Finally Apple announced its redesigned, 10th anniversary iPhone. Thanks to leaks, we knew what to expect a premium, $1,000 (Rs.64,000 approx) smartphone with a beautiful edge-to-edge screen, and no Home button: the iPhone X. Alongside that, we’ll almost assuredly be getting the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus with a more traditional design, but outfitted with glass backs to facilitate wireless charging.
Read about the highlights below.
The iPhone X
Apple
Just as we expected, the iPhone X (pronounced iPhone 10) is here with a full screen and no Home button. And this “Super Retina Display” is an OLED display with a pixel density of 458 pixels per inch.
Since the Home button is gone, you can wake up the iPhone X by either picking it up or tapping on the screen. To access the Home screen, simply swipe up on the lockscreen (just like you might do on a number of Android phones). For activating Siri, you can either use the always on “Hey Siri” hot-word, or press a button on the side that will trigger it as well.
As rumoured, the iPhone X will use facial recognition—Face ID—as opposed to a fingerprint sensor. The iPhone X’s front facing camera array now includes an IR floodlight and camera to invisibly illuminate and photograph your face even in the dark. Using a map of your face that is created by a series of hundreds of dots that map your facial topography. Apple then uses machine learning to make sure it recognises your face.
Facial recognition has existed on other phones before—to questionable results. But fingerprint sensing was also shoddy before Apple introduced Touch ID, imitations of which were then adopted by Android phones. When it comes to the strength of this feature, Apple says the odds of another person being able to unlock your phone with their face is one in a million. Face ID will also work with Apple Pay, so it seems like Apple is pretty confident in the security of the tech.
As a bonus, this same facial recognition tech also allows you to create facially-tracked animated emojis, and the depth-sensing front-facing camera will let you take “Portrait Mode” photos from the front-facing camera.
Apple
The iPhone X also has a new backside camera array that includes a 12 MP sensor and lenses of two different apertures, which allows the phone to take two pictures at once and then combine them computationally to simulate effects like “Portrait Mode” that are practically possible only with much larger lenses.
Apple
The iPhone X has wireless charging using the Qi standard, and Apple claims the iPhone X will last at least two hours longer than the iPhone 7 does, though, of course, your results may vary. Apple also teased a wireless charging mat dubbed “Airpower,” which is designed to be able to wirelessly charge an iPhone, an Apple Watch, and an AirPods case all at once. A convenience (especially since we don’t know how much an Airpower pad will cost just yet), but one that could make getting ready for bed just a little bit easier. And yes, the money rumours were correct. The iPhone X starts at $1,000 for the 64GB model. You can preorder an iPhone X on October 27, and it will be available on November 3.
Apple
The iPhone 8
Apple
As expected given the leaks, Apple announced the new iPhone 8 and 8 Plus with a glass back, as well as all the other fixings you’d expect from previous iPhones, like 3D Touch. The iPhone 8 also sports a new camera with a 12 MP sensor and optical image stabilisation—which helps you control for shaky hands—on both the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone 8. Previously that feature was only on the larger phones. This year, the camera trick exclusive to the Plus is a feature called “Portrait Lighting” which uses the Plus’s dual cameras and some computational tricks to simulate different lighting effects in real time.
Apple
The iPhone 8 also sports a brand new Apple-made processor—A11 Bionic. And while you may be hard-pressed to appreciate more processing horsepower during day to day life, this chip will make it easier to apps to start implementing advanced computational features like live augmented reality.
Augmented reality is still nascent tech, but Apple appears interested in pushing it hard. A few of the apps demo-ed on stage included an app that lets you point your phone at the sky and see constellations mapped over it on your screen, and even an AR-focused multiplayer game.
Apple Watch Series 3 with Cellular
Apple
The new Series 3 Apple Watch will come with a built-in cellular connection, allowing you to stream music to Bluetooth headphones without a phone, make and take phone calls, send text messages with voice commands, and even get directions. The Series 3 Apple Watch will also be the first one that enables Siri to answer voice queries out loud. Despite packing a extra guts, the Series 3 Apple Watch is just about the same size as previous versions, thanks to an extra small integrated SIM card, and an antenna that is built into the actual screen.
Apple
The Apple Watch Series 3 will be available for pre-order on September 15th and available on September 22nd. Tim Cook mentioned on stage that Apple has secured “introductory offers” with service providers, but didn’t give any more info on how much we can expect a data connection for an Apple Watch to cost month to month. In fairness, however, that’s not Apple’s call.
Apple TV 4K
Apple
Apple has released a new generation of the Apple TV that supports both 4K resolution and High Dynamic Range. This is great news if, and only if, you have a TV that supports both these technologies, the shows you want to watch are put out in high resolution as well, and your home internet connection has the speed and capacity to handle such large files. If you fit all those categories however, the quality improvement should be pretty great. Apple is also working with studios to bring more 4K movies to iTunes, and will automatically give you a free copy of a film you purchased in HD if a 4K version is available.
The new Apple TV packs an Apple A10X processor, which gives it the same computing horsepower as an iPad Pro, which is crucial if you want to push this many pixels. The Apple TV 4K will be available for pre-order on September 15th and available on the 22nd.
From: ELLE USA
