On Oct 31, 2017, at 11:41 AM, M. Taylor <mk...@ucla.edu> wrote:
CNET News - Tuesday, October 31, 2017 at 3:38 AM
iPhone X review: 14 important takeaways from our first 18 hours - CNET
The iPhone X feels like a concept car, or a secret project. That's because
of the X name, probably, and the legacy of 10 years of iPhones. It's also
the fact that this is an optional step-up model -- like an 8 Plus Plus, but
smaller. It's a bold new design, different after three years of each iPhone
looking very much the same.
I love new technology and the wild ideas that come with it. I love to be
immersed in new concepts. But I'm also practical when it comes to tools.
Will I use a fully rethought phone? Will it work for me when I need it to?
My phone is my mission critical everything. It's my Indiana Jones hat. Will
Face ID work as well as the trusty Touch ID home button? Will I feel safe?
Ultimately the all important question is simple: Is this the must-have
upgrade? Should my mom get it? Should my sister? My brother-in-law? My best
friend? You?
I've spent 18 hours with the device to begin to answer this question.
Consider this a living review that we'll be updating throughout the week --
and beyond -- as we test, retest and experience the iPhone X.
Now Playing: Watch this: iPhone X: Our first day with Apple's biggest phone
ever
3:26
Face ID works pretty well...
You've been able to unlock an iPhone with Touch ID using your fingerprint
since 2013. The original iPhone shipped with a home button a decade ago.
Apple's making a big leap by getting rid of both in one fell swoop and
replacing them with Face ID. Your face -- or a passcode -- is the only way
to unlock the iPhone X.
Face ID worked well in early tests. Setup is quick: Two circular
head twists
and the iPhone adds your face to its secure internal database.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Unlocking isn't automatic. Instead, the phone "readies for unlock" when it
recognizes my face. So I look at the iPhone, and then a lock icon
at the top
unlocks. But the iPhone still needs my finger-swipe to finish the unlock.
It's fast, but that extra step means it's not instantaneous. Face ID did
recognize me most of the time but sometimes, every once in a while, it
didn't.
I tried the phone with at least five of my coworkers. None of their faces
unlocked it -- although none of them look remotely like me. I
also attempted
to unlock it with a big color photo of my face on a 24-inch monitor, but
that didn't register as a face to the iPhone X either. The TrueDepth camera
recognizes face contours to identify you.
Face ID worked perfectly in these instances.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Face ID worked perfectly in almost completely dark room, too, lit only by
the iPhone's screen. (It uses infrared). We'll still need to do a lot more
testing to see what Face ID's limits are. By default, it requires
"attention" at the display, but that requirement for direct
attention can be
turned off for those who need it, or those who prefer to speed up the
process.
.but it's not perfect
By design, the iPhone X doesn't unlock with just a glance. Once you've
identified yourself with your face, you need to swipe up with
your finger to
get to your apps. Not only does the swipe remove the immediacy of Face ID,
it means you need your hand to do anything. Quick access to the
phone wasn't
quite as quick as I expected.
I pushed my face testing hard. I got a haircut, shaved my beard
into several
shapes, then off completely. I tried on sunglasses and other frames. I wore
hats and scarves. Then I went to more absurd levels, including some that
wouldn't happen in most real-world scenarios, trying on wigs,
fake mustaches
and steampunk goggles.
Face ID failed here.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The preliminary results are in my video. This is by no means a final test,
but the bottom line is that most of the "real world" tests worked
and showed
me that Face ID is more resilient than I expected. Face ID didn't mind my
sunglasses. Scarves presented some challenges, but that makes sense if
they're pulled up over your mouth since they're hiding essential aspects of
your face. All the tests worked far better than Samsung's face unlock
feature on the Galaxy Note 8 -- though Samsung kept its fingerprint reader
on, as an easy backup.
