Apple iPhone X Preview – OLED from edge to edge

The iPhone 7 was a bit of a disappointment in a way. It’s certainly not a bad smartphone, but Apple released a smartphone with a new design every two years until then and the external changes compared to the 6s were minimal. In addition, the biggest new feature was the dual camera and it was not on the smaller variant, so you had to choose; a very large phone or a smaller one that lacked the new feature. We are at Apple in Cupertino to see the phone that combines a large screen, a compact body and a dual camera: the iPhone X.

The iPhone X is a special iPhone for Apple, because the ‘X’ marks the milestone of ten years of iPhone. It was announced alongside the two usual upgraded versions of last year’s iPhone, which Apple would normally refer to as 7s and 7s Plus. This year is also different in that regard, because they have been christened iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, probably because the glass design of those devices differs from the metal housing last year. We will write a separate preview about those iPhones later.

The iPhone X is clearly this year’s most interesting iPhone. Despite the smartphone market maturing and truly groundbreaking changes becoming rarer and rarer, Apple has pulled out a lot for this tenth anniversary. Let’s start with the things that stand out the most.

Edge to edge and a glass back

Samsung and LG kicked off earlier this year with smartphones where the screen covers a larger part of the front than before. The bezels of the iPhone X are more comparable to those of the Essential Phone. The relative screen size to the entire front of the iPhone X is 80.9%, where that of the Samsung Galaxy S8, for example, is 84.2%. The front of the iPhone X is all screen. The bezels on the sides are old-fashioned thick; they are almost as wide as previous iPhones.

To enable a larger screen with smaller bezels and thus a relatively compact housing, the screen ratio has to be overhauled. Apple’s phones have had a 16:9 screen for five years, just like almost every other smartphone. LG now uses a screen ratio of 18:9 and Samsung an even more elongated 18.5:9. Apple even opts for 19.5:9. The advantage of such a screen ratio is that, for example, when browsing the web, more web pages fit on your screen. The downside is that a lot of content is in the 16:9 format, so you get black bars on the side, or part of the image is missing if you hold the iPhone X tilted. In addition, Apple maintains a ‘safe area’ and developers are not allowed to display interface elements too close to the corners, because they can disappear due to the rounding of corners.

Still, we think it’s a great development that Apple is moving in this direction and that many manufacturers will probably follow suit. It makes smartphones more compact, or screens bigger, depending on how you want to see it. If you find it annoying, you can also opt for smartphones with a classic 16:9 screen ratio for the time being and more choice is better in our opinion.

If you want the front of a smartphone to consist of as much screen as possible, you’re faced with one immediate problem, and that’s one that Apple has elegantly solved. There is usually a camera, proximity sensor and a speaker above the screen. They are also included with the iPhone X, namely in the cutout at the top of the screen. That may look a bit strange at first, but it’s not a bad idea. The space next to the recess is now used as a top bar and you can see which connections there are, how much range you have, the time and how much battery charge you have left. That is efficient use of the screen space, because the rest of the screen is for the content.

The front of the iPhone X is therefore essentially different from what we are used to from Apple, but the back is also different from recent years. It is made of glass and we last saw that with the iPhone 4s from 2011. The iPhone X also has a glass back, as many high-end Android smartphones from 2017 also have. Since many relatively cheap smartphones got a metal housing in the past year, it was time for a different material to be distinctive.

The result of that choice is obvious and is no different from other glass appliances: it is a finger-swiping party. The glass design does look slick. The sides are still made of metal, which fits nicely with the glass front and back. Although the iPhone X feels sturdy and does not bend easily, the choice of glass on both sides has made the phone more fragile. Apple says that the glass on the back is the strongest glass that has been put on a smartphone so far. It is not Gorilla Glass, but a type of glass developed by Apple itself.

A positive consequence of the glass back is that wireless charging becomes possible. This iPhone and the other two announced devices can also do that, which is not possible with devices with a metal back. This happens just like with almost all other smartphones that support it via the Qi standard – you pronounce that as ‘chi’ by the way. Another nice consequence of glass is that no more antenna lines can be seen on the back. You can still see them running thinly on the side through the metal.

The buttons are pretty much in the same places, but there are a few differences with the iPhone 7 (Plus) and 8 (Plus). The button on the right side of the device is a lot bigger. You can summon Siri with a single long press and with a double press you can activate Apple Pay and then confirm the payment with Face ID.

