Apple iPhone X review: A bold step into the future (2024)

Apple’s iPhone X is the beginning of something new.

Holding the iPhone X(opens in a new tab) in my hand triggers a distinct memory of the moment I first cradled the original iPhone(opens in a new tab). The sensation lingers as I caress the surgical steel band that wraps around the phone and I feel the cool glass back against my palm. Waking the phone snaps me back to the present. I’m suddenly unmoored as my eyes dart across the nearly unblemished Super Retina OLED screen, searching desperately for the home button.

There is no home button, just a stunning 5.8-inch screen that hugs the edge, reaching for the silver band that’s just millimeters away. All of it is so beautiful, save for that peninsula of darkness at the top — the notch(opens in a new tab) that intrudes on the otherwise perfect industrial design of the iPhone X, but also proves critical to its operation and serves as yet another signal that this is not just another iPhone.

Apple’s iPhone X(opens in a new tab) is the beginning of something new. Even if you don’t want an iPhone X, I encourage you to pay attention. Everything the iPhone X is serves as a roadmap for future iPhones.

Early adopters (and lucky reviewers like me) are like the scouts sent out ahead to tell if the road is clear, safe, and ultimately worth traveling. My postcard from the edge of Apple iPhone innovation reads: This is a trip you’ll want to take.

From a size and weight perspective, the Apple iPhone X sits neatly between the 4.7-inch display of the iPhone 8 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus. But Apple’s smartphone line no longer represents a continuum. To squeeze the iPhone X between these two devices, which were also unveiled in September, is to assume that your iPhone choices follow some sort of rote path. There is no path here. Yes, there are similarities between the iPhone X and, especially, the iPhone 8 Plus, but the way the iPhone X looks, feels and, most importantly, works, puts it on a different plane.

The stainless-steel band is home to a speaker grille and microphone as well as Apple's proprietary Lightning port.

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The back of the iPhone X is protected by ultra-hard glass (the same Corning custom blend that backs the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus(opens in a new tab)) with a smudge-resistant oleophobic coating on the outside and color — gray or white — on the inside. Touching the smooth glass exterior and looking at the steel-and-copper-plate frame underneath, the iPhone X feels like a beautiful contradiction.

Measured diagonally, the iPhone X screen is the largest on any iPhone ever made, yet the device fits comfortably in my hand. Though obviously smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus, the iPhone X, with a depth of 7.7mm (0.3 inch), is 0.2mm (0.008 inch) thicker. It weighs 174 grams (6.17 ounces), which is almost 30 grams more than the iPhone 8, but 28 grams lighter than the iPhone 8 Plus.

Apple has been slowly, but consistently increasing the thickness and weight of its flagship devices. If you're upgrading from the iPhone 7, which measures 7.1 mm thick and weighs 138 grams, you'll really feel it.

The Apple iPhone X is a smaller handset than the iPhone 8 Plus, but it has a bigger screen.

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I showed the iPhone X to a few people. Most who held the phone commented that it felt a little thicker and heavier, which I think is directly attributable to many of them owning iPhones that are two or more generations old.

Their overall impression of the look and feel of the device, though, was almost universally positive. The typical response was to make a sound that's probably similar to what they'd utter if they spotted a delicious-looking piece of cake. I could hear the desire in their voices.

Apple flipped the cameras 90 degrees on the back of the iPhone X. The iPhone X is also thicker than the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iPhone 8 Plus.

If the camera is a hint that this is not your average iPhone, the screen is a dead giveaway.

In addition to being Apple’s first OLED display on a phone — a custom Apple screen made by Samsung — the 5.8-inch screen is the highest-resolution smartphone display Apple has ever made. The 2,436 x 1,125 resolution screen has a whopping 458 pixels per inch (ppi). That blows away the iPhone 8’s 326 ppi, though it falls short of the 571 ppi SuperAMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy S8. The iPhone X display also supports HDR (High Dynamic Range), which means you see a greater contrast range and more colors than on non-HDR screens.

Specs aside, this is the best iPhone display I have ever seen.

The iPhone X's 5.8-inch "Super Retina HD" display is the highest-resolution smartphone screen Apple has even built.

