iPhone X review

• The iPhone X comes with a great new design and a stunning display
• Cameras and overall performance are great as well; Face ID works reliably
• However, spending ~1 lakh rupees on a phone doesn't make sense for most

It’s safe to say that the iPhone X has been the most-talked about tech product of 2017. The anticipation for the tenth anniversary iPhone started last year, well before the usual time for the iPhone rumour mill to start whirring. While the launch itself may have been without too many surprises - thanks to the generous number of leaks, the biggest from Apple itself - that didn’t stop the iPhone X from grabbing everyone’s attention, not least because it made Rs. 1 lakh phones a reality.

The iPhone has never been about specifications, and that’s never been more true than with the iPhone X, which shares most of its internals with the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, but is nothing like any other iPhone - new or old - in terms of design or how you interact with it on an everyday basis. With Face ID and a UI paradigm reimagined without the Home button, Apple says the iPhone X is “the future of the smartphone”.

The first time we saw the iPhone X from the back, it reminded us of older iPhone models, specifically the pronounced rounded corners and general ‘chunkiness’ of the iPhone 3GS. No, the iPhone X is nowhere near as thick as the iPhone 3GS - thankfully - but at 174g, it’s a fair bit heavier than any iPhone model to date that hasn’t carried the ‘Plus’ moniker. If you are moving from an iPhone 7 or earlier ‘regular’ sized model to the iPhone X, you will certainly notice the additional weight.

The glass back is a huge fingerprint magnet, and, again, just like the other two new iPhone models, the iPhone X is prone to sliding off surfaces that are even slightly slippery or have even a bit of an incline. Be sure to protect your ‘precious’ in some sort of a case, or you could end up with a repair bill that rivals the GDP of a small nation. The dual rear cameras on the iPhone X are laid out vertically, as opposed to horizontally on the Plus-sized models. We found the mute button on the iPhone X to be stiffer than expected, requiring more force than usual to toggle on two different units that we tested.

The iPhone X is available in two colours - Silver and Space Grey. As members of the ‘forever black’ club, we loved our Space Grey unit, but we believe that for the first time, Apple might have come up with a white finish that rivals - and perhaps even exceeds - the appeal of the black one. The white and chrome finish on the Silver iPhone X looks great, and the fact that there is no white bezel on the front only adds to its appeal.

Apple has made a couple of design choices that give the iPhone X its distinctive look. First, it has done away with the Home button, which means the screen now goes all the way down to the bottom edge. This enables the iPhone X to pack in a display that’s larger than that of the iPhone 8 Plus, despite having a smaller body, following a trend that’s been seen for a little over a year in the Android world.

The iPhone X has a 5.8-inch AMOLED panel, a first for any iPhone. AMOLED panels are known for their power efficiency and for offering deeper blacks, making them the choice of ‘purists’ who demand the ultimate viewing experience. Unlike Samsung, Apple has tuned its AMOLED displays to offer a fairly natural colour tone. Just like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the iPhone X display supports Apple’s TrueTone technology, and it can even show HDR content from the likes of Netflix and Apple’s own portfolio of iTunes movies. Overall, the iPhone X display is great, and is arguably the best we’ve ever come across on a smartphone.

The absence of the Home button and all-glass front and back mean that other than the camera bump at the back, both sides of the iPhone X feel pretty similar in hand. As a result, on more than one occasion we found ourselves holding our unit upside down or staring at its back upon taking it out of our pockets, or picking it up from a desk in the dark. However, if you end up using your iPhone X with a case - as you probably should - this may not be a real problem for you.

Like most phones, the area near the top of the iPhone X is reserved for an array of sensors and while the most expensive iPhone till date has its fair share of sensors - more on them in a bit - it is Apple’s decision to wrap the display around this array of sensors that gives the iPhone X its most distinctive design element. We, of course, are talking about the ‘notch’, the tech world equivalent of The Royal Wedding in terms of the amount of buzz it generated in 2017.