Apple
unveiled iPhone X, its first premium-tier phone, at an event in
Cupertino, Calif., on Tuesday. Here’s what else the company had to say.
•
iPhone X is priced at $999, the most expensive ever for a new iPhone
model. It will ship on Nov. 3. (Pro tip: The X is pronounced 10, and not
“ex.”)
•
The phone has a newer screen technology known as OLED, a type of
display that can be made thinner, lighter and brighter with better color
accuracy and contrast than its predecessor, LCD.
•
The screen on the X has a so-called edge-to-edge display that takes up
the entire face by eliminating the borders around the screen. Apple also
eliminated the physical home button that has been a signature feature
of the iPhone for a decade.
• iPhone 8 is also here, as well as its bigger sibling, the iPhone 8 Plus. The models include a glass body and a faster chip.
•
Apple TV, the company’s set-top box that has never been a blockbuster
hit, got an upgrade. The device will now be able to stream so-called 4K
resolution, which refers to screens with two times the vertical
resolution and twice the horizontal resolution of older high-definition
TVs.
•
Apple took the wraps off a new Apple Watch. Called Apple Watch Series
3, it has cellular capabilities. There’s also a new Watch OS.
iPhone X Pushes Apple Into New Territory on Price
With
the $999 iPhone X, Apple moved to a new premium level of pricing. The
smartphone will cost $300 more than the iPhone 8 and $200 more than the
iPhone 8 Plus.
While
that will be too expensive for many people, the company said it saw the
iPhone X defining a new era for the smartphone, much like the original
iPhone did 10 years ago. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said
the device would “set the path for the next decade.” That’s because
Apple will likely build on some of the iPhone X’s most notable features,
including infrared facial recognition, wireless battery charging and
sophisticated camera effects.
Consumer
reaction to the new phone will have a big impact on the company’s
revenue and stock price. Right now, analysts are betting on a slow
uptake of the top-end phone, both because of production delays and the
high price. But if it turns out to be an unexpected hit, like the iPhone
6 Plus and 7 Plus, the company’s sales — and stock price — could surge.
Wall
Street wasn’t immediately dazzled by Apple’s presentation, however,
with the stock price down more than 1 percent by the end of the event.
— Vindu Goel
The iPhone X’s design takes glass to the outer edges.
The
iPhone X is the first redesigned iPhone in three years, and Apple says
it is the blueprint for “the future of the smartphone.” Many of the
design details had leaked to the press before today’s unveiling — we’d
heard that it would have a new display that stretched across much more
of the phone’s front, and that it would do away with the trademark home
button.
Much
of that turned out to be true. The iPhone X is essentially the same
size and overall shape as the iPhone 7, but because the screen occupies
all of the front of the phone, it is far larger than that of older
models. The screen uses a technology new for Apple (which many
competitors already use), called OLED. It produces better image quality
than Apple’s older LCD screens.
What
we didn’t quite know was how Apple would integrate the new button-free
design with the operating system — how would you navigate the phone
without a physical button?
It’s
quite simple: You swipe. To go home, swipe up from the bottom of the
screen. To see other apps, swipe up from the bottom and pause — now you
see the multitasking pane. And to unlock your phone, you look at it. The
iPhone X eliminates Apple’s Touch ID, and replaces it with a
facial-recognition system that Apple calls Face ID.
Whether
people will adjust to the button-free system remains to be seen. For
better or worse, Apple has used essentially the same interface for the
iPhone for the last decade. Swiping is easy, but it isn’t as easy as
hitting a button, and it may throw some people off at first. The
learning curve will be interesting to watch.
— Farhad Manjoo
The iPhone X introduces infrared face scanning.
The brand-new feature in the iPhone X that has never existed on any other iPhone is infrared face scanning.
The
technology, called Face ID, uses an infrared camera system on the front
of the phone to scan the contours and shape of a person’s head to
unlock the phone and authorize mobile payments. The technology works by
spraying an object with infrared dots to gather information about the
depth of an object based on the size and the contortion of the dots. The
imaging system can then stitch the patterns into a detailed 3-D image
of your face to determine if you are indeed the owner of your smartphone
before unlocking it.
For
Apple, Face ID has been years in the making. In 2013, the iPhone maker
acquired PrimeSense, a company that developed sensors for Microsoft’s
Kinect, a camera system that scanned people’s bodies so people could
play Xbox games using body movements.
Face
ID is a direct response to the face-recognition feature in smartphones
offered by Samsung, Apple’s fiercest rival. Experts have criticized
Samsung’s face-recognition feature, which could be tricked by holding a
photo of the smartphone owner’s face in front of the camera.
— Brian X. Chen
Source: nytimes.com
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