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You have never seen such bright, touchable colors or inky blacks on an iPhone handset, nor have you ever seen an iPhone screen hug the virtually bezel-less edge and corners of a device the way the iPhone X does. Those corners of the screen are all curves — a first in iPhone history. Do not let Apple iPhone 8 owners hold their screen next to the iPhone X’s, unless you want to see grown-ups cry.

Of course, it’s not just the screen; Apple’s iPhone X introduces and entirely new form of iPhone life.

No home button, no problem.

To start, the iPhone X launches with the most significant feature deletion in iPhone history: bigger than dropping the 30-pin connector(opens in a new tab) in favor of a Lightning port and even more disruptive than canning the headphone jack(opens in a new tab) (which is still gone on the iPhone X).

There. Is. No. Home Button.

Apple has always been about making devices where the technology gets "out of the way." Whether you knew it or not, that meant, to make the iPhone of the future — what this button-less wonder claims to be a vanguard of — Apple needed to drop the home button (and the Touch ID fingerprint reader along with it) from the iPhone at some point. Now it's finally happening with the iPhone X.

Stop looking for the home button.

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You tell me, does the notch ruin the picture?

Lance Ulanoff/Mashable

There are eight components in the "notch" and each one of them serves a distinct purpose.

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I’d be lying if I said I never noticed the notch. It cuts into full-screen apps, movies, and photos, but, after a little while, I stopped fixating on it. I guarantee that some people will hate the notch and rail against it, and it's fun to imagine how the stoic Jony Ive, Apple’s Chief Design Officer, might’ve lost his cool when he first saw the notch. The complaints will, I suspect, mostly be from people who do not own or use an iPhone X.

The notch also paves the way for another one of Apple’s big iPhone X innovations and, thank goodness, an above average answer to, “How the hell am I going to unlock my iPhone without a home button and Touch ID?”

We’ve been tapping, pinching, swiping, and gesturing on our iPhones for over a decade now. Apple could fairly be credited with creating an entire "style" of interactions for handheld devices. The iPhone X takes that strategy to its logical conclusion, relying on a combination of facial-recognition technology and gestures to engage with the iPhone in ways no one ever has before.

Before I could engage with the iPhone X, I had to accept that I would not be pressing a home button to open it. This reality hit me hard.

During my first 24 hours of using the iPhone X, I helplessly pressed the space where a button should be. It’s a kind of Phantom Home Button Syndrome that I expect all iPhone X owners will experience in the early days.

Say it with me: The gesture bar is your friend.

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It fades, though, and rather quickly, thanks to a smartly designed gesture interface and something Apple calls Face ID.

Remember, without the fancy TrueDepth camera system, there is no Face ID, which might improve your tolerance of the notch. Apple could have gone the Samsung Galaxy S8 route, and shrunk the entire "forehead" of the screen by a quarter inch, to accommodate the TrueDepth camera, but I also think that would have made the iPhone X a more ordinary device.

Face ID is integrated into the iPhone X setup and I highly recommend you use it. The setup is easy, but you might want to do it when no one is looking at you.

After using my iPhone 7 to blaze through the initial iPhone X setup (when setting up an iPhone running running iOS 11, Apple allows you to transfer settings and apps from another iPhone via iCloud), the phone guided me through Face ID.

On screen, the Face ID setup showed the front camera view of my face inside a circle. It then guided me to rotate my head in a circle as, on screen, a green dial follows and fills in the circumference of the Face ID circle. Behind the scenes, the TrueDepth camera’s dot projector is covering my face in dots only visible to the infrared camera, rapidly building a 3D map of my face.

This is me registering my face with Face ID. Two rotations and you're done.

Lance Ulanoff/Mashable

Feeding my facial geometry into the iPhone , required me to make that slightly awkward head rotation move twice (it’s like drawing a circle with your nose), but then I was done. It's a faster authentication setup than I’ve ever experienced with Touch ID.

The result: A highly effective iPhone X unlocking routine.

Here’s how I unlock my iPhone 8. I pick up the phone, and the screen wakes on lift automatically. I press the home button, keep my finger resting on it for a fraction of a second, and the iPhone unlocks.

