GOD help you if you're unable to bury your heads in a phone soas to keep from socializing. Keep walking and texting!

13.9.2017 11:17 #5

SoTired

I agree $1k is way too much money, but I don't think most people think of their smartphones as being primarily phones, and most people don't spend that much time using the phone features.

In my case (I've never been an iPhone owner, btw), my "phone" has replaced multiple devices that I regularly purchased before the smartphone takeover:

Camera - $200 was what I typically paid for a decent compact camera that was nowhere near the quality of the camera in my current phone.
GPS Navigation device - my old Garmin and TomTom devices used to cost around $200. Again, nowhere near the quality of what my smartphone now has (realtime traffic, etc.)
Phone - My old flip phones were subsidized, so the price was built into my service contracts. But they ran around $150-250.
Portable music player - $150-200.
Portable movie (DVD) player -- $100.
Portable game system (Nintendo GameBoy, etc.) - $150-$200.

So, before smartphones, I used to pay well over $1000 every few years for this collection of devices. And they did not include the ability to browse the web or provide the services that I get from numerous free apps, ranging from metronomes to guitar tuners to portable recording devices for music, cookbooks, and so forth.

Overall, I hardly look at my phone as a phone anymore. And I don't have a problem paying a sum that, while significant, is still less than I used to spend on the collection of devices that it replaces.

My issue with the iPhone pricing is that it is far more expensive than other devices that have comparable specs or are certainly close enough to handle these ordinary tasks equally well.

14.9.2017 04:21 #6

sleeepy2

Originally posted by Bozobub: Originally posted by sleeepy2: Originally posted by ronatola: What's the world coming to?!
$1000USD to make a phonecall and send a text.
All the other stuff is bloat, and the mindless masses have been conditioned to think it's all necessary for the basic standard of life. Good thing you saw right through that, oh Enlightened One.
Yes, it is. And your snark doesn't invalidate a thing ronatola just said. Since the time of the Pharaohs, there have been luxury items. That's just the human condition, some will always have more than others. Nobody is mandating that you buy a thousand dollar phone. Apple is making one, it will exist, and 99.9999% of the human population will ignore it. I object to the moralizing about "mindless masses... conditioned to think it's all necessary for the basic standard of life". That's just freshman level douchebaggery.

14.9.2017 09:35 #7

Dan1Man

Great Breakdown in the Cost of the devices included in phones. Technology is wonderful when it compacts all those functions into a single device, reminiscent to Star Trek's Tricorder -- Fascinating!

Dan-the-Man

15.9.2017 10:34 #8

KillerBug

I'm sure it will sell. Apple is all about showing how much money you can throw away on something that will be outdated in a few months so more expensive products do that better.

Personally I'm just sick of the phone game. Both iOS and Android are too restrictive...android isn't as bad, and some models can be rooted with instructions from the actual manufacturer...but even a rooted or jailbroken phone is still pretty limited in what you can do. People (rightfully) complain about how limited Windows 10 is...but it makes a rooted Android device look extremely restrictive. Until I have options like a really functional x64 Linux or windows phone (no, I don't mean that fake version of windows for phones nor am I talking about the Ubuntu phone that is so poorly supported that the link on their site goes to a 404 page) there really isn't any reason for me to buy anything more than a base model android from a cheap manufacturer.

16.9.2017 10:57 #9

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