Great balanced review of the X, at last. Apple should be sued for telling is 5.8 is larger than 5.5. The only thing missing on the 8+ is the stabilized telephoto. Bummer.
I don't get the joke. Isn't 5.8" (the X screen) bigger than 5.5" (the 8-plus screen)?
iPhone 8 Plus: 5.5" from corner to corner 3.07 by 6.24 inches 19.157 square inches
iPhone X: 5.8" from corner to corner 2.79 by 5.65 inches 15.764 square inches (also, don't forget the notch)
iPhone 8: 4.7" from corner to corner 2.65 by 5.45 inches 14.44 square inches
In terms of square inches, iPhone X's screen is much more comparable to the 4.7" iPhone 8.
Don't forget that the iPhone X suffers from a longer aspect ratio. And since most video content is in 16:9, you'll be seeing even less of the screen being used unless it crops in and cuts the top and bottom off.
Thanks (really). Having said that I don't believe you'll see anywhere that Apple describes the X as having a bigger screen than the 8 Plus. That is, Apple doesn't say '5.8" is bigger than 5.5".'
Personally I've never wanted a phone as big as the Plus, so the relevant comparison is the screen of the 8 and the X.
redgeminipa said: Yeah... I've been using the X since launch day, and what you're saying is NOT how it performs.
You are quite right and I stand corrected. My sincere apologies to everyone! The behavior I described was seen with the first .2 beta and the bug apparently got fixed by beta 2... at least I am not presently able to reproduce it, whereas it was reproducible (for me) in the past. Again, my apologies.
Since it’s only the OCD crowd that constantly feel the need to kill apps because they read some blog that told them they have to, Apple decided it was okay to move it because it’s only needed when an app becomes unresponsive.
I don't know what world you live in but I have to force quit a misbehaving app at least several times a week and sometimes several times a day. Just to order the darn iPhone X I had to force quit the Apple Store app a bunch of times to get it to stop saying try back later from 3:00AM to 3:20AM. Yesterday I was trying to set up an IOT device where you have to connect to its internal WiFI network and then it switches to your regular wifi. Sadly the app developer never coded for the device failing to connect to the WiFi (open network but it probably failed because the device has much worse antennas than the iPhone). The only way out of the setup wizard was a force quit. Then there is the Apple News app that just sometimes decide not to update its content and requires a force quit (to be fair this seems better in IOS 11.1).
Moving up a metalevel to discuss the larger topic. Because the swipe has replaced a button, the iPhone X's touch interface does not operate in the symmetric ways we are accustomed to. Normally one can swipe to the left and then to the right, or up and then down, and the state will end up being identical to the previous one. Changing this breaks the direct interaction model that has existed in IOS since version 1.0. It also bifurcates the IOS interaction models. Even if one ignores that swiping up is now context sensitive which perhaps with more use will become just something you assume, going between an iPad and iPhone X will always cause significant cognitive workload because the interface behaves differently in subtle ways that require you to remember the limitations of the hardware that IOS 11.1 is running on. Admittedly hardware based interaction differences was also an issue for the year when the phone had touch ID but the iPad did not; however, because the passcode was still sometimes required even with TouchID it was it was actually much less of a difference.
To be clear I love my iPhone X and think it is as groundbreaking in its own way as the original iPhone was. That does not excuse breaking the interface paradigm that for any action the opposite action should revert the first action. That paradigm wasn't invented out of nothing but comes from how the real world works.
I still believe that most of the issues relate to how people have trained themselves to hold their phones one-handed and two handed. There’s too much focus on having critical interactions at both the top and bottom of the screen. They need to unify them to all occur at the top or at the bottom of the screen, and provide users the options to switch them as desired.
Why do queries for anything exist at the tippy top of the screen when it could exist above the keyboard? Or why is the keyboard at the bottom of the screen, when it could be located at the top and content beneath it?
Shifting between these would radically change how we hold our phones of all sizes, and would improve the UX as a whole.
Do you have an X? What about the notch in actual usage is problematic for you?