Here’s how I do with the iPhone X. I pick up the phone and swipe my finger up from the bottom edge of the screen. In the time it takes to do that, the iPhone X’s Face ID system has already read my face and approved it as the one registered with the phone. Is it faster than unlocking the iPhone 8? Close, but, if so, only by milliseconds. However, unlike pressing and holding the home button, accessing my iPhone X feels like a single gesture. You can, of course, still use a PIN code, which you’ll need when you turn on the phone, since Face ID won’t work after a power-down.

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I did try to fool Face ID. I took a photo of my face with the iPhone 8 and presented it to the iPhone X TrueDepth Camera. It didn’t respond. I also tried using a short video. Again, nothing. To see how well Face ID could recognize me, I tried with and without a hat, only defeating it when I pulled the brim down do far that I obscured half my face. Since this was around Halloween, I tried unlocking my phone while wearing a dark wig. Face ID knew it was me every time.

There is one way to fool Face ID, though, and Apple has already acknowledged this(opens in a new tab): identical twins. I tried it, so I know. It's one reminder that, while facial recognition is super convenient, it's not perfect.

Using that swipe to unlock the iPhone X is, though, the first step in a relatively painless journey of interface reorganization and gesture discovery.

One important limitation of FaceID: It only lets you register one face. That may strike many as unnecessarily limiting since Touch ID lets users register up to 10 fingerprints, but Apple says it found the number of people who register more than one person's fingerprints is miniscule. There's also the simple and obvious fact that humans have 10 fingers, but just one face.

You don’t realize just how many features rely on the home button until it’s gone. For as much as I love the iPhone X, using it in those early days was like interacting with an iPhone via funhouse mirror. I’d been schooled on where things moved, but had a nasty habit of bumping into mirrors as I forcibly retrained my digits and mind.

To get “home” one the iPhone X, I use the same gesture as I did to unlock it. A sweep up from the bottom of the screen at any time minimizes the open app and lands you on the home screen. There’s an omnipresent gesture bar near the base of the screen. It acts like the thin handle on a window shade, giving you a spot to put your thumb when you want to start your sweep gesture. It disappears after a few seconds and reappears if you tap the screen or start swiping up on the bottom of the screen (in portrait or landscape mode).

With the home button gone, there's another new gesture you need to learn for accessing the app switcher. At least it’s just a continuation of the core gesture: You gesture up from the bottom of the screen, but pause before you move your thumb off the screen. This reveals a familiar-looking app switcher interface, and then you can let go.

Apple uses the screen areas on either side of the notch for both consistent status information (time, battery) and as gesture-based access to Notifications and the Control Center.

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To kill apps, you hold your finger down on one and red minus signs appears on all open apps. You can tap any negative sign to close one.

Besides the app switcher, there's another, new way of switching between apps. You just place you finger near the bottom edge of the phone and swipe from the left to page through open apps.

I got so used to the home screen gesture that I kept trying to use it on my iPhone 8, which only resulted in revealing the Control Center.

Speaking of which, the Control Center migrated all the way to the top of the screen. It lives in the space on the right side of the notch, hidden behind the icons for connectivity and battery life (on the opposite side of the of the notch is the time and location icon).

Swiping down from the top right for the Control Center takes some adjustment.

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To access Control Center, I sweep down from the top right side of the screen. I have big hands so this 5.65-inch journey from the bottom to the top of the iPhone X screen does not bother me. Those with smaller hands may feel otherwise. They can still use the iPhone's Reachability mode, which you have to activate in settings.

Once Reachability is turned on, you can drop the whole screen halfway down (including access to Control Center) by swiping down slightly on the gesture bar. In my experience, though, even with Reachability, which is difficult to activate, this is an imperfect solution. There’s no visual cue for the location of the Control Center when the interface is halfway down the screen. If you have small hands and Reachability isn't your thing, you might want to look into a PopSocket(opens in a new tab).

Swiping down from the top of the screen anywhere but on the right side will reveals Notification Center.

I found the Control Center.

Apple Pay and Siri now live under the now substantially longer side (or sleep/lock) button. It takes a double press to access Apple Pay, which also activates Face ID to complete payment.

