- [Michael] You've seen the specs,
you've gotten the impressions
and you're gonna get a full review very soon.
But first, I'm answering your questions
about the most exciting iPhone in years.
I'm MrMobile and this is the iPhone X.
(upbeat music)
I'm not gonna make you wait
until the end of the episode for number one, folks.
Far and away your most asked question about the iPhone X
surrounds its most polarizing attribute,
that notch.
Specifically, how big a deal is it?
Well, this is a question I've actually tackled
rather recently on another high profile smartphone
so allow myself to quote myself.
This is something I expected to be annoyed by
every time I looked at the phone
but I actually came to like the quirky personality
it lends to the design.
I like it so much in fact
that when I use an app that doesn't automatically
scale to fill the whole canvas,
I get annoyed at the notch's absence.
I feel mostly the same way about the iPhone X.
After less than an hour I mostly stopped noticing it
and when I did it was more like a pleasant reminder
that finally I was holding an iPhone
that did something different
instead of yet another retread of the iPhone 6.
That being said it's early yet
and some apps haven't quite adapted
to the new forehead in their midst.
Also, going landscape in Safari
produces this pillarboxing that
makes for a real feeling of wasted space
unless you zoom in.
So, there are rough patches to be worked out for sure
but as for me,
I'll take bold but strange
over symmetrical but safe any day.
The next biggest question is all about the feature
that makes the notch necessary, face ID.
In your tweets, you wanted to know how well it works
and whether it's as good as old reliable touch ID
or fingerprint scanning.
The answer to the first part is the same
as it always is.
It works very well in the kind of demo situations
that require you to fit your face in the phone
in the same shot for your camera.
Even when the lights go down in the conference room
face ID is a champ.
And that makes sense
since the IR illuminator and dot projectors
don't care about the dark.
It's fast too.
In normal operation it ties with the Galaxy Note 8's
iris scanner pretty much every time
and it gets even faster
if I wanna trade some security and disable the
attention awareness tie in.
That's the tech that tells the iPhone
whether your eyeballs are looking at it.
But look, I've been using face unlock since 2015
on smartphones from Microsoft, Samsung and now Apple,
and in my experience it always starts great
and then gradually worsens over time
as you test it in more and more different environments.
Now, Apple's technology is more advanced
than anything we've seen before
but even when it works perfectly,
this tech is still usually less convenient
than laying a finger on a home button.
Even more frustrating,
it's actually even slower than it could be
since Apple annoyingly makes you swipe to unlock
even after it's decided that you are really you.
So, on the whole, I don't think this was a good move
but only the full review will tell us
how well this works in daylight.
Speaking of, subscribe to The MrMobile on YouTube
so you don't miss it.
Displays are the buzzy things to talk about
in smartphones today.
Thank you slash I'm so sorry Google Pixel 2 XL.
So, many of you wanted to know
how Apple's first OLED display looks in person.
It's quite striking and it's certainly nice to see
Apple fans finally getting those OLED advantages.
Apple also appears to have tuned this display quite well.
It looks better in person
than it does in this video
because of white balance issues
caused by the lighting at the venue.
Still, coming as I am from the Android world,
this display just seems good to me.
After all, the Galaxy Note 8 can get
twice as bright as the iPhone X
and its Galaxy S siblings have it beat here too.
Now, brightness isn't everything
and I think the general thrust of your questions was
is this display gonna turn out
like the disaster that befell Google's latest phones,
and I'd have to say that aside from the expected
effects as blue shift, I'm not worried about it.
You wanted to know how the deletion of the home button
affects the day to day.
Are the new gestures complicated
and how do they measure up
to the platforms that inspired them?
Well, like so many of my geeky comrades
it was Palm that taught me the joys
of gesture controls on smartphones
those many years ago.
And I was so looking forward to getting them back
on the iPhone X.
But it's a steeper learning curve here.
Because the screen goes right to the bottom,
there's very little room for a gesture area.
So, filling out that edge takes some practice,
as does timing out the beats,
that mean the difference between swiping home
and skidding over into the app switcher.
On that subject, you know that cathartic buzz
you use to get from flicking away cards to close apps,
kiss it goodbye.
It's been replaced by an awkward press and hold mechanic.
This might actually be a good thing
since you were probably doing more harm than good
flicking those apps closed manually,
but damn it, it was fun.
And fun was what I expected from all these new gestures.
Instead it's just kind of complicated and weird.
I spent minutes trying to get the new
reachability gesture right for example.
But, but, but, but, but, but let me stress once again
that these are first impressions
from a four-hour session with the phone.
To see how a real pro handles the new software
after just a little more time,
check out Rene Ritchie's review over at iMore.
Finally, not a single one of you
asked me about Animoji to which I say good for you.
You're all excellent people.
You got to admit though, this is kind of fun.
- [Rene] I was gonna say something very funny
and then I just,
I couldn't think anymore.
Woo!
Yeah!
- [Michael] Cameras, phone calls, battery tests
and yes, spec sheets.
They're all coming up in the full review
once I get my retail device.
Keep dropping your questions in the comments below
and I'll answer just as many as I can.
Again, check out Rene's review at iMore
for a way deeper dive than I'll probably ever take.
And finally, notice that there's no sponsor
on this video, folks.
That leaves me these precious few seconds
to ask you to please, share it if you enjoyed it.
MrMobile needs to grow
and to do that he needs help from viewers like you.
Until next time.
Thanks for watching
and stay mobile my friends.
(upbeat music)