Ownership of an iPhone X is not so relevant. One can still dislike the Notch for aesthetic reasons. One can dislike the notch because it cuts into full screen videos. But more importantly, Max who owns the iPhone X, dislikes the Notch as he said in the video.
Technological reasons why couldn’t be done aside, the fact is you and I and Max and everybody else here would be more aesthetically pleased with a display that spans the entire length and width of the front of the iPhone without a Notch more than the current design which has a Notch. If we’re honest, none of us are going to say “I think the notch looks better than a display without the notch.“
Thanks for the review. I especially appreciate the transcription! I almost never bother with video articles (on ANY site) so it was really nice to have a choice!
It was also refreshing to find out about how some of the feature/design trade-offs affected the reviewer's opinion of the device. When presented in context, both positive and negative impressions are helpful. They help me decide whether a feature/design choice will affect me or if my circumstances are different enough that either I won't have the same experience or it looks like something I can live with.
My only criticism is that I don't know who put all the effort into sharing this helpful information because the byline doesn't say.
Very good evaluation! But what you think about next software updates? Maybe we don’t need wait for next generation of iPhone X once we will had a lot of features with next iOS versions. Including better usage of fullscreen option. Jonny Ive had been talking about that during an interview last week.
Comments
Thanks (really). Having said that I don't believe you'll see anywhere that Apple describes the X as having a bigger screen than the 8 Plus. That is, Apple doesn't say '5.8" is bigger than 5.5".'
Personally I've never wanted a phone as big as the Plus, so the relevant comparison is the screen of the 8 and the X.
Again, my apologies.
Moving up a metalevel to discuss the larger topic. Because the swipe has replaced a button, the iPhone X's touch interface does not operate in the symmetric ways we are accustomed to. Normally one can swipe to the left and then to the right, or up and then down, and the state will end up being identical to the previous one. Changing this breaks the direct interaction model that has existed in IOS since version 1.0. It also bifurcates the IOS interaction models. Even if one ignores that swiping up is now context sensitive which perhaps with more use will become just something you assume, going between an iPad and iPhone X will always cause significant cognitive workload because the interface behaves differently in subtle ways that require you to remember the limitations of the hardware that IOS 11.1 is running on. Admittedly hardware based interaction differences was also an issue for the year when the phone had touch ID but the iPad did not; however, because the passcode was still sometimes required even with TouchID it was it was actually much less of a difference.
To be clear I love my iPhone X and think it is as groundbreaking in its own way as the original iPhone was. That does not excuse breaking the interface paradigm that for any action the opposite action should revert the first action. That paradigm wasn't invented out of nothing but comes from how the real world works.
Why do queries for anything exist at the tippy top of the screen when it could exist above the keyboard? Or why is the keyboard at the bottom of the screen, when it could be located at the top and content beneath it?
Shifting between these would radically change how we hold our phones of all sizes, and would improve the UX as a whole.
The measurements are for the whole body not the screen - which means the bezels on the 8/8+ are taking up some of that area.
iPhone 8 Plus screen:
5.5" from corner to corner
~2.7 by 4.8 inches
~12.96 square inches
iPhone X screen:
5.8" from corner to corner
~2.43 by 5.27 inches
~12.81 square inches (minus notch)
iPhone 8 screen:
4.7" from corner to corner
~2.3 by 4.1 inches
~9.43 square inches
Technological reasons why couldn’t be done aside, the fact is you and I and Max and everybody else here would be more aesthetically pleased with a display that spans the entire length and width of the front of the iPhone without a Notch more than the current design which has a Notch. If we’re honest, none of us are going to say “I think the notch looks better than a display without the notch.“
It was also refreshing to find out about how some of the feature/design trade-offs affected the reviewer's opinion of the device. When presented in context, both positive and negative impressions are helpful. They help me decide whether a feature/design choice will affect me or if my circumstances are different enough that either I won't have the same experience or it looks like something I can live with.
My only criticism is that I don't know who put all the effort into sharing this helpful information because the byline doesn't say.
Regarding transcripts: while they may not go up the minute a video does, we do generally get them up.