iPhone X – The beginning of a new era of smartphones through a quantum leap of technology.

The much awaited iPhone X is the latest awe-inspiring classic smartphone launched by Apple Inc.

iPhone X is Apple’s high end, premium handset that supports augmented reality experience.

It was unveiled by the Apple Inc. during a press meeting held at the Steve Jobs theatre in Cupertino, California on September 12 this year. On Nov 3^rd 2017, with the release of iPhone X, the next era of iPhone has rolled up.

 

iPhone X is designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. and it’s their new flagship to mark the tenth anniversary.

This innovative compact device with 5.8-inch OLED super retina display screen, facial recognition, 3D camera functionality and many more awesome features is said to be the technology of the future era.

In this post, we will deliberately try to round up all the best features of this most exciting and stunning smartphone available under the blue sky.

 

iPhone X was not built in a day. Let’s take a quick look at the Timeline of iPhone X :

• 2012 – The research and development team of Apple Inc. was engaged in developing the technologies used in iPhone X for five years, since 2012.
• 2016 – During the last few months of 2016, rumors spread that a drastic iPhone is being developed by Apple Inc.
• July 2k17 – A Home Pod firmware leak suggested that Apple is about to release a new iPhone loaded with stunning new features.
• Sep 2k17 – An almost final version of ios11 leaked out that intensified the previous rumors.
• Aug 31^st 2k17 – Apple Inc. arranged a press event on Sep 12^th at Steve Jobs theatre in Cupertino, California at company’s new Apple park campus.
• Sep 12^th 2k17 – iPhone X was announced during the keynote as a classic “one more thing….” alongside iPhone 8 & iPhone 8plus product line up.
• Oct 27^th 2k17 – Registration of Pre-order of iPhone X started.
• Nov 3^rd 2k17 – Finally iPhone X was released. Shipping of pre-order started.

 

Apple’s latest flagship iPhone X is far & away the most sophisticated and innovative iPhone Apple has ever introduced and is already outperforming its prior editions like iPhone 8 plus and iPhone 7.

 

Some most impressive specifications of iPhone X  are listed below:

• Edge to edge 5.8-inch Super retina ( more than 2 million pixel ) OLED display.
• Durable all glass body with IP67 certification of water and dirt resistant.
• Facial recognition that works in dark, with hats, beard or glasses that might practically obscure the user’s face.
• Inductive wireless charging support, with “fast charge capable” feature.
• Animoji (3D emoji to mimic user’s facial expression).
• Apple A11 Bionic chip with Apple-designed GPU.
• ios11 with a modified version of Siri.
• 12 MP dual vertical camera with optical image stabilization, 7 MP front-facing 3D true depth camera.
• Advance LTE speeds up to 450 Mbps.
• Bluetooth 5.0 (4x range, 2x speed, 8x broadcast message capacity than Bluetooth 4.2).
• 11ac wi-fi with MIMO (Max. data transfer speed 866 Mbps).
• Quoted 2716 mAh battery life at 21 hours of talk time, 12 hours internet use, 13 hours video playback, and 60 hours of audio playback.
• Augmented reality experience supported games & apps.
• No home button.

 

Display

iPhone X has an edge to edge 5.8-inch diagonal screen having super retina display with HDR and True tone technology found on iPod Pro.

iPhone X makes sample touch input at 120 Hz. iPhone X is the first iPhone adopting OLED color accurate technology that supports,

• DCI-P3 wide color gamut, SRGB, high dynamic range.
• The contrast ratio of million- to- one.
• Resolution 2436×1125 & 458 Pixels per inch. It’s the greatest resolution and pixel density that an iPhone ever had.

 

iPhone X possess the largest screen ever in iPhone with no bezels and a highly polished curved edge surgical grade stainless steel band. This encompasses a durable all-glass body having IP67 certification of water and dirt resistance.

 

iPhone X  is available in two pearlescent colors – Space Gray and Silver, both having a Black front panel.

iPhone X  comfortably fits within the hand having a dimension of 143.6mm x 70.9mm x 7.7mm.

 

No Home button

Because of having an edge-to-edge top-to-bottom display, iPhone X  has no room for a conventional Home button.

• By swiping up from the bottom of the screen pops up the Home screen.
• A swipe & a hold pops up App Switcher.
• A tap on the screen shows notifications.
• By pressing and holding the side button, activates Siri.
• A downward swipe at the top screen invokes the control center.

 

Face ID

iPhone X  adopted a complex facial recognition system which provides a whole new user experience to unlock the handset.

