Apple iPhone X long-term review

Introduction

"The future of the smartphone" they said when announcing the iPhone X alongside the expected iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus last September. There is no denying that the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are excellent phones, but their all too familiar form factors ensured they were overshadowed by the new look being flaunted by the iPhone X. "An iPhone that is all display." in the words of Jony Ive, Chief Design Officer at Apple. Now, that's way more impressive.

The iPhone X - you've all seen it by now and you've all wondered whether it's worth your hard-earned cash.

We covered this and more in detail during our original iPhone X review alongside our usual plethora of tests. But what would the iPhone X be like to live with on a day to day or, indeed given how often we interact with our phones, an hour to hour basis? Would it be a case of simply learning to adjust and re-program our muscle memory or would it be such a fundamental change that things would never be the same again for better or for worse?

Rest assured, we'll try and answer those as well as any other questions you may have about the iPhone X. For example, what's the real-world performance from its A11 Bionically enhanced brains? What new goodness do this year's cameras bring? Plus, in another iPhone first how about that wireless charging?

Three of us have been using the iPhone X's as our daily drivers, so we'll cover these questions and more in this long-term review.

Build quality

The iPhone X clothes its backside in glass, which was last seen on the iconic iPhone 4, with the two halves being almost coherently married together by a band of surgical-grade stainless steel.

It retains enough iPhone DNA to be identifiable as part of the iPhone family and on the whole is manufactured to Apple's usual high standard. We all liked the heavy premium feel that you get when you hold the device. And this sort of feel doesn't wear off with use.

One notable exception though is where the glass back meets the aforementioned stainless steel band, at the point where the two surfaces meet, the tolerance isn't 'tight' enough. On one of our iPhone X's, it appears that 'glue' is starting to extrude out of the gap, in truth this could also be dirt that is captured in this area. Another of our iPhone X's, even when cased, is starting to gather dirt and dust in this area.

Even more distracting is that you can feel this seam in the day to day use (without a case on) and this is detracting from the high-quality fit and finish elsewhere. We've witnessed this on our iPhone 8 Plus, but somehow it seems less pronounced, maybe the narrower width results in it being held slightly differently.

To better illustrate this, we grabbed the microscope that we use in our in-depth reviews to show you the phone panels and magnified the seam. While we were at it, we looked for micro-abrasions, of which there were a few too.

We're happy to report that these are really micro abrasions and they are not visible to the naked eye. All in all, it seems that the glass back should prove more scratch resistant than the iPhone 7s Jet Black finish.

We appreciate the grip that the back glass gives us.

What we don't appreciate is that it's an absolute pig to keep clean regardless of the phone's color and it's always proudly showing off the oils from our hands and fingers with its smudges and fingerprints. One of us resorted to using a thin case purely for that reason alone.

Sticking to the subject of cases, the iPhone X the most expensive iPhone by some margin to repair if you use Apple servicing so perhaps slapping a case on is a great idea. At the time of writing, a Screen repair costs about $280/€320/£285 with Other damage costing $550/€610/£555 - ouch! AppleCare is more necessary than ever.

On a positive note we did have a couple of unfortunate and entirely random drop tets between us and the phones survived without any visible form of damage so that's a good sign.

If you have a case on the phone you also get rid of another annoyance - the wobble when the iPhone X is placed on a flat surface. The over-and-under shotgun arrangement of the primary camera system seems to make it even worse than it is on other iPhones.

On the plus side, this arrangement ensures that we're less likely to cover the lens when holding the iPhone X in landscape mode.

Our final gripe with the design of the devices is that by removing the Home button, Apple has gotten rid of another visual and tactile identifier that helps you orientate your phone when pull it out of your pocket or bag to use it.

Display

The iPhone X is the first iPhone to sport an AMOLED display and it looks gorgeous. The high max brightness and the low reflectivity means none of us has an issue reading what's on screen regardless of the ambient light.

Not to mention that color accuracy is amazing - right up there with the best of them.

And we're happy to say that here there are no signs of the screen issues, which have been plaguing the Google Pixel 2 XL. We didn't notice any image 'retention' or 'burn-in.'

The nature of the beast does mean though that you see some shift in color and hue when viewing the screen off angle but it's nothing as bad as the Pixel 2 XL.