The iPhone X occasionally asked me to re-enter the passcode after a failed
Face ID attempt, then locked out further Face ID efforts until I
entered the
passcode again. If you've used Touch ID, this will remind you of trying to
use an iPhone with wet fingers.
The big OLED screen is a welcome addition...
The 5.8-inch screen is the biggest on an iPhone to date, and the
first Apple
handset to use OLED (organic light-emitting display) technology versus the
LED/LCD in all previous iPhones. In addition to better energy efficiency,
OLED screens offer much better contrast and true, inky blacks -- not the
grayish blacks of LCD screens.
The iPhone 8 (left) has a 4.7-inch screen; the iPhone X (center) has a
5.8-inch screen; and the iPhone 8 Plus (right) is 5.5 inches.
Sarah Tew/CNET
At first use, the bigger screen feels great. I've wanted more screen real
estate on the iPhone, and the X comes closest to all-screen.
Picture quality
improvement isn't immediately noticeable over previous iPhones,
but that's a
testament to how good Apple's previous TrueTone displays are. The larger
screen gives the iPhone a more current and immersive feel.
I'll need more time to compare the screen to other iPhones -- and to other
OLED phones, such as Samsung Galaxy models.
Sarah Tew/CNET
...but the X's screen feels different from an iPhone Plus
That said, I grappled with a few X display quirks. Sure, there's
a notch cut
out of the top of the screen where the front-facing camera array sits. But
this isn't just the Plus display crammed into the body of a
4.7-inch iPhone.
The X's display is taller than recent iPhones -- or, when you put it in
landscape mode, narrower. For some videos, that means they get letterboxed
(black bars at the top and bottom) or pillarboxed (black bars on the left
and right) to fit properly and the effective display area ends up a bit
smaller than on the 8 Plus.
The rounded edges of the display mean that even if you expand a picture to
fill the screen, parts of the image or movie end up cut off.
The notch didn't bother me -- much...
Hear me out. The notch and the two extra bits on either side end up feeling
like bonus space: most apps don't use that area, and it ends up
relegated to
carrier, Wi-Fi and battery notifications, which saves that info from
cluttering the display below.
Sarah Tew/CNET
...but your favorite apps might not make the most of that screen
Many current apps aren't yet optimized for the iPhone X. These
outdated apps
end up filling the same space as on an iPhone 8, leaving a lot of unused
area. That'll certainly get fixed for some apps over time, but it's a
reminder that the extra screen room here might not end up meeting your
needs, until or unless the apps are optimized.
The Witness isn't optimized for the iPhone X (yet), so it "pillarboxes"
(places black bars to the left and right of the screen).
Sarah Tew/CNET
Living without the home button takes some adjustment
A number of new gestures take the place of the old home button. I kept
reaching for the phantom button over the first few hours, feeling like I'd
lost a thumb.
Unlike phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, which adds a virtual home
button to create a "press for home" experience, the X remaps familiar
gestures completely.
. Swiping down from the corner now gives you Control Center, instead
of swiping up.
. Swiping up is the new "home button."
. Swiping up and holding brings up all open apps.
. And another new trick: swiping left or right on the opaque bar below
all apps, flips between apps for quick multitasking.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Meanwhile, there's a new, large side button that brings up Siri and Apple
Pay. I instinctively pressed and held it to shut down my phone, then I
realized that is not what that button does. (To turn off the phone, you now
hold that same side button *and* the lower volume button at the same time,
which feels far from intuitive.)
Those gestures added up to some difficult maneuvers as I walked Manhattan
streets in the Flatiron between my office and a local barber shop. At the
end of the first day, I admit: sometimes I missed the simple home button.
Now Playing: Watch this: iPhone X unboxing
2:51
You'll need to adjust your Apple Pay routine
Double-clicking the side button brings up Apple Pay, but an additional
face-glance is needed to authorize a payment. I tried it on our vending
machine at the office and sometimes it worked great. Sometimes Face ID
didn't seem to recognize me. Maybe my timing was off.