Before paying at Starbucks, I double-checked that it accepts tap-to-pay. The barista laughed and said, "Of course! It's 2017, man." I pressed the side button twice, saw the Face ID icon on screen as the iPhone X captured my face and followed the instructions to place my phone near the card reader. Piece of cake (actually I got a cup of coffee and a bagel).

Pressing and holding down the side button activates Siri. I pressed the button and said to Siri, "Let's take a selfie." My front-facing camera opened immediately. Overall, I’m fine with moving Siri, though I do think pressing a side button is little less intuitive than using a home button.

Slightly more concerning: I now must press two buttons at once — the side button and either volume button — to fully turn off the phone, which reveals a slightly redesigned shutdown screen (it now includes Emergency SOS). I doubt many iPhone fans will appreciate this change, but it might also be worth asking yourself: when was the last time you turned off your iPhone? As I was writing this, I realized I hadn’t turned off the iPhone X in three days. You can still turn on the iPhone X by pressing just the side button.

If the TrueDepth camera had just this single purpose-- unlocking your iPhone X -- it might be a disappointment, but the ability to see faces in three dimensions unlocks some fascinating and often entertaining opportunities.

The 7-megapixel camera that we all use for selfies is now a Selfie Portrait Mode camera. What’s really interesting is that the iPhone X can take Portrait Mode photos from both cameras, but by using two completely different sets of technologies. Portrait mode on the back of the camera relies on both wide and telephoto cameras and some powerful image algorithms to create that pro-looking bokeh effect.

On the front of the iPhone X, the phone creates portrait mode selfies by combining imagery from the 7MP camera with the 3D depth-sensing information collected by the TrueDepth module.

In addition to more entertaining iMessages, the TrueDepth camera will take third-party apps to new places. Snap provided me with a test version of Snapchat so I could try out the new 3D skins that take advantage of the TrueDepth camera. There were four total: a luchador mask, full face paint, feather glasses, and flowers.

In each case, the face mapping is simply next-level. The app uses the 3D face-mapping information gathered by the TrueDepth camera to map my face, expression and even the lighting to an extraordinary level. I did notice a tiny bit of judder on the mask, and just a hair of a flicker that made it clear my face wasn't really painted.

The two rear 12MP cameras on the iPhone X are like the ones on the iPhone 8 Plus, but they’re not entirely the same. In addition to the new configuration and orientation, the 12MP 2x telephoto lens now has a f/2.4 aperture (the iPhone 8 telephoto lens is f/2.8). A lower number means it can collect more light, especially useful for a telephoto lens. In addition, the telephoto lens now has optical image stabilization (the wide-angle camera on the iPhone 8 Plus already had it).

On the lock screen, Apple put the extra screen space to work and added a pair of useful quick-access 3D-Touch software buttons: The flashlight on the left and the camera on the right. A firm press on the screen activates either one. For the flashlight, another firm press turns it off. And you can also still access the rear camera by swiping left on the lock screen.

Digging a little deeper, the Apple iPhone X runs the exact same CPU as the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. The A11 Bionic chip(opens in a new tab) is a powerful and impressive mobile CPU with killer benchmark scores and significant, built-in AI power.

When I ran Geekbench, I noticed that the Apple iPhone X A11 Bionic is clocked slightly lower than the iPhone 8 Plus, which has a tiny bit more memory. The iPhone X’s Geekbench single- and multi-core scores were slightly higher than those of the iPhone 8 Plus. None of these things were noticeable in the operation of either device.

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The iPhone X ran smoothly through all my tests and activities. It’s incredibly responsive and the A11’s six symmetric-multiprocessing cores seemed up for anything. The chip’s built-in Neural Engine helped drive seamless face tracking in Animojis and Face ID.

I did notice that the phone could get a little warm during AR games like The Machines and ARise. The latter also had a glitch where the live camera view appeared letterboxed with blurred video of the core live video repeated in the borders — a common technique for filling the screen so the letterboxing isn't as obvious. But it shows that many app developers will have to update their apps to display properly on the iPhone X's longer screen.