One thing you might not expect based on the screen specs is that thanks to the unusual aspect ratio, the curved edges, and the notch above the screen - there is less screen real estate than you might expect. The iPhone X, in fact, falls in between the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus in this regard.

When used in Portrait mode the extra height afforded by the display is welcome with Apple adapting iOS accordingly to utilize the taller screen. We're still being caught out though by Apple's default keyboard. It has been moved up to avoid the Home indicator but they've left the Emoji/Keyboard selector key behind which results in many miss-typed messages.

                                   
iPhone 8 Plus keyboard layout • iPhone X keyboard layout

The majority of the apps we use have now been updated to cater for the iPhone X display, but when we come across one that hasn't, it looks odd as the screen is padded with black bars. These are proving to be the exception as opposed to the rule though so we wouldn't count this against it.

Performance is stellar

To steal a phrase from the late Steve Jobs, the iPhone X is a 'screamer'. The synthetic benchmark tests that we originally ran bear this out.

So how does this manifest itself in real-world performance? Everything felt smooth, well - as smooth as iOS 11 allows.

When we put the iPhone X against our iPhone 7 plus in the day to day tasks, it turned out there is not much of a noticeable difference. Yes, the iPhone X boots faster but after that the devices are almost neck and neck. The iPhone X edges it when launching apps, launching the camera, multi-tasking, and gameplay but the difference between the two isn't as pronounced as the difference in benchmark scores would suggest.

It's behind the scenes where all that extra 'oomph' is utilized. Apple's new faster GPU is more efficient, matching the A10 Fusion GPU using only half the energy. Additionally, the A11 Bionic features a new Neural Engine employed by the Image Signal Processor (ISP) which means the iPhone X is the most capable phone yet when it comes to handling image and video capture and processing. Studio Lighting, which we'll come to shortly, can only be viewed in real-time on the iPhone X thanks to the A11. But this also holds true for the iPhone 8/8 Plus so you can see our point that performance is definitely where the iPhone X stands out. The other iPhones are equally good.

Battery Life

Speaking of, "Good enough" is probably how we'd all describe the battery life we've been getting out of these phones. On average it would get us through the day on a single charge just fine. Where we have seen excessive battery drain, it's been as a result of the occasional rogue app.

Granted, one of us has to charge several times a day at weekends when he's gaming, but that's expected.

What leaves a sour taste though is that we expected slightly more out of the iPhone X's 2,716mAh battery. Why? Because the iPhone 8 Plus gives us an gets excellent two-day battery life with the same innards and software and it has a marginally smaller battery at that (2,691mAh).

The reduced battery life of the iPhone X over the iPhone 8 Plus could be down to a multitude of reasons - it has more pixels to push around, what inefficiencies lay in the layered battery introduced in the iPhone X, or is it Face IDs constant scanning? Or perhaps it's the UI color of the OS (a 'dark theme' can, in theory, reduce the power consumed by the AMOLED screen). Well, we can only guess.

Wireless charging

Wireless charging has been long overdue on iPhones and with the 2017 generation, Apple has finally adopted it. It's the reason why these iPhones all have glass backs and we can guess next year's iPhone's will be all glass too. We're glad Apple has adopted the Qi wireless charging standard instead of inventing one of their own.

We also finally got fast charging capability but making use of it isn't exactly straight forward because it reauires the purchase of an expensive and bulky USB-C MacBook charger. Given the price, it's very ungenerous of Apple not to include a fast charger with the iPhone X - a shame indeed.

To add insult to injury, charging the iPhone X either wired or wirelessly, via the included 5W charger is excruciating slow. Testing bears this out achieving around 40% after an hours charge - this is a 2700mAh we're talking about. It's fine for charging overnight but don't expect a solid top up when you're in the coffee shop.

Initially restricted to 5W wireless charging, Apple enabled up to 7.5W charging in the subsequent iOS 11.2 software update (the Qi standard supports up to 15W of charging). Charging via 7.5W wireless in the same test tops the iPhone X up to 46% - an improvement but hardly earth-shattering.

We charge our iPad via Apple's 12W iPad charger and using this will take your iPhone X to 72% charge in that same hour. That's much better but remember - it's an extra purchase, too.