What was also striking about the housing when we held the device is that the double camera on the back of the device protrudes quite a bit; apparently more than with the iPhone 7 (Plus). With those devices, the camera bump is sloping and it is therefore a kind of hill. With the iPhone X, the camera protrudes a bit more angularly from the device and is less integrated with the rest of the back, if only because the camera edge is made of metal and the back is made of glass.

Oled screen

The iPhones of recent years had a beautiful LCD, but even the most beautiful LCD cannot compete with a high-quality OLED screen. That actually has only one main reason and that is the fact that a pixel can be turned off on an OLED screen and can therefore produce an almost perfect black value. As a result, an OLED screen is particularly rich in contrast. Apple has been able to get enough OLED screens for the iPhone X and that is good news.

The OLED screen on the iPhone X therefore looks great, with the colors splashing off the screen. We cannot say with the naked eye how it compares to an OLED screen of, for example, a recent Samsung device, but we suspect that it will not differ much. After all, the screen is very likely to come from Samsung. The iPhone X has adopted True Tone from the iPad Pros, which adjusts the white balance of the screen according to the ambient light. As a result, the color fidelity of the screen appears more correct to the human eye, since our eye also adjusts to ambient light.

The screen is narrower and longer than that of the iPhone Plus phones of recent years. They have a screen with a surface area of ​​83.4 cm ² and the iPhone X up to 84 cm ² . The smaller iPhones have a considerably smaller display at 60cm ^{2 .}

From Touch ID to Face ID

Last year, Apple ditched the 3.5mm jack and now the fingerprint scanner is also disappearing. These are remarkable steps, because both functions worked fine. In fact, Apple is the manufacturer that popularized the fingerprint scanner on smartphones.

But how do you unlock the iPhone X? Basically with facial recognition called Face ID. The infrared camera makes a 3D scan with thirty thousand points on the face. If someone looks at the phone with the lock screen on, the phone quickly creates a 3d scan and matches it with the saved points. Algorithms must be used to make this comparison quickly and also filter out elements such as different light, glasses or other hair. In addition, Apple has tried to teach the software to recognize photos and masks and then keep the phone locked.

We were able to test that briefly in the Steve Jobs Theater. Most of the time, unlocking the iPhone X went well and fairly quickly. We doubt whether it is just as fast as the fingerprint scanner with Touch ID. Still, we need to test it a bit more in practice to be able to say whether it will be annoying to unlock the phone with the face if you are used to the fast Touch ID.

When unlocking, it is important to keep the phone pointed at you and look at the phone. According to Apple employees, it was developed that way on purpose, because it would be unsafe if someone took your phone and could unlock it while you weren’t looking at it yourself. We do wonder what it will be like if you’re in the car, for example, and you have the iPhone X in a car holder. It would be inconvenient to have to hang with your face in front of it. Also on the table you may have to force yourself over it or pick up the phone and that is perhaps a disadvantage of the absence of Touch ID.

What is striking in a negative sense anyway is that the employee who demonstrated Face ID to us sometimes did not get the phone unlocked with the face. In the end, she even had to enter her code to reset Face ID, but it went wrong again after that. Perhaps it is a bug, because it either worked well and fairly quickly, or not at all, even after several tries. We hope this turns out to be an incident.

In addition to Face ID, the series of sensors on the front also has another function, which is to make the new Animoji move. In the Messages app you can have various well-known emoji react to your face. When you smile, the Animoji smiles too, and when you frown, the Animoji frowns happily. It works very quickly and directly. You can also record and send a voice message. It is very nice that the function can be included in the Messages app as a .mov file, so that it can then also be sent in other apps.

Control without home button

You immediately miss the home button if you have an iPhone X, which is quite logical, because you use it quite often. Apple made some tweaks to the iOS controls to fix this, and we tried to get used to them in the short amount of time we had. The difference is huge. For example, you go back to the home screen from an app by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. The app then goes to the background and you see the home screen again. But if you’re on another page of apps and you want to quickly get back to the home screen, you pressed the home button too. Now you also swipe up from the bottom of the screen. It’s a different movement for a while, but we think you’ll get used to it.

Multitasking was also possible with the home button. With the iPhone X, you get to the multitask screen by swiping up and then holding your finger on the screen and waiting briefly. In our opinion, that is just a little less nice than simply pressing the home button twice, but it does work smoothly.

On other iPhones, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up Control Center with toggles for Wi-Fi, brightness, do not disturb, and more. Now you have to swipe down from the top right of the screen, which includes the battery indicator. That works fine and makes sense. The dock has also been considerably improved with iOS 11, with the toggles clearly arranged in a row and you can use 3D Touch to bring up the settings of a toggle.