[Closed] iPhone X

I'm just struggling to understand why anyone would pay that much for a phone

True. But I wonder what people would be prepared to pay for a phone, games console, pretty capable and decent camera, a pretty decent camcorder, a wireless music and media player, a portable computer, a multi functional GPS navigation device, a device that can control multiple devices in your home from anywhere in the world, and Amazon Dot/Echo type of device etc. etc. etc. I could go on if I invested more time. But if you go out and buy a individual devices that can do all of that for under £1000 then you'll have a very good point. In fact this phone does all of this for only a few hundred pounds more than a Miele washing machine.

OK so you might say "all i want is a phone". Well that's like someone looking at buying a Ferrari and saying to the salesman salesman "all I want is something to do the weekly shop in and go to work in"......then you don't want a Ferrari then, you want a Ford Focus. It's OK not to want an iPhone or even a smartphone for that matter. People won't judge you.

So how much would an acceptable price be for such a device? Bearing in mind people seem to forget, or be ignorant of the fact that these things are high tech devices. This technology didn't exist only a few years ago. This technology has to be developed. That takes years and millions if not billions of pounds of investment to develop the tech and brings these products to market. That millions or billions of pounds of investment has to be paid back....with interest, over only a handful of years as these products only have a life span on a few years before they are obsolete.

And.. assuming there is a,lightning port, have to assume you can still use normal headphones with the adapter...

The adaptor is in the box IIRC from a quick look at the Apple website last night.

RE the sideways card reader: the garage nearest my house and the one nearest my work both have sideways contactless. It exists. It's real. I didn't make it up to diss the iPhone.

However, Simon_g has blown my mind with the idea that I can pre-authenticate.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PIXEL-Phone-Google-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp/B01M8KJ0XC
How does 540 quid with free delivery sound?
https://www.carphonewarehouse.com/google/pixel-xl.html#!colour=black&capacity=32GB&dealType=sf

I admire Mike's commitment to the cause.

I don't quite understand posting links to a, soon to be superceded, Android flagship phone on an iPhone thread. But I applaud the consistency.

Yeah I know, rumour has it coming in 40-50 quid more for the new one, launching soon so it's very comparable
It was answering this particular comment

So how much would an acceptable price be for such a device? Bearing in mind people seem to forget, or be ignorant of the fact that these things are high tech devices.

Jamie 🙂

iPhoneX you can still enter a passcode, when Phil (?) did the live demo the first X didn't recognise him and passcode screen came up so he went to a second phone. Same as TouchID you don't have to use it.

Lightning port is standard one as per now. The X does not come with a wireless charging pad they are extra $40 or so

As for price and value that's up to individuals, I'd rather have an 8 for £700 than an X for a £1000. I'd rather have an X than spend £1000 on a pair of Fox Forks, seems to me the phone does a lot more for my money

I’m a big Apple fan boy but there is no way the iPhone x has an edge to edge screen. Have they not seen the Samsung Galaxy Edge! The problem with android phones is they are just so awful to use. They certainly have some great features and had had tech for years that Apple is now just getting but I find the combined experience not very good. However I am bored of the Apple tech and the loss is the good days when companies came out with distinctive designs that used different materials. Everything now just seems the same. I don’t think £1000 is really that bad when I take into account how much I use my phone day in day out. I generally keep my phone for 2 years so that works out £1.30 a day.

Is it overpriced compared to the competition, for sure. But than again so is Santa Cruz compared to a Canyon.

It does amaze me that one of the richest and largest companies in the world brings tech to the market years after others and aesthetically at least has so few options.

It's not whether an iPhone is worth £1000, it's whether it's worth several hundred pounds more than something else. I had a work iPhone 6. It was fine, but not worth the extra compered to my own phone. In my view.

Simple point is how much does a device with all this functionality cost? Answer less than the apple ones If my facebook feed and this thread are anything to go by sales will be down, plenty of people not going ot drop that sort of cash and will seriously start looking around.

Not sure the Apple competition is cheap enough to be a significant threat, and Apple can afford to weather the storm for some time. Apple have the bases covered. The X, the premium product for those who do want to stick a couple up at the Jones' and have the cash or access to credit to have one. The 8 for those early adapters and Apple enthusiasts and big corporations (the company I work for has jumped ship to Apple and buys tens of thousands of the things every year)and still the cheaper 7, 6s and SE for those (the majority) who don't have the readies. After all the SE 6s are hardly crap phones and perfectly capable for the vast majority of us. I've just sorted my daughter out with her 'first smartphone' (seems to be a rite of passage these days) and went in assuming there was no way she'd be walking out with an Apple phone...maybe an SE, but she ended up with a 6s, they were virtually giving them away.

