It’s been a decade since the original iPhone was released. My own 2007 vintage handset has seen better days, but it’s still going strong. So 10 years of iteration and development has led us to this hyped up anniversary edition. but is the new iphone X (ten) all it’s cracked up to be?
Glass & Stainless Steel
Even before you turn it on it’s clear that this iphone is a little different. made from the ‘most long lasting glass ever’ and ‘surgical‑grade stainless steel’ (Apple uber-marketing speak) it does have a premium look and feel.
Speaking of feel, I often read that the aluminium backed iPhones are slippery and hard to hold. I’ve never found that and I’ve always gone naked. I’m a firm believer that covering up an iphone with a $2 piece of plastic is sacrilege. however that may have to change as it looks like breaking the rear glass alone could cost £556.44 to repair and the only part of an iphone I’ve ever broken is the glass back of my iphone 4. The Apple silicon case is great but it covers up that pretty back so I bought this Spigen Ultra hybrid transparent case, but it’s an abomination and I’ve taken it off already. It does feel a bit like Russian roulette without a case though, with knowledge of those repair costs.
The new glass back is a bit grippier and along with that steel frame the extra density gives it a reassuringly solid feel, it’s 0.2mm thicker than the Plus. The 2.5D curved glass meets the stainless steel in a a lot more seamless way than previous designs, helping to make it ‘splash, water and dust resistant’ (IP67).
The steel band is polished on my Silver model, similar to the steel apple watch, while the space Grey versions get a layer of matching colour using vapour deposition. Unlike previous iPhones both colours now have black front bezels.
It’s All Screen
¿Lo es? The bezels are slim, but the Galaxy 8S with its Infinity display is bezel free, on its sides at least.
The new 5.8″ ‘Super Retina HD Display’ is the first OLED on an iPhone. It has a resolution of 2436×1125 at 458 ppi and its High dynamic range (HDR) display supports Dolby Vision and HDR10 for your Netflix and iTunes motion picture enjoyment. as with all OLED displays, the contrast ratio is off the charts. It reminds me of my ageing but still loved Pioneer Kuro Plasma TV.
Independent of the pixel dimensions, is the point size, which is how the UI sees the screen and what it can fit on it. With the Ten’s 3x image scale aspect that’s 375 points large by 812 points high. That compares to 414 by 736 for the plus phones (here’s a great illustration of the different pixel and point sizes on each generation of the iPhone).
So although the 5.8″ display sounds bigger than the 5.5″ of the plus, the X has a narrower aspect ratio (19.5:9). add that to the rounded corners, sensor housing as well as the ‘Home Indicator’ (the line at the bottom of the screen that gives the user a hint at the swipe feature) and you are left with an extended safe area for developers.
Unlike the plus phones the icons don’t rotate when you are in landscape mode and you don’t get the 2 panel version of the mail app etc. If you want maximum screen real estate, especially in landscape mode, then the plus model may still be the one you need
It’s probably a lot more accurate to think of the X as some where between the 8 and 8 Plus. however coming from a plus model the screen feels far from a backwards step.
At 120hz the touch sample rate of this display is twice that of other iPhones and unlike any previous model you can touch any part of the display to wake the device.
Apple claim the best colour accuracy ever for an iphone with P3 and sRGB colour gamuts available. ‘True Tone’ tech uses a new ambient light sensor to adjust the screens white balance to match the colour temperature of your surroundings. This warms things up and cools them down as required and is subtle and pleasing. only when I brought my 6S plus near the new phone was it really obvious how different the colour temperatures were.
3D touch is still here. After 2 years though I use it very little, generally for clearing all notifications and positioning my cursor in text. The 10’s home screen now helpfully has a flashlight and cam icon that use 3D touch to swiftly launch them.
There will be a wait for apps to be revised for the new layout, but with lots of updates coming each day hopefully this won’t take long. Here’s a before and after example of the Downcast podcast app being updated for the taller screen. You can see the software bezels the system uses on the left before apps are updated.
De primera categoría
The notch has been one of the greatest talking points on the X. It’s particularly obvious in landscape mode when playing video full screen. actually checking out 16:9 video content doesn’t encroach on the notch, although you can choose to zoom to full screen and lose a bit off the top and bottom of the video. I found playing full screen and holdingthe phone one handed your thumb covers a lot of of the notch anyway. In portrait mode in apps with a black UI the notch disappears completely.
