Apple’s most awaited event, including the 10th Anniversary of the launch of the first iPhone was held in San Francisco last night as scheduled and most of the products and their unique features unveiled fell largely in line with what the pundits had been speculating.
The spotlight, undoubtedly was on the special 10th Anniversary edition of the iPhone, and Apple didn’t disappoint the fans. The phone is to be called iPhone X and has to be pronounced ‘ten’. If the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which were also announced in the same event, were to be called flagships then the iPhone X will be a super flagship.
The highlight of the iPhone X is that it comes with the edge-to-edge display and if there is a little notch at the top it is to accommodate the front facing camera and the facial recognition sensors. The other factor to be noted is that the Home button has been done away with replacing it with the upward swipe on the display screen to bring the screen alive.
On the hardware side, it’s glass all over with a special grade stainless frame holding it. The display is 5.8 inches in size and screen resolution is 2436x1125pixels and the density, 458ppi. Apple calls it Super Retina display, while it is actually OLED and iPhones get it for the first time.
The fingerprint sensor also is no longer present, since the iPhone X will have the Face ID technology to unlock the phone. It works instantly and there is a provision to shed light on the user’s face when the phone is brought in front of it and this enable the identification even in dark environments.
Apple claimed in the event that the likelihood of another person being successful in unlocking your phone using the Face ID is one in a million.
The camera setup has 2x12MP cameras in the rear with both the sensors equipped with optical image stabilization feature. The lenses have apertures of f/1.8 on one and f/2.4 on the other. The True Tone flash, according to Apple, will be twice as bright as the previous phones had. The flash is positioned between the two sensors. The front camera would be of 7MP. 4K video recording and stereo speakers round up this part of the phone’s features.
When it comes to the CPU and the GPU, both are Apple’s own in-house creations. The main processor is a hexa-core, A 11 Bionic processor, with two cores meant to control performance and the other four to function as efficiency engines.
The other major departure Apple has attempted on the new iPhone is wireless charging. Apple is working on a universal wireless charging pad and will be made available by next year.
On the pricing front, there will be a 64GB variant sold at $999 and the 256GB at $1149. There are reports that the India price for the iPhone X will be Rs 89, 000.
While in the US market, the pre-orders begin on 27th October and the phones might start shipping about a week later, the schedule for the Indian market is yet to be announced.