“I’m spending a week with iPhone X as my primary device. So far, it’s the most fun I’ve had with any gadget since the original iPhone. I’m not being hyperbolic here,” Rene Ritchie writes for iMore. “There are shortcomings. There are things I’d love to see changed. But I can’t stop using it. The new display is beyond gorgeous. HDR is glorious. Fluid navigation gestures are sublime. Face ID is so fast I’m forgetting I have a passcode. Attention aware interactivity is the bomb.”
“If you want a familiar iPhone experience, iPhone 8 is ready and waiting for you,” Ritchie writes. “If you want a radical new design, with as close to an edge-to-edge OLED display as possible, a TrueDepth camera and Face ID on the front and an even-better-than-iPhone-8 dual camera system on the back, and you have the cash for it, then get iPhone X and enjoy not only tomorrow’s iPhone today, but the best damn product Apple’s ever made. And that’s saying a lot.”
“iPhone X’s design is completely dominated by an expansive OLED display that measures 5.8-inch corner-to-corner. At least it would if iPhone X had corners. Apple has rounded them off, aggressively. Still, it allows Apple to fit an iPhone Plus-sized display into a regular iPhone-sized chassis,” Ritchie writes. “The display still manages to run completely across the glass and into the stainless steel band around the sides. That is, except for the big bite Apple took out of it at the top. The look has been popularly referred to as a ‘notch’ or, internally and casually, as ‘forehead’ and ‘ears.’ For some, it was and will forever be the ‘”horns’ (as in🤘).”
“In a perfect world, I’m sure Apple would have loved to have been able to create a truly edge-to-edge display, top and bottom. Since the TrueDepth camera system can’t currently be hidden beneath the panel, the company was left with two choices: Give up on edge-to-edge altogether and run the TrueDepth camera module all the way across the top, or keep edge-to-edge at the rounded corners and let the TrueDepth camera system bite into the top. Apple chose the latter,” Ritchie writes. “It’s easy to disagree with that choice. At first glance the horns look awkward and distracting. At second and third glance as well. Like a spot in the corner of your eye or a splinter in your mind.”
“After having spent some time with the horns, I’m already beginning to forget about them. I can instantly see them if I look for them, of course. And on a white screen like web pages, they stick out more than on more color-filled and darker screens. in landscape it looks even odder at first, but I end up putting my thumb over the camera module anyway, so it’s always at least partially obscured,” Ritchie writes. “I’d still rather the horns disappear but only when and if Apple can go truly edge to edge. And I’m not sure how long that will take.
MacDailyNews Take: Rene, you’re putting your thumb over it because you subconsciously want to hide the notch from view. If it wasn’t there, you wouldn’t be purposely placing your thumb atop your display, obscuring it. With the notch, Apple has placed their immoveable “thumb” permanently over one edge of your iPhone X’s display. That’s why it’s bad design.
Tons more in the very comprehensive full review – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you can read only one iPhone X review out there currently, this is the one to read.
SEE ALSO:
Ars Technica reviews iPhone X: Easy to recommend if you want a glimpse at the future – November 3, 2017
TechCrunch reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘Like using the future of smartphones, today’ – November 1, 2017
Tim Bajarin’s first impression of Apple’s iPhone X: Face ID worked flawlessly – November 1, 2017
The Verge reviews Apple’s iPhone X: Clearly the best iPhone ever made, despite being marred by its ugly notch – November 1, 2017
Above Avalon’s first impressions of Apple’s iPhone X: ‘An entirely new iPhone experience’ – October 31, 2017
The Independent reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘This feels like the future’ – October 31, 2017
David Pogue reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘The best thing is its size’ – October 31, 2017
Forbes reviews Apple’s iPhone X: Opulent, gorgeous, classy; the best iPhone yet – October 31, 2017
CNBC reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘The best smartphone on the market’ – October 31, 2017
