Video | Apple iPhone X review – a top-notch phone spoiled by top notch
Apple’s 10th anniversary phone drops the fingerprint sensor in favour of the TrueDepth system that recognises your face and can put your features onto ‘animojis’. However, the sensors take a chunk out of the bezel-free screen
From the moment Apple chief executive Tim Cook introduced the iPhone X in September, until my testing of the device, I, like many others, was certain that the most cutting edge feature on the most anticipated tech product of the past few years was its edge-to-edge OLED display.
But after a week of use, I’ve realised that is not the case – in fact, the display is a bit overrated; the single most impressive thing about the iPhone X is that it turns me into an animated piece of poop.
Design and hardware
That ability to transform users into a pile of faeces is possible due to the row of sensors at the top of the iPhone X, which include an infrared depth camera and a projector that shines 30,000 invisible dots onto your face.
Together they form a 3D map of your face, which gives the smartphone the ability to project your facial expressions onto emojis (now known as animojis), one of which is the poop. (You can also, of course become a talking horse or cat, but where’s the fun in that?)
This tech is part of what Apple calls “TrueDepth” camera, and it’s the true innovation of the iPhone X. It’s what allowed Apple to remove its trusty fingerprint sensor in favour of facial recognition; and let an iPhone shoot selfies in “Portrait” (aka bokeh) mode for the first time.