Not buying the iPhone X and what you should know beyond the iPhone X hype

By now pretty much everyone has covered the latest Apple announcement.

If you don’t know about the new flagship iPhone X phone, then you probably don’t care and have been too busy with real life. But in order to have a seemingly intelligent conversation when someone says “hey, did you hear about the new iPhone?”, here is what you need to know:

• New iPhone is called the iPhone X
• It is virtually all-screen except for a small niche at the top where the front facing camera and other tech live.
• It has the latest A11 bionic processor with 3 GB of RAM.
• The battery will last “2 hours longer” than the iPhone7 and has wireless charging.
• Dual rear-facing 12-megapixel cameras
• It uses TrueDepth array so that you can unlock the phone with your face by looking at your phone instead of using your fingerprint. This is called FaceID.
• The iPhone X has Animoji which are animal emojis that mimic your facial expressions.
• It will start to sell from October 27th with a starting price tag of $999.

The world’s media was captivated during the 2-hour Apple commercial…eh… launch where Apple took the opportunity to reveal a new Apple Watch series 3, announced that Apple TV has been redesigned, and an iPhone 8 phone.

Ok so now you know what was announced. If you are already salivating at the thought of the new phone in your pocket, or already bought an iphone x case for your future phone, maybe you should stop reading right about now…

Here are my initial non-fanboy thoughts on the Apple iPhone X

The Bezel Swipe Up

The “innovation” of having an all screen display (a Samsung made display btw) and needing to swipe up from the bottom to reveal a home-screen is not new. In fact, it’s so old you probably forgot or didn’t give it a chance. As you might recall, BlackBerry had this feature when it had BB10! When BlackBerry showed it to the world, it wasn’t so well received, now that Apple has the exact same thing it is now “oooohhhhs” and “wows” I can only sigh but credit to Apple…

How this will work in the real-world is another question. How will websites render? how will the functionality work in full-screen mode? how will apps respond? We have to wait to see it in the real world first.

The insane animoji

Those animal emojis are creepy. There, I said it. I am not sure I want to have a conversation with someone who responds as a pig or a clucking chicken. Yes, it will be fun for a while, but will the novelty wear off? My fear is that it does not…

Just look at the inventor of those emojis – Snapchat (was that a BURN?!). They are still around but within Snapchat, and even Instagram Stories, they kinda make sense but mixed into real conversations on Message, I am not sure it does…time will tell.

Will the Real Battery please stand up

The battery is the one thing that all iPhone owners complain about. Correction. They stopped complaining since it became accepted that there is no way for the phone this good which does so much, to last an entire day (shit iPhone owners say). The new iPhone X has a battery that lasts 2-hours longer than the iPhone7 which seems to mean that the mad-dash for a power source will start around 2pm?Again – this is a guess as obviously as power management software evolves this iteration of the iOS operating system could be much better. So let’s see how long the battery will last after you unlocked your phone with your face for the umpteenth time and made your panda make horrible faces….just me? ok never mind.

Yes, Apple has finally embraced wireless charging. Nice to see them catching up to Samsung.

Future-Ready

The one thing that I must mention is that the iPhone X does have serious processing power to run all of this. To make the poop emoji smile and mimic your face requires complicated algorithms and machine learning and that is the “next big thing”. So Apple having the A11 processor which is a neural engine capable machine for better AI, VR, and AR really does make the iPhone X a future-ready beast.

So if you are into pointing your phone at a table to see a characters dance or are into pretending to be Luke and fight like a Jedi in a VR game – go for it!

Of course, the not-so-wrong conspiracy people now have another thing to hold onto – first it was your fingerprint that you gave up to Apple and now its your face…I will leave that one right here…

FaceID Security

I am really keen to see how this one works. In theory, you would just stare at your phone and it will unlock. Here is my question: isn’t that a big security flaw? I mean if you are drunk, could anyone (aka your significant other) simply hold the phone towards your face and it will unlock?

What about airport security? could they just wave your own phone in front of you and it will unlock?

What about if you wear a helmet on your motorbike and want to get navigation how will it unlock?

Apparently, you need to “cooperating” so that means that your eyes need to be open as it scans your face. I hope so as it seems way too easy for someone ELSE to unlock your phone with your face. I guess you better start practicing your breathing-underneath-a-blanket technique!

And all this innovation is yours FROM “$999”

Heaven forbid Apple would add a micro-SD slot and lose all that money on cloud hosting. So whatever storage your device has is the storage capacity you are stuick with so if you want more storage space, the price is going to exceed the $1000 mark  – the 256GB version is $1149.

That is a lot of kaching for a phone, however, this won’t matter as the marketing engine is in place to convince you that you are currently paying X per month for your iPhone7, so for a few more dollars, you can get the latest-bestest-iPhone X-ever-made.

And that is the secret of how millions are sold and millions will be sold. With zero percent interest, with no money down (no deposit)  and for only a couple of dollars extra per month, why wouldn’t you get the latest? Of course you would.  You never actually own the phone, you are just paying a “usage fee” and you keep paying month after month until its time to trade in your 1-year old phone and continue to pay to get the newest while they resell the old one to another customer.

If you are locked into the eco-system, AND you need to have the latest all the time, then this makes sense. However, most people don’t and yet most people won’t look at the overall price, but focus on the “hey it’s only a couple of extra dollar per month”. where do I sign?

So in summary

Where has all the real innovation gone? Are we just evolving and copying each other? Where are bending screens and flying cars we were promised? All I see is more “me-too”

Apple yet again did what Apple does best – “package” and “wow” so that you MUST  own their latest.

Apple has this amazing ability to make you look at your current iPhone which, before the announcement was the best-of-the best and yet somehow by the time the announcement is finished, that same phone you were holding instantly transformed into a piece of shit and you MUST place your pre-order asap.

Well played Apple.

Well played again.

Note: this article is NOT sponsored by Apple (shocker I know)