X marks the spot for Apple

Vaibhav Sharma

The tenth anniversary of the iPhone is here, and with it comes the iPhone X (pronounced ten). Apple claims that it is the culmination of 10 years of design and engineering, and this device will serve as the anchor for the next decade. The iPhone X is futuristic in every conceivable way. The 5.8” Super Retina, Tru-Tone, near edge-to-edge display is delightful to look at. Not only is it Apple’s first foray into OLED screens, it is also the company’s highest resolution display in a phone. The stainless-steel frame is encased in durable glass on both sides, with the screen merging into the body to present a seamless surface. The notch at the top of the phone houses the myriad of sensors and it is here that the bezel makes its presence felt, but, within that tiny space, Apple has managed to cram in a dot sensor, a microphone, a speaker, a 7 MP camera, an ambient light sensor, a proximity sensor, an infrared camera and a flood illuminator. Some of these come together to enable the Face ID technology that replaces Touch ID.

Apple claims that Face ID is even more secure as compared to Touch ID as there is only a one in a million chance that someone else’s face could unlock your phone, whereas with Touch ID that ratio was 50,000:1. While the world quickly moved on without a headphone jack, the convenient fingerprint reader may be a far greater loss. During the keynote introducing the new phones, Apple executives claimed that Face ID will work perfectly in both light and dark scenarios and will even adapt to your face — it won’t fail to recognise you if you grow a beard, wear a hat or put on glasses. If it proves to be as reliable as Apple thinks it is, losing Touch ID might not be that big a deal, otherwise it will cause a world of annoyance. Other than this concern, everything else about the iPhone X is stellar. The dual camera system introduced with the iPhone 7 Plus has been updated with optical image stabilisation for both the telephone and wide angle lens, and they will have even better low light performance this year. The real innovation, however, is a mode called ‘Portrait Lighting’ that produces impressive studio-quality lighting effects and with the front facing camera also getting the ability to take bokeh-filled selfies, these things together promise to really up your selfie game. 

With the A11 Bionicprocessor, Apple claims to have introduced the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone, with a neural engine that’s capable of up to 600 billion operations per second. It packs six cores, the four efficiency cores are up to 70 per cent faster than A10 Fusion and the two performance cores are up to 25 per cent faster. In short, this thing combined with Apple’s custom GPU screams, and there is nothing in the Android space that even comes close. 

While the attention was focused on the X, Apple also released the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. They look familiar to the 7 and 7 Plus respectively, but come with glass backs instead of aluminum and thus support wireless charging, much like the iPhone X. In fact, they are also powered by the all new A11 chip and the iPhone 8 Plus even supports the new Portrait Lighting mode. These devices have the mind of the X, but the body of its predecessors.

While the iPhone 8 starts at Rs 64,000, it doesn’t make much sense to spend Rs 73,000 for the iPhone 8 Plus, when another 16,000 would get you the iPhone X. Terming such a difference as minor may sound silly, but such is the world of Apple India’s iPhone pricing. At over Rs 1 lakh for the 256 GB iPhone X, it no longer makes sense to buy it for the functionality — there is nothing truly ground breaking. But an iPhone has never really been the sum of its parts and if you do buy the iPhone X, it will be for the design, the craftsmanship and the love of all things Apple. This is a luxury sports car. You don’t need it, but you still want it.