It is used much like a fingerprint authentication. Face ID authentication system creates a 3D map of user’s face by projecting over 30k infrared dots.

This is termed as “Romeo module”. It is stored in the secured enclave of the A11 Bionic chip for future authentication.

 

During face recognition, a 3D True depth front-facing infrared camera reads the pattern of user’s face which is termed as “ Juliet module”.

It is sent to the dual-core neural engine in 6 core A11 Bionic chip to confirm a match.

 

iPhone X  uses infrared camera technology so that Face ID system may be done in dark also. It is so efficient that it can detect user’s face with hat, glasses, sunglasses, beards or any other objects that partially obscure the face.

• Face ID does not work with eyes closed.
• Face ID of iPhone X is so secure that it can not be deceived by photos, marks or any kind of facial replicas.
• Face ID may be used for authenticating Apple pay purchase, App Store purchase or to access passcode protected Apps.

 

Camera

The front-facing camera of iPhone X supports features like auto HDR, selfies, 1080p HD movie recording, Retina flash, auto image stabilization etc.

Some salient features of iPhone X camera:

• 7 MP True Depth camera.
• Aperture f/2.2
• Capture 1080p video at 30fps/ 720p video at 240 fps.

The front camera, with portrait mode, focuses the subject in the foreground and the background is blurred. This subtle but effective lighting approach fabricates a compelling portrait.

There are five dramatic studio lighting effects provided by iPhone X to capture stunning images with a shallow depth of field effect.

1. Natural light
2. Stage light
3. Stage light mono
4. Studio light
5. Contour light

 

Rear camera :

The iPhone X has a dual camera arrangement in vertical alignment.

 

1. A 12MP wide-angle camera having a f/1.8 aperture. It supports for face detection, high dynamic range, and optical image stabilization. It can capture 4k video at 24,30,60 fps or 1080p video at 30,60,120,240 fps.

 

2. A 12MP telephoto camera with f/2.4 aperture. It offers 2x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom with optical image stabilization.

 

iPhone X has a quad-LED True tone flash sandwiched between the two rear cameras. It introduces a slow sync feature to combine a slow shutter speed with a strobe pulse.

It creates a brighter foreground subject and properly exposed background in a low light effect. It provides two times better light uniformity.

 

Animoji

Animoji is the most discussed feature of iPhone X since its inception because of its ability to lip sync tunes with its user.

With the help of face scanning feature of iPhone X, Apple introduced a new fun feature called “Animoji” in iOS 11.

It is the animated version of the popular 3D emoji characters found on phones.

 

Animoji uses the True Depth camera to create a 3D version of user’s facial expression by analyzing more than 50 muscle movements of eyebrows, chicks, chins, eyes, jaw, lips and mouth.

User’s facial expression is then translated to Animoji version and it starts to animate accordingly.

 

There is 12 variety of Animoji available within the message app of iOS11.

They are monkey, Unicorn, chicken, Robot, rabbit, cat, dog, panda, pig, alien, poop and fox.

 

Connectivity

 

Modem – iPhone X provides advanced LTE feature which enables a data transfer rate up to 450 Mbps and supports for more than 20 LTE bands across the globe.

iPhone X comes with two variants of modem chips based on Mobile carriers worldwide.

 

1. A1865 Model supports both GSM and CDMA carriers and uses the Qualcomm MDM 9655 Snapdragon X16 LTE Modem.

 

2. A1901 Model supports only GSM carriers and uses Intel XMM 7480 Modem.

 

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

iPhone X provides Bluetooth 5.0 standard which offers 4x range, 2x speed and 8x broadcast massage capacity compared to Bluetooth 4.2 standard.

 

iPhone X supports 802.11ac with MIMO which provides a communication speed up to 866 Mbps.

 

iPhone X not only supports GPS but also supports Galileo ( Europe’s satellite navigation system ) and QZSS ( Quasi-Zenith satellite navigation system of Japan ).

 

A11Bionic Chip

The iPhone X is powered by a 64-bit ARM-based A11 Bionic processor on a chip (SoC), designed by Apple Inc.

It is a 10 nano-meter 2.39 GHz CPU with six cores. Among them, there are two high-performance cores, called Monsoon and rest four cores are High-energy efficient cores called Mistral.

By the use of a new second-generation performance controller, all the six cores can be harnessed simultaneously. A11 Bionic chip is 70% faster than its predecessor A10.

 

The A11 Bionic chip features an Apple-designed three-core GPU(Graphics Processing Unit) which is 30% faster than A10.

