Apple iPhone X: Two weeks in the life of an anxious user A top-end smartphone isn’t just for Christmas: it’s for 18 months, maybe two years, two-and-a-half at a push. So here at The Reg, we let the stardust settle around Apple's iPhone X launch before putting the product to test in the field for longer than an afternoon. Fanboi squeals written up just after you peel away the …
It seems like only five years ago that the cheapest of Nokia phones came with an instruction brick weighing the box down. That's progress.
It seems like the new Nokias still do, unless that's online only and you get a postage stamp with 'getting started' written on it in the box.
Come on...
Alistair specifically said he couldn’t find one online, even on Apples website. Guess what the first hit on google is if you search iPhone user guide.
Many people won’t need this (hence no paper wasted in the box) but it’s useful for new features (like new gestures) or new users and is certainly not hard to find online. Oh and in the box, on the fold out quick start guide, is the URL for more support so I don't think there is any more than can be done here.
I think it's a bit like the original green screen Nokias. They had a really simple UI, but partly because they didn't do that much. About the time the first iPhone came out, I had a work candybar Nokia dumbphone. It had a colour scren and all sorts of fripperies like mp3s, radio camera WAP, email But all that meant was that you had a bloody complicated menu system, that made it a truly rubbish phone. And email on a non 3G phone with no data tarrif and no WiFi is just silly anyway.
The first iPhone didn't do too much. And even when they brought out the 3, that did, there weren't many gesture controls. So it was dead easy to use, although even then there was nothing to tell you to try a long press as a sort of smartphone equivalent to right clicking a mouse.
But now iOS has loads of different gestures, and screens that swipe down from the top, up from the bottom and in from the sides. Yet still Apple think it's easy to use and intuitive. But it no longer is. I'm nnot saying it's hard or bad (like that awful Nokia), but it does now need a short explanation. A How To gestures app on the homescreen, or a thing that pops up and says try this, or a simple UI manual built in.
At least MS had the weird writing that slightly overlapped the screen on Windows Phone - as a visual clue to tell you that if you swiped right there was more stuff.
I went to www.apple.com and searched for "iPhone X user guide". The results, from the top, were...
https://www.apple.com/iphone/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/films/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/specs/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/ios/
https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-7/specs/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-8/specs/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/specs/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-x
https://www.apple.com/iphone-8/
https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/
https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/
At this point, I lost the will to live. It's all sales bumf, not a single user guide.
Mr Dabbs,
Proof yet again that there's no point going to a vendor's site and trying to find what you need, and bloody well know is there.
Search on Google, and they'll find it for you much quicker. Something everyone's long said for finding stuff in Microsoft's knowledge base when Windows is playing up. I wonder if Bing is as good at that as Google nowadays?
Last time I had a 'droid (HTC Wildfire) there was no manual at all. Google had left the Android manual to the OEMs, so it came with a basic paper booklet and there wasn't a manual for Android 2.2 anywhere. I was able to find developer documentation, so I had the info for the APIs - just not how to set up email accounts.
Alistair, how hard is it to type:
“iphone x user guide”
into google, click on the first link that it provides (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/iphone-x), scroll down to where it says “Learn more” and click on the “iPhone User Guide” link (which gets you to http://help.apple.com/iphone/11/)?
It’s even item number 3 returned if you click on Support and then search using the same phrase on the Apple web site.
Steve Todd,
How hard would it be for Apple to have a simple user guide available on the damned phone? I'm sure they only don't do it becuase they want to blather on in their marketing about how intuitive and easy to use it is.
Not that I'm saying it's hard to use. But there's a lot of totally un-intuitive gesture controls in smartphones nowadays. Those you can only learn by being taught them - and they're different for each OS.
Was this card not included in the iPhone box?
https://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iphone-x-info.pdf
It's in pretty small type but the first paragraph reads:
Phone User Guide
Review the user guide before using iPhone. Go to help.apple.com/iphone. To view the user guide on iPhone, use the Safari bookmark. Or download the user guide from the iBooks Store (where available).bRetain documentation for future reference.
Fair point. To get answers to most of the questions that you raise*, you need to download "iPhone User Guide for iOS 11.2" using the phone's iBooks app. The guide even helpfully tells you to do that on page 20. Shame that there's nothing in the box along these lines, as I'd guess that 90% of buyers never find out.
* Swipes on page 8, icons on page … 95. And that's still with 32 pages to go in Basics.