Like the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which also have glass backs, the iPhone X is wireless charging-capable and works with any Qi-compatible charging base. I found the iPhone X charges slowly on a Mophie wireless charging base, but Apple says a software update coming later this year will raise the wireless charging wattage threshold from 5 watts to 7.5 watts, which should increase wireless charging speed by 50%. Wireless charging also raises the iPhone X’s temperature considerably.

Wired charging supports fast charging out of the box, and the phone is ready to handle whatever wattage you hand it, including a MacBook Pro charger, if you can find the right Lightning-to-USB-C adapter.

Battery life is rated at a robust 13 hours for video playback. My initial experience with the phone didn't get me that far, but that was because I choose to restore the iPhone X from my iPhone 7 backup. The more data you have on your phone, the harder the new iPhone will work to catch up, especially when connected to Wi-Fi. Over the next two days, and as the iPhone X caught up to my backup data backlog, I watched my battery life get better and better. As I write this, I have 47% battery life left after 8 hours of use.

This is still a phone. You know, that device you use to communicate with other humans via voice? Call quality through the Verizon network is excellent. When I switched to FaceTime, which uses the 7MP front camera (in the notch), video and audio quality remained strong over 4G LTE. I loved the full-screen experience, but my call buddy commented that my video thumbnail was super long. In other words, the iPhone X sends video that matches the iPhone X screen's aspect ratio (which is 19.5:9, for the record). I like it, but my call companion, who chatted with me via an iPhone 7, did not.

At $999 for a 64 GB iPhone X, this is Apple’s most expensive iPhone ever. It’s $200 more than the iPhone 8 Plus, an excellent device that doesn’t move the bar very much compared to the iPhone 7 Plus.

Still, there’s nothing quite like the iPhone X. It looks and feels like a premium device. The first time I held it, I understood why it cost so much. It’s exquisitely designed with premium materials that will get you noticed. And let’s face it, that was at least part of the draw for the original iPhone. Owning the “Jesus Phone” got you looks. It was unlike any other smartphone on the market. However, if the appeal of that first iPhone revolved solely around good looks, we would not be here a decade later considering this new, alluring device.

The Apple iPhone X is everything an Apple iPhone should be: Gorgeously designed, innovative, risky, inviting and effective in dozens of myriad tasks. It’s a "look at me" device that, by shedding one of its most iconic features, fades even more effectively into the background when you use it.

So much has changed with the iPhone X, but you will get so used to it. And going back will be impossible.

Lili Sams/Mashable

There is no getting around that notch. It cuts into movies, games, photos and really did a number on Instagram stories (an app update during testing fixed this issue).

Apple told me developers shouldn’t have trouble with the different screen sizes across their growing lineup of iPhones, but there’s clearly some value in updating your app to work with the iPhone X’s notch and new gesture bar. During my testing, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all delivered updates optimized for the iPhone X's unusual screen size and design.

People are gonna notice the iPhone X camera.

Dustin Drankoski/Mashable

And yet, you may find, as I did, that you can see past the notch. I watched Wonder Woman on the stunning OLED display and lost myself in the movie. Only when I tried to pay attention to the left edge did I notice an actor’s face obscured behind it. And you can always double-tap the video to activate letterboxing so the notch is a non-factor.

The iPhone X changes the iPhone experience, but for the most part those changes are for the better. I’m positive that those fearing the loss of the home button will forget about its absence 48 hours -- tops -- after buying the phone. Face ID and gestures are better, more convenient ways unlock and do basic tasks on the phone. That's progress. Even if you say, “No thanks,” to the iPhone X, this is the future, so just get ready for it.

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The Good

Exquisite design and materials • Effective facial recognition • Amazing screen • Great cameras in front and in back • Fast and powerful

The Bad

The notch • Need to re-learn fundamental features • Face ID can't discern twins • Pricey

The Bottom Line

Yes, the iPhone X is expensive and it removes a beloved feature, but it innovates in key ways. It's still the iPhone you want.

• Chief Correspondent

  Lance Ulanoff

• Tech Editor

  Pete Pachal

• Photo Editor

  Lili Sams

• Art Director

  Dustin Drankoski