In the A11 Bionic chip, an M11 motion coprocessor and a new image processor are embedded that captures motion-based data from the compass and supports computational photography functions.

 

The A11 Bionic chip has a dedicated neural network hardware called “neural engine” which can perform more than 600 billion operations per second. The neural engine is used for Face ID, Animoji, and other machine learning tasks.

 

Battery & Wireless Charging

The iPhone X possess a two-cell battery in an L-shape design having a capacity of 2716 mAh that offers –

Talk time – Up to 21 Hours.

Internet use – Up to 12 Hours.

Video playback – Up to 13 Hours.

Audio playback – Up to 60 Hours.

Apple’s flagship smartphone iPhone X supports Qi wireless inductive charging standard.

iPhone X supports faster 7.5 Watt wireless charging and a couple of Qi chargers are available at Apple store which is specifically designed for iPhone. They are,

1. Belkin’s boost up wireless charging pad.
2. Mophie’s wireless charging base.

 

“Fast charge capable” iPhone X can be charged 50% within just 30 minutes by using Apple’s 29 Watt, 61 Watt or 87 Watt USB-C Power adapter.

 

Augmented reality

Using the Accelerometer, Gyroscope and individually calibrated cameras in iPhone X, the powerful Bionic A11 chip introduced a better Augmented reality experience.

 

Developers are engaged in fabricating unique AR apps by taking advantage of both the rear and front cameras with unparalleled face detecting capabilities.

More Read : All you want to know about Augmented Reality. 

 

3D touch input

iPhone X supports 3D touch gestures that are available throughout iOs 11 Operating system.

A Taptic engine seamlessly delivers tactile feedback in the form of vibration as soon as the user interacts with the display.

 

Price

Apple’s latest high-end flagship device iPhone X is available in two variants.

The 64GB Model is priced at $999 and the 256GB Model is priced at $1199.T he iPhone X features 3GB RAM on both models.

 

iOS11 Operating system

iOS 11 is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system which opens up amazing possibilities for Augmented reality in various games and apps.

 

Some best features of iOS 11 are,

1. Phone-to-phone payments can be generated and verified by the face ID.
2. Offers a redesigned control center and accepts 3D touch gestures.
3. Smarter maps including speed limit guidance and detailed floor plan of airports and shopping arena.
4. “Do not disturb while driving” feature detects when the user is driving and turns the user’s, iPhone Black. It can send auto-replies to the incoming calls telling them the user is currently on road.
5. Introduced smarter Siri that provides more natural male and female voice, can translate languages, take notes, scan QR codes etc.
6. Messenger feature is redesigned and loaded with Animoji.
7. Better compression of captured image and videos which offers same image or video quality at much lower storage.
8. Includes an Augmented reality kit for the developers to create unique AR apps.

 

Issues of iPhone X

iPhone X is much different from all its predecessors, but like all smartphones, there are few issues that crop up. Such as,

 

1. Screen burn-in :

A portion of users noted that “image persistence” or “burn in” appears when you leave iPhone X screen on for quite a while.

Apple recommends to reduce the brightness of the device & to turn on Auto lock feature after 30 or 60 seconds of inactivity.

 

2. Cold :

A fair number of iPhone X users have reported that it becomes unresponsive in cold. While some users have experienced it for a few seconds, some users have experienced a larger freeze up.

Apple Inc. has addressed the issue by introducing iOS 11.1. 2 on Nov 16th 2k17 and requested the customers to update their device to fix this issue.

 

3. Green line :

Some iPhone X owners discovered a persistent Green line on the screen.

Apple Inc. is currently replacing the affected handsets and trying to find the source of the problem.

 

4. A crackling sound of speaker :

A notable amount of iPhone X users reported a crackling noise from a speaker at a high volume.

 

5. Face ID of iPhone X can be unlocked with a mask, even with “Require attention” feature turned on.

 

6. Annoying Autocorrect bug of new iOS11 that autocorrecting “it” to “I.T.”

 

Apple Inc. issued an update to fix this bug but no official fix is available for download.

 

Conclusion

No doubt…..Its a mega gadget. Criticism can’t challenge its magnitude.

The only debate is whether it is worth the hype or not.

iPhone is never a value for money, rather it is a value for innovation.

Same for iPhone X. It’s worth a try. You must be a part of the technological leap.

 

These were just a handful of features that people might find useful. Of course, there are many more details we could not round up here. Please feel free to sound off down below with your valuable inputs in the comments section.