The Verge reviews Apple’s iPhone X: Clearly the best iPhone ever made, despite being marred by its ugly notch
“The iPhone X is finally here. Apple says it’s a complete reimagining of what the iPhone should be, 10 years after the original revolutionized the world,” Nilay Patel writes for The Verge. “Of course, there’s the notch in the display — what Apple calls the ‘sensor housing.’ It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though. It makes landscape in general pretty messy. Less ignorable are the bezels around the sides and bottom of the screen, which are actually quite large. Getting rid of almost everything tends to draw attention to what remains, and what remains here is basically a thick black border all the way around the screen, with that notch set into the top.”
“Unfortunately, the top of the display is marred by that notch, and until a lot of developers do a lot of work to design around it, it’s going to be hard to get the most out of this screen. I mean that literally: a lot of apps don’t use most of the screen right now,” Patel writes. “Apps that haven’t been updated for the iPhone X run in what you might call ‘software bezel’ mode: huge black borders at the top and bottom that basically mimic the iPhone 8. And a lot of apps aren’t updated yet: Google Maps and Calendar, Slack, the Delta app, Spotify, and more all run with software bezels. Games like CSR Racing and Sonic the Hedgehog looked particularly silly. It’s fine, but it’s ugly, especially since the home bar at the bottom of the screen glows white in this mode. Apps that haven’t been specifically updated for the iPhone X, but use Apple’s iOS autolayout system will fill the screen, but wacky things happen: Dark Sky blocks out half the status bar with a hardcoded black bar of its own, Uber puts your account icon over the battery indicator, and the settings in the Halide camera app get obscured by the notch and partially tucked into the display’s bunny ears.”
Alrighty then.
“Apps that have been updated for the iPhone X all have different ways of dealing with the notch that sometimes lead to strange results, especially in apps that play video. Instagram Stories don’t fill the screen; they have large gray borders on the top and bottom. YouTube only has two full-screen zoom options, so playing The Last Jedi trailer resulted in either a small video window surrounded by letter- and pillar-boxing or a full-screen view with the notch obscuring the left side of the video. Netflix is slightly better, but you’re still stuck choosing between giant black borders around your video or the notch,” Patel writes. “Landscape mode on the iPhone X is generally pretty messy: the notch goes from being a somewhat forgettable element in the top status bar to a giant interruption on the side of the screen, and I haven’t seen any apps really solve for it yet. And the home bar at the bottom of the screen often sits over the top of content, forever reminding you that you can swipe to go home and exit the chaos of landscape mode forever. I’m sure all of this will get solved over time, but recent history suggests it might take longer than Apple or anyone would like; I still encounter apps that aren’t updated for the larger iPhone 6 screen sizes. 3D Touch has been around for years, but I can’t think of any app that makes particularly good use of it.”
“The iPhone X is clearly the best iPhone ever made. It’s thin, it’s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place,” Patel writes. “It is a huge step forward in terms of phone hardware, and it has the notch to show for it. If you’re one of the many people who preordered this thing, I think you’ll be happy…”
Tons more in the full review – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Notchtastic™!
Apple made the wrong choice with the notch. It’s bad design to ask the world’s developers to design around a flap occluding the display.
The good news is that Apple can fix this in the software (of course, the few developers who’ve already designed around Apple’s abomination will have further work to do). Apple should reserve the “bunny ears” portion of the screen to display cell and Wi-Fi signal strength, time, battery, and whatever else they want to use it for on a deep black background – with corner arcs that match the iPhone X’s other corners – into which the black bank of sensors comprising the notch will simply disappear.
Apple owns the notch’s bunny ears and the developers get all the rest.
Simplicity is the hallmark of great design, but Apple’s current notch design “solution” is anything but simple. It’s “ugly,” “messy,” and it “mars” an otherwise gorgeous device.
iPhone X notch un-botched by Forbes’ Gordon Kelly and Nodus
