Living with an iPhone X

No phone has received as much attention this year as the iPhone X, and while some of this is due to the phone’s high price point, the iPhone X does live up to the hype; after using it for the past few weeks, I've been particularly impressed by its face detection and improved camera. Despite a couple of misses—I would still like to see a headphone jack—the iPhone X$999.00 at Verizon Wireless has proven to be fast, reliable, convenient, and probably the most exciting iPhone in years.

At 5.65 by 2.79 by 0.3 inches and weighing 6.14 ounces, the iPhone X is pretty compact for a phone with a 5.8-inch display. Its size lands it between the iPhone 8$699.99 at Verizon Wireless, with its 4.7-inch display (measuring 5.45 by 2.65 by 0.29 inches and weighing 5.22 ounces), and the iPhone 8 Plus$799.99 at Verizon Wireless, with its 5.5-inch display, which measures 6.24 by 3.07 by 0.3 inches and weighs 7.13 ounces (The iPhone 7$649.99 at T-Mobile and 7 Plus were similar).

In other words, you're getting a bigger display on the X compared to the 8 Plus, but in a notably smaller, lighter, and easier to carry package. Apple isn't the first to offer a near bezel-less display—LG
and Samsung, among others, were first here—but the new form factor is very nice, and makes the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus look dated in comparison. As with this year's top Android phones, the display is elongated—it has a 2,436-by-1,125-pixel display in a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. I've grown accustomed to taller displays over the course of the year, and now like them very much. Yes, in applications such as YouTube, you do get black bars on the side if you're viewing many videos while holding the phone horizontally (although you can often zoom to get them to fill horizontally, but at the expense of some lost content vertically.The iPhone X is also the first iPhone with an AMOLED display. I have found such displays to be bright and vibrant on the Samsung line for the past several years, and Apple's implementation is at least as good. The display looks very nice from any angle, and holds up well in bright sunlight. The iPhone X's display tends more toward warmer colors compared with Samsung, but both displays are excellent.