The big news came out yesterday and all I can say is: finally!
Maybe Steve Jobs’ ghost came back to flutter around 1 Infinite Loop. Or, even less likely, maybe Tim Cook read my rant about the shitty design of the iPhone 7.
Maybe investors were just getting fed up with the training wheels and wanted to see just how high the stock price could go.
It doesn’t matter, the iPhone X is the chains-off, technology-driven, we’re-going-back-to-innovating product that Apple has badly needed since the death of Steve Jobs.
Highlights:
- It’s all screen, and that screen wraps around the edge, in the same way as the Samsung Edge but without the terrible design of the Samsung Edge.
- An OLED screen, which I’m pretty sure stands for OMG LED, provides a 1 million to 1 contrast ratio. Fuck better screens, I’m going to need better eyes!
- It’s got glass on the back so you can shatter both sides of your phone when you drop it at the bar.
- Wireless charging, jumping on the bandwagon a little late here but still better than the plug.
- Forward-facing portrait mode, so those annoying influencers can look even better.
- The A11 Neural processor can do up to 600 billion operations per second. Notice that word, Neural? Apple is preparing us subliminally for the robot apocalypse.
All of that is really just blah blah compared to the big innovation, Face ID.
The iPhone X uses an invisible dot projector to map your face. You can then unlock your phone just by looking at it.
I’ll let that sink in.
You can do everything with your face that you used to do with your thumbprint. It even boasts an artificial intelligence system so that it can recognize you with your glasses on or after a month of not shaving.
An infrared camera can even see your face even when it’s dark in the room.
Sure, it costs the same as a MacBook Air. But the iPhone X is way more advanced.
I’m not a fan of the rounded corners that have become standard since the iPhone 6 – I prefer the oldschool design of the iPhone 5 with the metal around the outside, but after years of making slightly bigger, slightly faster, and slightly different colored variations of their standard devices, Apple has made a true leap forward.
Finally.
Tony Hymes 