We tested Apple Pay on our in-house vending machine.
Sarah Tew/CNET
I'm definitely going to need to check this out at more places in the days
ahead. The bottom line: you don't want to be the guy holding up the line at
the drugstore because your double-click-to-Face-ID-to-NFC-reader flow was
off.
The rear cameras are similar, not identical, to the iPhone 8 Plus
Like the iPhone 8 Plus, the iPhone X has a dual rear camera with both
wide-angle and telephoto lenses. But X has two changes: A larger aperture
(f/2.4 vs. f/2.8) on the telephoto lens, and optical image stabilization on
both lenses (rather than just one on the 8 Plus), which should make for
better-lit, less blurry zoomed-in shots at night or in lower lighting.
My colleague, CNET Senior Photographer James Martin, has done a
deep dive on
the new front-facing iPhone X camera, experimenting with
portraits and shots
around San Francisco.
Now Playing: Watch this: iPhone X camera pushes the art of selfies
2:47
The front camera is great with Portrait Mode.
In addition to handling Face ID duties, the TrueDepth front camera brings
most of the magic of Apple's rear cameras to the selfie world.
Scott Stein/CNET
Portrait Mode, where the subject is in the foreground in focus with a
blurred background, and Portrait Lighting, which applies various lighting
effects to a photo after the fact, both now work on your selfies. Vanity,
thy name is Portrait Mode.
...but not great with Portrait Lighting and my face
Portrait Lighting is officially in beta on both the iPhone's rear and front
cameras, and my experiences with it confirmed Apple isn't finished
perfecting the software that makes it work. My face ended up looking oddly
cut-out and poorly lit. Unlike the rear cameras, which seemed to produce
hit-or-miss Portrait Lighting shots, I haven't had luck with my
own selfies.
Portrait Lighting is still in beta, so temper your expectations.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Get ready to be bombarded with animojis, and other TrueDepth AR and
face-mapping apps
Animojis are exactly what they sound like: animated emojis. They're cute.
They're also Apple's showcase for the fancy TrueDepth camera, which maps
your facial expressions onto monkeys, aliens, foxes and even a
pile of poop.
(If nothing else, the 10-second clips made my kids laugh when I sent them a
few.)
Animojis map to your facial expressions and mouth movements.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Third-party apps also use the TrueDepth camera for real-time 3D effects.
Snapchat created new face filters I got to play with, and some did an
amazing job staying on my face. I'm curious to see how future apps use this
tech for even more advanced face-aware AR.
Snapchat face filters just got a lot more realistic.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Apple's Instagram-like video app Clips has an update coming that also uses
the camera to green-screen my face into different scenes, like an 8-bit
gaming experience or a Star Wars filter where it looks like my face is a
blue-tinged hologram. Again, it's fun. For many people, the
filters Snapchat
already provides are probably enough.
Apple's Clips app is now TrueDepth-enabled, too.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Apple nailed the size and feel: Did it nail the entire experience?
I think the X is in the sweet spot that the older iPhone sizes could never
perfectly be. It's a good-feeling phone with a nice, large
screen. The shift
to Face ID and the removal of the home button feel like changes that some
might be fine with, and others will find unnecessary. I'm still
learning the
X's design language.
We're just getting started!
Want to know more? So do we. This is the beginning of our iPhone X journey,
not the final word. We've got plenty more on deck, including battery tests,
benchmarks and in-depth comparisons to rival phones such as the Samsung
Galaxy Note 8 and Google PIxel 2 XL.
We'll continue to update our experiences throughout the week as we count
down to the iPhone X global launch on Friday, Nov. 3.
For now, our CNET review of the iPhone X will be ongoing with a lot more
tests. Stay tuned!
The iPhone X selfie camera: Our first impressions, out and about
in the real
world.
I'm using an iPhone X already. AMA! Tweet your questions to Scott.
Original Article at:
https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-x-review-day-one/#ftag=CAD590a51e
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