A lot of the stuff like edge to edge screens that the competition try to differentiate themselves with are not really important - who gives a stuff if you have 1mm of an edge around the screen?! and shows the competition are running out of ideas.

Sales may very well be down, and the X wont be Apples best seller (is not intended to be - its their premium and more discerning product), but sales are slowing anyway for all manufacturers not just Apple, but it's Apple who have more hard cash in the bank than pretty much any country in the world.

sales will be down, plenty of people not going ot drop that sort of cash

They will buy an 8 then for £700 or one of the other cheaper Apple models. The X is pitched as their (ultra?) premium phone

Overall sales have been down across the board, CarPhoneWarehouse noted that on a recent profit warning. People are keeping their phones longer, you can see this on this thread.

Thanks for clearing up the lightning port stuff..

Sure more intimate details will be coming through the next few days, I'm looking forward to hearing/reading about them.

I'm pretty much decided on buying an 8 now, since it's pretty much "still normal in an everyday use" way.

Now, what colour ? Gold again ??

[i]I'd rather have an X[/i]

Minor point, but it's "a X" not "an X". It begins with T 😉

It's pretty inspired thinking though isn't it. Sell a fancy phone for mega bucks and then sort of the same thing with a screen that goes right to the edges for a bit more.

TBH I hadn't put 2+2 together, the gimmicky facial recognition thing isn't a added thing, it replaces the finger print reader because there's no button, I'm out - no way I'm doing the selfie pose to unlock the thing (I use the reader constantly).

FaceID UX comments …
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/face-id-on-the-iphone-x-is-probably-going-to-suck/?amp=1
Fingerprint will be back on halo devices, just as soon as they can combine it with the chinless format of big screen small footprint phones.

$350 for the SE seems like pretty good value though.

Theres only been two big leaps in phone tech

1) Mass market cellular phones Nokia etc.
2) Touchscreens and Apps from the first Iphone.

There wasnt any yesterday only the watch comes close.

If Steve Jobs was at the helm that watch would have been sold as a standalone device with good battery life and voice recognition for functions not easily done on a small device,

Lots of folk could then bin off the phone and just have a watch and iPad, Imac set up.

Apple has the same problem as the rest of them, lack of imagination and a business that makes too much money from shifting little boxes.

$350 for the SE seems like pretty good value though.

Is the new watch the only Smar****ch on the market which has cellular functionality?
RM.

$350 for the SE seems like pretty good value though.

As mentioned earlier I picked up a mint 64GB SE on eBay for £195.
I imagine they will be even cheaper on there now (or very soon).

If Steve Jobs was at the helm that watch would have been sold as a standalone device with good battery life and voice recognition for functions not easily done on a small device,

But the trouble is, none of that is easily done on a small device!

Most smartphones only just make it through the day and they have massive batteries compared to a watch. If you start adding stuff like "Hey Siri" always-on voice recognition plus GPS and 3G cellular radio to a watch then the battery won't last past lunchtime.

Like a lot of technology the thing that is really holding us back is a massive improvement in battery technology and/or power efficiency.

Is the new watch the only Smar****ch on the market which has cellular functionality?

I think there is an LG or perhaps Samsung that have cellular.

Guy at work got one. It's massive. Works the same way as the new Apple Watch I think (e.g. no SIM number sync over LTE).

Face recognition. It's going to be great on a cold day in a cold country when you have a scarf over your face. Or when you have sunnnies or normal glasses on. Windows Hello doesn't recognise me in my specs, which isn't personally a problem since I rarely wear them but could be a ballache for some. And of course it's aimed at desktop usage where scarves and sunglasses shouldn't be an issue.

FaceID UX comments …

I will admit I have not tried Face ID yet,

I have an iPhone 6s and after everything I have read I really can't see a reason to upgrade – I was hoping for something game-changing but all we have is an iterative development and a design that really doesn't inspire. And the little black panel jutting out at the top of the screen (housing the mic etc) – that would annoy the hell out of me when looking at things full screen (ie, watching a movie) – it just gets in the way.

My business partner has a 7Plus (S?) whatever the latest one was before last night's announcement and he is creaming himself at the thought of getting the top of the range Ten / X / 10 simply because it is the latest model.

Face recognition. It's going to be great on a cold day in a cold country when you have a scarf over your face. Or when you have sunnnies or normal glasses on.

It [i]should[/i] cope with normal glasses just fine, sunnies maybe not.

Scarf.. well it depends how good the IR camera is and how thick your scarf is.

I wonder if it works with burqas and niqabs?

