Apple iPhone X launched: Features and specifications you need to know

Apple iPhone X announced for India: Price is Rs 89,000 for 64GB and sale is November 3. (Source: Reuters)

Apple has officially announced the iPhone X at an event held in San Jose, California. The iPhone X (Ten) features a design that’s completely different from the company’s previous generation iPhones. The smartphone has a screen that wraps all the way over the front of the smartphone, an all-new display technology, Face ID and more. The iPhone X marks the tenth-anniversary of the original iPhone, which was launched way back in 2007.

Apple iPhone X price in India is Rs 89,000 for the 64GB variant, while the 256GB version will cost Rs 102,000.  The iPhone will be available in India from November 3.

Apple iPhone X Design, Display

2017 is a major year for the iPhone, as Apple has made significantly changed the overall appearance of the iPhone compared to what we saw in the past couple of years. The last big change happened in 2014 when Apple launched the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, featuring bigger displays.

The biggest change for the iPhone X has to be the introduction of a new all-screen design, which is edge-to-edge. The screen stretches across the Super Retina Display, has OLED technology, and a resolution of 2436 x 1125 pixels. The Super Retina Display supports both HDR 10 and Dolby Vision HDR variants.  Also for the first time, Apple’s flagship iPhone doesn’t come with a home button. This also means the end of Touch ID, which was the fingerprint scanner to unlock the phone.  The iPhone X only comes in silver and space grey colour versions.

Apple iPhone is IP68 water and dust resistant.

Apple iPhone X Face ID, A11 Bionic Processor 

Instead, Apple iPhone X uses something called Face ID, which recognises the owner’s face to unlock the device. Apple claims the new technique will “learn your face” with the True Depth camera system. The company has added a bunch of hardware on the front, including a dot projector, infrared camera and flood illuminator, all of which is powered by the A11 Bionic chip on the iPhone X.

Apple said that there’s a one in a million chance that another person could unlock someone’s iPhone X with Face ID. Plus, users can still unlock the phone using a traditional passcode.

The company is also claiming the Face ID can’t be fooled by 3D masks of the face or even with a picture of the user’s face. It also says the feature will work in the dark as well. Apple adds that all facial information is saved on the device itself and the processing is done on-device and no requests are sent to cloud servers. This is to ensure greater user privacy.

“Face ID only unlocks iPhone X when customers look at it and is designed to prevent spoofing by photos or masks,” says Apple.

Apple is also claiming the Face ID can’t be fooled by 3D masks of the face or even with a picture of the user’s face. (Source: Reuters)

Apple’s flagship iPhone X is powered by the company’s A11 Bionic  processor with a new Neural Engine. Apple’s new chip has six-core with four efficiency cores, and the company claims this is “the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone.”

There’s also a new second-generation performance controller, which can utilise all six cores simultaneously for better performance workload. It also has an Apple-designed GPU with a three-core design for better graphics, improved experience on AR apps, and for 3D games. The neural engine has a “dual-core design” and is designed to carry out the more heavy duty AI, machine learning stuff, which is around Face ID, Animoji, etc. Apple claims the neural engine can performs up to 600 billion operations per second for real-time processing.

Apple iPhone X Camera

The iPhone X has two 12 MP image sensors, comprising a f/1.8 aperture wide-angle and a f/2.4 aperture telephoto lens. Both the cameras have optical image stabilization along with a Quad-LED True Tone flash. Also there’s a 7MP TrueDepth front-facing camera with support for Apple’s Portrait mode for selfies.

iPhone X also has a new Apple-designed image signal processor (ISP) for more “advanced pixel processing, wide colour capture, faster autofocus in low light and better HDR photos,” says the company. The ISP can also do real-time lighting estimation.

Animoji is another key feature of the new iPhone X and relies on the Face Recognition technology that Apple has added in the smartphone. (Image source: Reuters)

The camera is also geared for the AR experience, which will be a big part of iOS 11. Apple says both the cameras are “individually calibrated, with new gyroscopes and accelerometers for accurate motion tracking.” In AR games, where accurate motion tracking is required, all of this will help, claims Apple. Once again, the A11 Bionic CPU will step in to deal with “world tracking, scene recognition,” etc for AR. On the video side, the rear camera delivers better video stabilization, 4K video up to 60fps and 1080p slo-mo up to 240fps.

Apple iPhone X has dual rear cameras with OIS on both sensors. (Image source: Reuters)

Apple’s iPhone X also has the Portrait mode with Portrait Lighting on both the front and rear cameras. The Portrait Lighting mode is still in beta and allows users to add studio lighting effects to iPhone pictures in Portrait mode.

Apple iPhone X Battery 

Apple claims the battery on the iPhone X will last 2 hours longer than the iPhone 7. So yes, once again Apple has not given an exact number and iPhone is not really known for a strong battery life. Just like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the X also supports Qi wireless charging.