The iPhone 10 is predictably different it's the first design overhaul Apple's
had since the original iPhone and like Apple itself it's predictably polarizing
I tend to be pretty agnostic when it comes to mobile OS's splitting my time
pretty evenly between whatever Android flagship du jour is out and the large
screen iPhone at the time for me the iPhones become a commodity an entry into
iMessage but with the iPhone X it was the first iPhone since
the 6 plus I was generally pumped about but now two weeks in the initial
enthusiasm has started to wane the iPhone X for me though is a tale of two
stories for the first six days I found it frustrating and oftentimes super
annoying I wasn't starting my swipe far enough down to go home accidentally set
off the SOS alert trying to turn my phone off which probably the police to call me
back it was annoying that I couldn't see the battery percentage without swiping
down from the right but then the second week of testing something happens I
stopped thinking about these UI tweaks and just started using them after that
initial learning curve I started to really enjoy the phone but I'm getting a
bit ahead of myself let's start back at the beginning the iPhone 10 at least on
paper is a phone that I've been hoping Apple would make wireless charging OLED
badass camera setup and a design that can finally rival the best of Android
so aside from Apple stealing my hairline for that top notch at least
aesthetically the phone looks stunning Face ID these sounds like a gimmick but
now two weeks in and I'm still not completely sold but I'm way more
convinced that I was at the beginning but we'll get to that I usually skip
over software my phone reviews because it's iOS but with the iPhone X you can't just
pick it up and know what to do I've been reviewing phones now for over nine
years this is the first device that I can remember where I had to look up how to
power the device off I had to ask how to take screenshots and how to close
applications there's a lot of nuances here it takes time to learn but the more
I used it the more I saw that Apple's feature while looking surprisingly like
the Palm Pre software is incredibly bright the gestures became more
deliberate and the swipes became second nature
I still have a hard time understanding why Apple didn't put an on screen home
button or at least something force touching the dock but I did at least get used to
it so software aside the next big story is
the 5.8 inch OLED display and I just want to say thank you seriously
finally and thank you the 2436 x 1125 make the 458 PPI screen look awesome in
my recent Samsung reviews I praised them for the incredible screen technology and
for the iPhone X Apple cozied up to the frenemy Samsung to build the display
while Apple maintained control of the underlying tech so predictably when
those two get together the screen is incredible but not perfect I turned off
the true tone display I thought the constantly re-white balancing
was unnecessary and a possible battery drain and also to my eye caused a bit of
a yellow hue but others in the office absolutely loved it so personal
preference thing color reproduction is awesome the wide color gamut really
helps with that and the black levels are very black it's one of the incredible
things about the OLED technology I was a bit worried about brightness but with
Auto turned on I never felt this screen looked washed out I never had issues
seeing it in direct sunlight this is clearly the best screen Apple has ever
put on one of their devices and can finally rival the best displays from
Samsung and LG despite having a larger display than the 8 Plus the phone feels
noticeably smaller in the hand it kind of feels reminiscent of a Galaxy S8 and
it's only slightly bigger and frame than an iPhone 8 I usually opt for the larger
sized phones but it's hard not to admit this is the sweet spot for almost
everyone's hand size I really love the feel of the phone the glass on the back
feels awesome and I thought that I lost the feel of device when I put in a case so
perhaps foolishly I made the decision to go case free and instead opted for Apple
care it's hard to not feel like a chump after shelling out about 1200 bucks for
the phone that extended warranty I have laptops that cost less than
apple claims the glass on the back is the strongest glass on any smartphone
but when it comes to the accidental drop and the subsequent battle of glass
versus concrete I'm going with concrete every time and the drop test that we've
seen and reviewed tend to confirm the fragility the band around the side is
made of surgical grade stainless steel and I'm not sure what surgical grade has
to do with anything here but hey it's there the space gray version and I've
been testing does show plenty of finger prints so keep a t-shirt or a cloth
handy to clean that sucker up the speakers here are also 25% louder and
they sound pretty good for a mobile they don't distort the sounds when you go to
high volumes but if you still want better audio you're gonna want a
headphones but make sure those headphones are either wireless or lightning
because still no headphone jack here so I promise I talked about Face ID and in
all honesty I'm still not sure how I feel about it but how I feel doesn't
really matter it unlocks about as fast as touch ID and I found myself having to
use a passcode about as often as I did with touch ID anyway so I think that's a
win using it in apps though is we're really shine things like Apple Pay and
one password just feel effortless camera time so Apple changed
orientation a 12 megapixel sensors from landscape to portrait so you know they
mean business it's expected combo of wide-angle and telephoto lenses and
Apple's marketing machine will tell you it uses a state-of-the-art seven magnet
solution but to the end-user the pictures just look really good both
cameras have OIS and they do a really admirable job of stabilizing video where I
think it really shines is in low-light situations where the pictures still end
up looking really good pictures look really incredible without being
overexposed and even in almost no light I was able to see the true color
reproduction in the photos another thing I love is portrait mode and I try and
use it almost every chance I get to take pictures of my kids it just works
incredibly well the true depth camera on the front enables portrait mode selfies
that just looked really bad hopefully software updates will fix this
but the background sometimes where I'm blurred properly ears seem to trip it up
I just wasn't that impressed but you do get an emojis which I'm not gonna lie I
use more than a grown man should the novelty will probably wear off soon but I
love shaking my head and seeing the poop sway and I can't be alone battery
life for me was about 10% worse than what I got on my iPhone 8 Plus it's good but
not great I could get through a full day so that's at least what I need and I
commend Apple for not going full Apple and creating their own wireless charging
standard instead opting for the pretty much ubiquitous Qi standard it also
rained one day while we were testing so it was nice to have the ip67
obviously I would have preferred the ip68
that standard now across almost all Android flagships so that notch it's it's
there on one hand I can see why they did it it creates two distinct swipes to
bring up different things in this case control center notifications and I get
that it also for better or for worse serves as brand identification for Apple but when
watching full screen videos or apps and aren't yet optimized it's kind of
distracting it a bit of an eyesore it did start to fade in the background in
the latter part of my usage but then I'd watch a full screen YouTube video and I'd
be keenly aware that notch was there I'll say this though it detracts less
than I thought but it's definitely a slight blemish on otherwise gorgeous
canvas the A11Bionic is powering the device and it's predictably fast
sometimes it feels overkill but I imagine the extra horsepower is there to
help the iPhone 10 aged gracefully into iOS 12 and 13 which I think are gonna
focus a lot on gestures so the iPhone 10 it's not for everyone in the way
previous iPhones were my mom for example has been an iPhone user for five years
and took one look at the lack of a home button and said no thank you
face ID and gestures are gonna take time to get used to not because they don't
work because they're drastically different than what people have had
before the price of having the cutting edge from Apple is a steep one to pay
starting at a grand the barrier to entry is crazy high even for Apple if you
decide you want to come on board or get a device that's finally at feature parity
with the best of Android and predictably performs better than any iPhone in
recent memory I can see the direction Apple is headed here and while not
perfect the iPhone 10 is definitely top notch