[i]Or when you have sunnnies or normal glasses on.[/i]

Surely this would all be part of the setup. I mean, it's not going to recognise your face out of the box (phone out of the box, not face) - you'd have to set it up to recognise you, like what you do with the fingerprint thing now.

There were some more legitimate concerns in the US around it being used to bypass your rights and unlocking the device by the police/immigration without your consent or a few blokes worried their partner would unlock it when they were asleep...

FaceID UX comments …

There were some more [s]legitimate[/s] concerns

I wonder if it works with burqas and niqabs?

Stupid idea.

You moved from "bullshit" to "may have a point" quite quickly there.
The tech will work (or if there are issues, will be sorted fast) but the adaption to and adoption of the UX will be interesting to watch. Strange that they added fingerprint rec to the new MacBook Pros, rather than this tech, because the FaceID interaction would be far more expected/necessary there.

There were some more legitimate concerns in the US around it being used to bypass your rights and unlocking the device by the police/immigration without your consent or a few blokes worried their partner would unlock it when they were asleep...

I think you need to have your eyes open, which makes sunglasses a bit of an issue unless the infra red can see behind them.

If Steve Jobs was at the helm that watch would have been sold as a standalone device with good battery life and voice recognition for functions not easily done on a small device,

Nah, Jobs was a marketing genius not a magican, what Apple miss since he left is a bit of their prowess when it comes to selling a limitation as a benefit.

Maybe he could have reversed the wireless charging on the phone so you could charge your watch from your phone and you'd have the Apple Faithful sat on the train with their phone on their wrist feeling smug because it was game changing thinking.

Do people not realise you can authenticate ahead of time for an Apple Pay transaction? Double-tap on the home button, give it your thumb and the text turns into "Hold near reader to pay" and you just wave it over the reader like any contactless card.

This is more revolutionary to me then the new phones!

More days have gone past since my last post re my recent upgrade from a 6 to the 7, I really miss the headphone jack. I picked up some knock off 3.5 to lightening cables which worked for all of 2 songs before they were not recognised... on the plus side, I do really like the 3D touch to get to shortcuts in apps without opening them.

if they (or you) had actually watched the presentation you'd be aware it's harder for that to happen than with fingerprint recognition as you have to be both awake (eyes open) and looking at the screen.

The points in the linked article were actually decent though. My nexus is unlocked by the time it's picked up, for payments it's done in a second - no "selfie pose" required, basically they have done away with a really quick and rapid unlock and replaced it with a slower more awkward option or told you to go back to a pass code. You might call that innovation but it doesn't seem like it. I await the line of people at the self serve checkout staring into their phones before paying - or go back to plan b of tape your bank card to the back of the phone 😉

Sunglasses… does the dot projector use non-visible light?
Remember, this uses proper 3D face rec, not just image based stuff that others rushed to market.

There were some more legitimate concerns in the US around it being used to bypass your rights and unlocking the device by the police/immigration without your consent

Same issue with fingerprint TouchID I think. As I understand it if you are under criminal investigation then the police can't force you to enter your passcode for your phone, but they [i]can[/i] take your fingerprints.

Talking about the facial recognition with my [identical] twin daughters earlier. They pointed out that they could probably open each others phone
Stupid idea.

Well no. Assuming that it isn't smart enough to spot the difference between identical twins (it might well be) then the stupid part would be deciding to activate facial recognition when you know you have an evil identical twin.

[i]You moved from "bullshit" to "may have a point" quite quickly there.[/i]

Yeah, but "bullshit" wasn't referring specifically to the [i]UX comments[/i], was it.

I'm a simple man.

Just give me a SE sized iPhone, the guts of a 7 with an edge to edge screen and a bit thicker to allow for a bigger battery.

Oh, and leave the headphone jack.

I can wait till September 2018.

@sharkbait they discussed this yesterday, basically said twins (those with close genetic relationship I think they said) could open each others phones

As above you don't have to turn it on. I still open my 6 and iPad with pin 80% (?) of the time

Yeah I'd probably buy that Jamie. Especially if they made it waterproof too.

@Jamie agreed I would prefer a thicker phone with a bigger battery. Without a case the 6 is too thin imo

I'm with you Jamie, except the headphone jack… more battery and completely sealed instead please.

more battery

You know the whole wireless charging thing..

Presumably that means that now, instead of carrying round a little powerbank or USB cable to charge your phone up when going away for the weekend, you are now going to have to carry round a F-off big wireless charging pad in your bag?

Optional Ninfan, no need to stress.

the stupid part would be deciding to activate facial recognition when you know you have an evil identical twin.

As above you don't have to turn it on