Image: phonearena.com
I’ve always thought of the notch as giving me a lot more screen rather than taking some of it away. While a lot of other modern designs have thicker bezels top and bottom Apple has maximised this area better than a lot of (with the exception of the essential Phone). Here’s a quick (badly) Photoshopped image to show what I indicate on the Galaxy S8 Plus.
So the notch can be considered to be reclaiming screen, rather than minimizing it, although it’s probably the aesthetics that a lot of object to. I’m taking a glass half full attitude to the notch, but of course ideally Apple could magic away all those sensors and have zero bezels.
Face ID
For now though the notch houses the normal suspects. The earpiece speaker, proximity sensor and light sensor. In addition it’s home to the 7MP ƒ/2.2 TrueDepth cam along with an variety of sensors and emitters that together make up the face ID system.
30,000 undetectable dots are beamed onto your face to create a 3D depth map. Apple say there’s now a 1 in a 1,000,000 chance of a random stranger being able to unlock a face ID equipped iphone compared to 1 in 50,000 for Touch ID. They’ve apparently worked to make sure the system cannot be fooled by photos or even 3D masks, unlike some of the joke facial recognition of its competitors.
You can bet your house though that the worlds hackers are at this very moment devising cunning plans to try and out fox the system. Sometime in the future we’ll find out how safe it is. For now the best low-tech way to unlock someone else’s iphone X is to be their (near?) identical sibling.
Setting up face ID involves a movement akin to drawing a circle in the air with your nose. This movement allows the system to capture your face swiftly and the setup process is faster than for Touch ID.
When you first use it to unlock the phone it seems odd that it does not reveal the home screen as is the case with the Touch ID operation. You need to swipe up to do this. There’s a reason though. face ID is ‘attention aware’ and it will unlock your device when you look at it with your eyes open (you can switch this off). That’s beneficial when checking out notifications as they reveal their details once you glance at the phone. If you have no notifications then you simply raise the phone and swipe up at the same time as you look towards the sensor. It becomes one fluid motion and feels like you don’t even have biometric safety switched on.
It works fine with both my sunglasses and the coated varifocal lenses of my regular glasses. It worked after I shaved, while I was wearing my big headphones and a hat. I wondered how this would work when the phone was in its cradle in the car and lying flat on my desk. In practise it’s fine in the car because it’s facing me, but less convenient on a desk as you do have to step your head over the phone. face ID does not work in landscape orientation and a friend also tells me it doesn’t work for him when he has a flourish mic across his face while flying his plane. On the upside no a lot more problems with wet fingers or gloved hands trying to unlock Touch ID. So pros and cons. I’d say after just a few days face ID is better in around 95% of situations and worse in around 5%. remember you can turn it off and use a passcode if you prefer.
The system absolutely replaces Touch ID and is used to authenticate Apple Pay as well. A quick visit to a filling station for milk and bread was a good test of the new way. now a double tap of the side button invokes the system followed by a glance to unlock before putting the phone near the reader. Sencillo.
It will be interesting to see if all this hardware will be able to do anything similar to this cool Sony feature that can build a 3D scan of your head to place an outstanding likeness of yourself into games etc.
For now all that tech is employed for these ‘Animoji’. You capture your personal expressions represented by a variety of animated emoji and send them to someone who cares. Millennia of human development has led to the animated poo emoji.
Ir a casa
So with no home button how do you get to the home screen now? Well prepare to format and re-write 10 years of muscle memory. There’s now a new series of gestures to learn.
Swipe up for Home
Swipe up and pause for app switcher
– or – Swipe ideal / left on home indicator to switch between apps
Swipe down from top ideal for control Centre
Swipe down from top middle or top left for Notifications
In addition there are new button presses too
Apple Pay – double click the power button (now rechristened the side button)
Siri – long press side button
Power Off – Hold side button with either volume button
Screen shot – Side button plus volume up
Surprisingly the home gesture was locked in really swiftly and easily. some of the others may take a while longer.A11 CPU biónico
¿Hay mucho hardware nuevo aquí como Bluetooth 5.0 que debe admitir 2 auriculares conectados simultáneamente si Apple lo permite? Los altavoces estéreo también son más fuertes, lo sé porque todavía puedo escuchar mis podcasts sobre el ruido del hervidor hirviendo por la mañana. Pero la estrella del espectáculo es la CPU más actual de Cupertino.
