It has been almost a week since I got my iPhone X on the launch day. I got the 256GB Space Grey version from StarHub. So here is my review of the iPhone X.
Size of the phone
The first time I saw the phone, I thought it was pretty small as coming from Plus sized
phones. It turns out, I am quite happy with the overall size of the phone. It is less bulky,
makes it easier to put in your pocket, grip and use it with one hand.
Display
When it comes to the display, put it beside a Plus sized iPhone with both displays on, you can see that the iPhone X display is bigger. It’s much taller, however, the display is slightly narrower and I got to admit, the TrueDepth camera cut out on the top of the display looks really odd at first, but after a while of using it, it just disappears, like you don’t really think about it. Contents look really good with the OLED display, unlike LCD, which uses backlight, the blacks on the OLED display do not produce light, so the blacks don’t appear greyish.
With the display being much taller, it also means that this iPhone’s display is not the 16:9 aspect ratio that we have been used to since the iPhone 5, so if you play videos that are in 16:9, you may choose to fill up the screen completely (which I prefer), or you could watch the video without any part of it being cropped, but your content would be smaller.
I’m glad that a lot of the apps that I use daily like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram, have support for the iPhone X’s display. There are also apps that have yet been optimised for the new display, so contents would be letterboxed and become smaller.
Overall, I think this is a really stunning display, as more apps start to support the iPhone X display, comparing it to the Plus, I don’t think there are any compromises on the display.
Battery Life
Apple claims that the battery life on iPhone X would last about 2 hours more that the iPhone 7. They did not compare that to the Plus however. I can’t do an accurate comparison for sure based on my experience, because, it depends on your usage. For the past few days, I have been using my iPhone X heavily, so the battery will definitely drain more. So, based on what Apple claims, I think the battery life should be almost as good as the iPhone 7 Plus.
Face ID
Face ID is awesome! Really, that’s what I have to say. It may not be as quick as Touch ID at times, but if you are like me, I have sweaty palms, so my fingers tend to get moist and Touch ID wouldn’t always work, you would really appreciate Face ID, it just works.
Face ID uses the sensors located in the TrueDepth camera system. Other than Face ID, the TrueDepth camera system also allows for Portrait mode and Portrait Lighting for selfies, and of course, Animoji.
While everything I mentioned above about the TrueDepth camera system was great, there are some really small features, that are lesser known, that really blows me away. Well, you probably know that Face ID requires your attention to unlock, meaning it checks for whether you are looking at the phone or not.
When you’re receiving a call, or your alarm is ringing, it starts to seek for your attention, when it notices that you are looking at your phone, it lowers down the volume of your ringtone or alarm automatically.
When you have notifications on your phone, no one else can see its content except you. Once it recognises you, immediately it reveals the content of your notifications just for you.
Also, checks for your attention to prevent the display from dimming and sleeping while you are actually using your phone.
All these features are enabled and they are called Attention-Aware Features. You can find it in settings under Face ID & Passcode.
Initially there were a lot of doubts about Face ID on whether it can be as good as Touch ID. After using it and also when I learnt about some of the other features that come along with it, I’d say, absolutely.
Conclusion
Is this iPhone worth its price? Yes. This iPhone has lots of new features, it has been completely redesigned with an edge to edge display. While it surely is an expensive device, I think it has significant upgrades that justifies its price and is worth going for.
One of iPhone’s greatest features that I didn’t really mention in this post is the camera. I will be writing on that really soon once I get to take a lot of great photos with my new iPhone X.
25TechGeek 