A top-end smartphone isn’t just for Christmas: it’s for 18 months, maybe two years, two-and-a-half at a push.
Seeing as I'm onto my second, second-hand S5 I appreciate the irony! Good call quality, waterproof, usable as a remote control, expandable memory, can get replacement batteries… Sounds to me like a top-end smartphone.
The description of Face ID sounds about the best I've come across thus far. But, seeing as I don't use my phone for activating anything, and would probably drop it a lot more if I did, doesn't appeal too much. Gloves with capacitative fingers are a lot cheaper!
Point is you need a fingerprint to unlock the (standard apple) device in order to use apple pay. This is generally less of a faf than FaceID, but if you have gloves on it's preferable.
FWIW android pay doesn't require unlock to pay. And nor does my contactless card. Honestly not sure why I'd bother with either instead of the card itself. Not like everywhere takes contactless anyway.
Honestly not sure why I'd bother with either instead of the card itself.
Agreed. Cheap to make and robust. Of course, the best thing to do is to get rid of the stupid barriers in the first place so you don't need to wave anything at them. This should be easy given the economics of public transport: the costs providing of the service does not correlate to the length of individual journeys…
The benefit of Apple Pay is that in many stores you're not limited to the £30 limit that contactless or Android have. The ones that I've used successfully for purchases more that £30 are Sainsbury's, Morrison's, Marks and Spencer, and, paying for a new kitchen which was not a small purchase, Magnet.
The newest phones with removable batteries I've found are the LG G5, LG V20, the Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016 edition), and the Motorola Moto G5. All getting a bit old so probably not seeing updates on Android.
Older than those there's the Note 4 and S5 which definitely aren't.
And that's it. You either go without your phone while the service centre deigns to replace the battery for half the phone's original cost or most people will throw them away after two years when the battery lasts half a day and run really slowly.
Hopefully the EU will come along and decide to put a stop to this nonsense and make non-user-replacable batteries illegal,
I've settled on an external battery case to solve this issue and haven't looked back. My phone's battery hasn't gone below 90% since adding the case and once the case's battery dies, I can hermit-crab the phone into a new one for $40 and in about 5 seconds. Additionally, the case adds a little bulk to the back and has a thin projecting lip around the front so I can set my phone down on a table without worrying about scratching anything. It also keeps the buttons/mute switch from being accidentally activated, which was a surprisingly common occurrence before.
The Galaxy S5 is a very, very good phone
As I illustrated elsewhere, I took a company S8 back in stock, tried to set it up and was truly shocked by what Samsung was attempting to give itself rights to of your personal data. I hope your S5 didn't force you to give Samsung access to your life, but I suspect you just clicked "yes/agree/ok" everywhere like Samsung hopes you will do.
Honestly, start actually reading conditions. It's worth it.
I've been an iPhone user for about five years now, but each time handset upgrade time comes up, I have chosen an iPhone model that's at least one or two "versions" behind the latest-greatest-up-to-datest. Thus, when the 6 was the newest, I chose the 5S; next time around, the latest model was the 7, but I chose the 6S.
In most cases, I just don't see the point of coughing up silly money every month, for a couple of extra features (gimmicks?), a slight speed-bump, bragging rights amongst the hipsterati at the coffee-shop, or whatever. To me, the relatively small difference in functionality just isn't worth the sizeable difference in moolah, but hey-ho.
I have about a year to go until upgrade time, so by then I'm pretty confident that the iP X will have come down quite a bit. Even if it doesn't much, then there's always the 8-series or even the 7 - I'm wondering about a 7 (or 8) Plus next time around.
So, I'd neatly sidestep the "£1000!??!" issue by waiting patiently until the X isn't "£1000!??!" any longer...
Yeah, same here. The only reason I have from wanting to drop down from the 6s+ I have at the moment is the size - I am bloody sick of carrying a TV screen around with me. If a SE2 gets announced soon I may consider that, failing that I'll stick with this as long as possible and then pick up whatever the last model that is slim(ish) and has a proper headphones socket.
I went for the Note 8 instead and it's simply excellent. Had the Note 4 previously (and thought about the X) and the current Note is a big step up. Only two small issues ... the location of the fingerprint scanner and the headphone audio volume and quality isn't the best out there .... but otherways it's a superb handset.
As far as price goes, I got the Note 8 with my 25% discount through Vodafone. They wouldn't honour discounts on the iphone 8 or X and there's no way I would shell out £60 per month plus for the extra storage when I already have a 256gb card anyway.