El A11 “Bionic” de 64 bits de 6 núcleos tiene 4.300 millones de transistores. Cuatro núcleos de eficiencia que son de hasta un 70 por ciento más rápido que la fusión A10, más dos núcleos de rendimiento que son hasta un 25 por ciento más rápido (la GPU de tres núcleos es hasta un 30 por ciento más rápido que la última generación). La CPU puede encender los 6 núcleos cuando realmente siente la necesidad de velocidad.
Imagen: ifixit.com
Se ha comparado con un rendimiento similar a un Core i5 MacBook. Aunque a diferencia de una computadora portátil, el teléfono no podría mantener ese tipo de rendimiento. Sin embargo, es una hazaña excelente en un dispositivo tan diminuto. El silicio personalizado de Apple parece estar ligero años antes de la competencia, lo que lleva a la guía de Tom para revisar recientemente el iPhone 8 con el A11 con el titular, el teléfono más rápido del mundo (ni siquiera está cerca).
Entonces, ¿cuál es la necesidad de todo este poder? Bueno, además de hacer que el teléfono se sienta excepcionalmente ágil, su motor neuronal lo utiliza para tareas de aprendizaje de fabricantes en dispositivos, evitando la latencia de un viaje a la nube y la espalda y sus preocupaciones de privacidad y seguridad asociadas. Sus 600 mil millones de operaciones por segundo se emplean para otras características nuevas, como Face ID y realidad aumentada. Ah, y por supuesto la cámara.
Cámara trasera
Me salteé el iPhone 7 Plus, así que provenía de un 6s Plus, este es mi primer iPhone con cámaras traseras duales (12MP). El golpe en la parte trasera todavía está allí y en realidad es más grande que en mi viejo teléfono.
El ƒ/1.8 ángulo grande y el teleobjetivo ƒ/2.4, ambos emplean estabilización de imágenes ópticas, el único iPhone que lo hace (el iPhone 8 Plus tiene solo su lente de ángulo grande).
El nuevo chip ISP de Apple, mucho más silicio personalizado, puede reconocer y optimizar elementos en su foto, así como suministrar un enfoque automático más rápido y mejoros HDR (solo la toma HDR se guarda de forma predeterminada ahora). Al igual que con los últimos años del iPhone 7, el modo de retrato suministra esa cámara grande, efecto de profundidad de campo de profundidad que todos amamos y ahora también está disponible en la cámara delantera. Nuevo para este año 8 y X es la función de iluminación de retratos (consulte la excelente revisión de Austin Mann para obtener muchos más detalles). Aquí hay una foto de prueba rápida en condiciones de iluminación difíciles (esto no usa el modo de retrato).
Nunca uso flash, nunca. Es horrible. Esta vez, sin embargo, existe una posibilidad de que pueda cambiar. El Flash True Tone Led Led ahora tiene una sincronización lenta, una característica que combina una velocidad de obturación lenta con un pulso de flash corto. Esto es especialmente beneficioso por la noche y permite que la cámara capture los detalles de fondo en lugar de simplemente soplar todo en primer plano y dejar todo lo demás negro
El nuevo formato HEIF indica tamaños de archivos más pequeños para fotos (si desea aprender mucho más, lea este gran artículo). Las exportaciones todavía están en JPEG para facilitar el intercambio hasta que el resto del mundo se ponga al día. Deberá estar en MacOS High Sierra para el apoyo del formato más nuevo, o puede elegir seguir disparando en JPEG si lo prefiere.
HEIF es un contenedor que utiliza la codificación de video de alta eficiencia (HEVC) o el estándar H.265. El teléfono ahora dispara 4K en hasta 60 fps. La cámara lenta también mejora con hasta 240 fps disponibles en 1080p ahora. Los tamaños de archivo más pequeños combinados con el almacenamiento de 256 GB a bordo (tanto o mucho más que muchas computadoras portátiles equipadas con SSD en estos días) indica que no debe haber escasez de almacenamiento.
Carga inalambrica
Reemplazar el aluminio con vidrio en la parte posterior de los 8 y X permite la carga inductiva por primera vez en un iPhone. Ha pasado mucho tiempo, este es el alcance severo para Apple.
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