If it's max juice in the shortest time you're after then you'll need to invest in a USB-C charger and USB-C to Lightning cable. This combination will give you more than a 'splash and dash' and will top your tank up to 79% in that same hour.

Given these figures, and what you'd pay for the bulky USB-C charger and cable, we'd recommend using the Apple 12W charger for fast wired charging and a 7.5W wireless 'pad' for the convenience of wireless charging.

A slight downside to the wireless charging implementation with the iPhones is they can be somewhat temperamental that you take care to put them on the correct spot on the charger and not an inch further. The issue is exasperated further if you have a thicker than usual wallet style case.

It would be nice, especially given the power-sipping AMOLED display if iOS 11 showed its charging status on screen.

Main Camera

The iPhone X packs a dual-12MP (wide+telephoto) camera setup, the wide-angle sensor sits behind a f/1.8 lens while the telephoto has been updated with optical stabilization and new wider f/2.4 lens. When combined with the new image processor assisted by the A11 Bionic chip and the iPhone X takes excellent pictures in daytime or low-light.

Shown below are some shots that we took during our travels with the iPhone X main camera demonstrating its capabilities in both full daylight and low-light conditions.

        
iPhone X main camera samples

Overall, the camera treated us nicely and we could always rely on it to take great shots. Our only disappointment - the flash output is weaker than the iPhone 8 Plus resulting in overall poorer flash photos.

Studio Lighting

Just as last year when Apple introduced 'bokeh' Portrait mode effect to the public in 'beta' they continued the trend this year, by introducing a 'beta' called Portrait Lighting which is non-destructive tonal correction which works straight in the camera's viewfinder. Not unique to iPhone X but also supported by the iPhone 8.

As you'll see in the examples below, we still feel the 'beta' tag is well deserved. These examples were shot in low light at 5:00 in the afternoon so you'll see there is more noise than expected. The first picture is Portrait Bokeh which is ok given the overcast lighting conditions and it's doing exactly what it says on the tin and while you can see the differences in Studio and Contour lighting - we can't help but feel that the skin becomes over-exposed and detracts from the subject. Of course this subjective and down to personal taste but we hardly found any use for the first two light effects at this point exactly for this reason.

Where things start to come unstuck are the last two effects which are supposed to separate the subject from whateevr 's around. It's failing miserably with our subject's unruly hair with lots of it being excluded in the separated image and a general smoothing of the hair overall. Edge detection algorithms often struggle with finer details including hair and undoubtedly the low light didn't help.

     
Portrait - Natural Light • Portrait - Studio Light • Portrait - Contour Light • Portrait - Stage Light • Portrait - Stage Light Mono

Selfie camera

While now capable of 'bokeh' effects in its portrait mode, the front-facing camera is probably the weakest link in the iPhone X camera setup taking 'ok' pictures but certainly not the best we've seen.

Overall, the iPhone X has an excellent primary camera system and is up there with the best of them. We'll just not count the selfie cam in this discussion.

If you're interested in checking out camera samples from the iPhone X, make sure to go through the assortment found in our full review, additionally check out our photo comparison tool to judge for yourselves - in this link you can compare the iPhone X, Samsung Note 8 and Google Pixel 2 XL.

Oh, as for Animojis - they are a great technology demo utilizing the TrueDepth camera, and we'll leave it at that.

The 'Notch'

Cyclops eye, or the 'notch' as it's now known, still divides opinion around here. For some of us, it's faded into the background while for others, it's a constant irritant that we never quite got used to.

The biggest bugbear results from the reduced status bar area created by the 'notch' - we can't believe we've come this far into smartphone evolution that we have to swipe across the screen just to see the precise battery percentage. We would like to see iOS 12 making this whole area configurable - but that's not the Apple way.

Face ID

Turning our attention (pun intended) to Face ID and our experiences don't paint a good picture. For two of our team, to be blunt - they would happily revert back to using just Touch ID if they had a chance and only one would settle to have the system on board as long as it's coupled with a fingerprint sensor as a backup.

The reality is that Face ID didn't meet our expectations on many occassions. For what should have been a transparent technology (just there and working without you thinking about it) it requires way too much effort onb the user's part - which was never the case for Touch ID.

We've encountered a wide range of issues with Face ID, including forcing yourself to look at the phone - which depends on the placement of the phone means you have to pick the phone up or taking it out of the car dock.

