iPhone X – a Revisit

iPhone X - a Revisit 1

Apple announced the most controversial iPhone ever on the special occasion of the 10th Anniversary of their iPhone lineup. The iPhone X brought some pretty amazing things to the table and was a total revamp when compared to iPhones released so far, especially in the aesthetics department. The question of whether people loved or despised the iPhone is still in the blur. Keeping in view the confusions, we decided to go back to the iPhone X and see how it performed in the real world.

Let’s clear things up before we move ahead, the X in the iPhone does not denote the alphabet “X” instead it is the roman representation of the number 10. This may not sound like a big deal, but since we are going through an in-depth review, it is better to clear that up first.

iPhone X – Design and Aesthetics

Without any further delay, let’s get one thing out of the way, the iPhone X is by far the most good-looking iPhone ever developed by Apple. Every year, for the past 10 years we have received an iPhone which more or less looks like its predecessors. With the iPhone X, apple went all-in by adding a metal frame and an all glass body.

The iPhone X shouts premium as you hold it in hand and weighs 174G which is the same as Google Pixel 2 XL. There are no bezels at the front except for a rectangular shaped bar at the top-middle of the display.

Some people do argue that the glass body makes the iPhone X delicate and it is prone to fingerprints, smudges and most of all it is delicate. All those arguments may stand some ground but personally, I think the delicacy is what defines the premium aesthetics of the phone.

Face ID & Touch Gestures – No Home Button (Touch ID)

Apple has made a bold move by replacing the Home Button with a bezel-less screen. Without the home button the iPhone X no more supports Touch ID. Many people thought that Touch ID would be integrated within the power key, but Apple had different plans.

Face ID, as the names suggests, is a facial recognition system that can help with unlocking the phone. Yes, it does work without any light which is amazing, but it is not as accurate all the time and to be fair it works 75% of the times.

The most annoying thing about the Face ID is the fact that after unlocking the phone, the user must swipe the screen to get to the home. This makes the overall process sloppy, however, expectations are that Apple will resolve this with a software upgrade.

Touch ID was not the only thing that went missing with the Home Button and to make up for which Apple introduced a bunch of touch gestures. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen takes you to the home screen. Swiping right brings up the widgets, swiping down from the right side of the screen brings up the notification panel and swiping down from the left side brings up the control center.

This looks complicated while reading it but getting used to it hardly takes a couple of days. If you are still not up for that, you may use the virtual home button or the assistive touch option.

Camera, Display and Performance

The camera is slightly improved version of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The iPhone X offer a wider aperture of F1.8 and F2.4, the dual camera configuration can help with optical stabilization during video and images and adds a 2X optical zoom. All things considered, the camera on the Google Pixel 2XL is still superior in terms of quality.

The performance on the iPhone X is as one would expect out of a flagship thanks to the 3GBs of RAM and the A11 bionic chipset that gives amazing multi-tasking capabilities, gaming and graphics performance. Geek bench benchmarks returned with a score of 4241 for Single-Core and 10221 for Multi-Core.

The display is better than ever; the bezel-less screen offers a 19.5:9 Ratio with a resolution of 1125 X 2436 Pixels. It looks a little different at first coming from the 16:9 Ratio, but one can easily adopt to the change.

iPhone X

Software and Battery

The 2716 mAh battery lies somewhere in the middle of best and worst. It all depends on the usage, with normal usage the iPhone X should be able to offer 6 – 7 hours of on-screen time which is better than the iPhone 8 but not as good as the iPhone 8 Plus. The glass panel at the back allows for wireless charging and takes 2.5 hours to charge from 0 – 100% with wireless charging.

The iPhone X lacks when it comes to software which may hit some people as a shock because Apple has always done a great job when it comes to software stability. The iOS 11 is buggy and takes away the attention from the iPhone X. The biggest problem is the optimization of the software with the hardware aspects of the iPhone X.

Verdict

Apple did take a shot at a lot of innovation at the same time in an industry where smartphones can be despised easily. However, if you are attracted towards a premium feel and beauty then the iPhone X is certainly the best choice for you. The second biggest downside is the price of this premium phone. The iPhone X costs $1000 for the base model with the storage of 64GBs

 

2 thoughts on “iPhone X – a Revisit

  1. Casey says:

    Have you guys come across any cost effective iPhone X screens to use for replacement that are as nice as the ones Apple uses?

    • Repair Sharks says:

      We have found some high quality screens, also we are now able to program the ambient light sensor from the original iPhone 8 or iPhone X to the new screens. If we replace your 8 or X screen we can move the programming from the original screen over to the new replacement screen thereby allowing the ambient light sensor to continue operating properly. As many of us know in the repair world this has not been possible with prior repairs.

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