“I’ve had this phone since last Tuesday. Apple had given me this early peek in part because I was one of the first pre-release reviewers of the original iPhone. Given that history, we all thought it would be interesting to get my impressions of what the company clearly believes is the next milestone in a journey that has pretty much altered our relationship with technology,” Steven Levy writes for Wired. “Sure, with every single iteration of the iPhone, Apple has claimed that it’s the best one the company has ever made. But for this anniversary edition—coming at a time when critics are griping that the company had tumbled into an innovation trough — they’re pushing for something higher. Tim Cook calls the iPhone X ‘the future of the smartphone.'”
“Covering the entire surface of the phone with the screen has consequences. There’s no getting around the fact that some of the sensors, camera lenses, microphones and speakers need to be forward facing; Apple addresses that by lining them up on a blacked-out notch on the top of the screen — kind of the Area 51 of the new iPhone,” Levy writes. “It’s an aesthetic setback (what would Steve Jobs have said?), but you get used to it, like watching a play when someone with big hair is off-center in the row ahead of you — a tiny distraction in your peripheral vision that you eventually get past.”
“After a few days with the iPhone X, I can begin to make out its themes. It’s a step towards fading the actual physical manifestation of technology into a mist where it’s just there — a phone that’s ‘all screen,’ one that turns on simply by seeing you, one that removes the mechanics of buttons and charging cables. A decade hence, when it’s time for the iPhone 20 (XX?), we’ll already be on the road to what comes after the smartphone; the X might be a halfway point to that future,” Levy writes. “And that’s why, despite the fact that the iPhone X at present is no more than a great upgrade to the flagship device of the digital age, I can’t easily dismiss Tim Cook’s effusions that this is more than a just another iteration.”
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Notch!
Re: the Consequence; I just hope it doesn’t have an emolliating effect on the iPhX, or worse, be an immolation catalyst like the notable Note 7. I think more likely, it’ll just be a mysterious big-hair area 51.
Mole! 🙂
When I first got cable I was driven mad by the channel idents splattered across the top of the screen, I don’t even notice them anymore. This is so overblown its ridiculous, if it wasn’t there we would get whinging about what way up it was.
It’s definitely annoying-looking on videos when held horizontally, ugly to cover up part of the content like that or otherwise scale the video to iPhone 8 proportions. I’m not planning on watching more than 3-5 min YouTube vids on the thing though, not going to be a problem for me.