Additional niggles include Face ID not working when the phone is held in landscape mode, or often refusing to recognize our faces while walking in the dark and an overall general sluggishness.

We would stop short of calling Face ID unreliable, it works most of the time, but it is slow and requires effort. Pity that such a fast computing device is slowed down because of the unlock method, especially considering how often we unlock our phones on an hourly basis.

One of the team was getting frustrated that notification content that appears on the lock screen is kept secret until you look at the phone and Face ID identifies you. You can configure this within Settings, but it isn't obvious straight off the bat. For this and other tips see our iPhone X tips & hints.

On other occasions, when relying on raise to wake to activate the screen, the screen doesn't wake up quickly enough, so you decide to push the power button, but just as you do, the screen wakes up, and the result - your pressing of the power button turns it off instead. Total disaster. Happens more often than we thought.

Gestures

The removal of the Home button means that you need to use a new set of gestures losing some of the intuitiveness in the process. The simple process of killing an app can now take 2-3 attempts.

The Home indicator also causes issues in some apps. In Pokemon Go, the fundamental task of flicking the ball can cause the app to close as you hit the Home indicator and swipe up accidentally, its easily done.

The Home gesture also causes problems when rotating the phone into landscape mode, the Home gesture also remains accessible when swiping from the side that was once the bottom. With the gesture staying active for around 7 extra seconds after you turn the phone to the side, this caused us to close the app just by attempting to swipe through content such as photos, for example.

iOS 11

iOS 11 probably had one of the rockiest starts of any iOS release in recent memory, with issues ranging from bugs to some questionable design decisions. We don't intend to cover them all here, but one of us has constant problems with the reliability of his iPhone X, which is suffering from multiple occurrences of freezing with some of them only resolvable by performing a forced reset. This phone has had iOS reinstalled so it could be a hardware issue and will probably require a visit to the Apple store.

Another example how the lack of a home button has changed the UI for the worse on the iPhone X is app downloads. Authenticating for app downloads is different now that there is no fingerprint reader. To have FaceID authenticate you upon a download, you have to double-click the phone's side Power button. For us, around 20%-30% of these attempted double clicks actually were misinterpreted and the screen went off instead. And that's extremely annoying when you are trying to download an app.

But to end this section on a high note, the sheer choice of high-quality apps found in the Apple AppStore is what's keeping our three editors firmly on the iPhone train and none of them has actually considered changing their iPhone X for another device despite all the niggles listed here. It seems, after all, that for them the phone's Pros outweigh the Cons. All three of them, however, acknowledge this phone may not be a universal recommendation so you better know well what you are getting into when buying one so hence the reason behind this article. Check out what our verdict is on the next page of this review.

Conclusion

Living with the iPhone X on a day-to-day basis hasn't been the smooth sailing we expected. There is a lot to like about the iPhone X. That glorious AMOLED screen, the bang on trend bezel-less form factor, the primary camera system that produces pictures that rarely disappoint and the performance from the A11 Bionic processor is class leading.

And there isn't any major issue with the iPhone X, which we can single out as the source of complaint. It's minor niggles and annoyances with Face ID and those new gestures which leave the iPhone X feeling like work in progress - promising but still rough around the edges.

When it comes to price, Apple often leads the way, which is a polite way of saying that their products don't come cheap. And in the case of the iPhone X, we bought the most expensive phone on the market so we didn't quite expect any disappointment in the user experience.

It's ten years ago virtually to the day that Apple first announced the MacBook Air - a revolutionary design direction for their laptops. That first MacBook Air was expensive and was weak in a few key areas, but over time it evolved into a class-leading machine (now since left behind by Apple). The iPhone X feels a lot like that product, the first in the next generation of phones from Apple signaling the direction that they're moving in.

Unless you specifically want the all-new form factor and its AMOLED screen with its taller aspect ratio, it would be remiss of us to recommend an iPhone X over the similarly specified iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus. We wouldn't blame you for wanting Apples latest and greatest, but we'd strongly recommend trying to spend some time with the iPhone X to experience for yourself Face ID and those new gestures in action. If they work for you, then you're going in with your eyes open (Face ID pun not intended), and you won't be disappointed because it's still a high-end Apple product and the amazing app ecosystem would help you make the best out of it.