I know four people with the X. Two of them are bling merchants and the other two are extreme Apple fanboys. As the article says this is not a phone for "normal" people.
Another thumbs up for the note 8 here. Absolutely love it, the stylus is better than ever, screen amazing, battery life better than the old note 4 (even with a new battery) and NO NOTCH. That notch makes my OCD twitch. I can't believe that abomination popped out of such a supposedly design-focused company.
Good review. I haven't experienced the camera delay issues (incl. the flash delay) you have, but I guess everyone has a unique phone setup due to different apps & customizations. I completely agree with your point about things not being discoverable enough. I just had the same experience: yesterday I wanted to transfer something via AirDrop - which I had done a thousand times (I've never seen the fussiness you describe) on my iPhone 6. But AirDrop was gone from the control center!? Where the heck did it go? Why didn't Apple tell us? I had to query the web. Lo and behold, when you 3D Touch the connectivity area in the control panel, more icons show up, including AirDrop...WTF??? Apple should really provide some visual indicators for things that are "3D touchable" - otherwise, how the he11 do you know???
(btw, if anyone has succeeded exporting health data from an iPhone 6, let me know how - when I try emailing it (Apple creates a zip file of it), the zip file that arrives is always empty :-(
You say you were always paranoid about the expensive phone dropping - so why don't you use a case??? I assume you were going case-less because you complained about the camera protruding on the back and because you use wireless charging, which can be fussy with cases. Folks who use cases (or, in my case, a stick-on wallet) don't have that issue - or have come to terms with it since this protrusion business started 3+ years ago. Personally, I use the aforementioned stick-on wallet plus Itomic's Edge protectors. This way I still mostly get the 'feel' of a naked phone, but also some really good drop protection. I'm not a member of the Rolex crowd either and plan on keeping this phone for a good number of years - as I have my iPhone 6. I paid full price for 2 iPhone X (the other being my wife's) - and after using it for a couple months now, I think it was the best investment I've made in awhile. For folks who want to keep their phones in their front jeans pocket, maximize their content/reading surface, and still mostly use it one-handed, there's no better phone.
The original review is decent, as are your comments on it, though I can't get over the paranoia in the review itself. Jeez, get a screen protector and a case. Mine were ordered before I even collected the phone. I've now had mine since release and can say in use it's really, really nice. I do agree with the slight weirdness of the pay interaction (Face ID + double press on power button), but it doesn't bother me too much.
However, the point about how 'Apple should really provide some visual indicators for things that are "3D touchable' is bang on. For app icons, all it would need is a small corner overlay. In other places its much easier and intuitive (link in Safari), but it's certainly true that some UI indicator would be useful where it's not obvious that 3D Touch is available
Nice report. I've got an Android phone and an iPad Pro (just so i can enjoy the wonders of IOS).
My BIG gripe is sharing data files across apps. I want to load videos onto it so I can watch them on a plane. There's issue no.1 - how to do it without using the godawful iTunes. Issue 2 is that I would like to use VLC as my player. Nope - have to use the apple video player.
Then, there's my music. And the wonderful iCloud - and all the other stuff that keeps all my data isolated.
If there was an Android tablet as fast as the iPad Pro, I would have changed by now. But it is actually nice and useable as a tablet as long as you can accept the foibles.
Give iMazing a try. Not as horrible as iTunes, but not (anything like) free either. They've got a guide.
Alternatively, copy files to iCloud drive on Mac or PC (supposing you have enough iCloud space for them), then, in iPad Files app, select files once they've downloaded and use Copy to VLC action. That done, you can delete them from iCloud drive. All in all, about as bad as using iTunes …
Thanks all - streaming doesn't work on aeroplanes (unless you pay loads).
And jumping through hoops is what I have had to do to make it work. But it would have been nice if there was a place which was "public" rather than all these separate "private" places. How hard can it be?
I have a 200GB USB stick that includes its own wifi for up to 5 devices to stream files from it. Obvious business uses but also great as an in-car entertainment option without having to load up phones (apart from their video player app which is on the USB stick anyway).
Nah. As well as my trusy (18 year old) Rolex I'll also stick with my 6S thanks. Dropping £1k on a phone does seem a tad... expensive/excessive. Plus aside from being slightly bigger/zippier I can't think of any good reasons to go to an X, or even an 8 right now.
I'm tempted by an iPhone 8, but may wait until models with rear-facing 3D sensors appear to take advantage of the SoC's features, rumoured to on the next gen of iPhones. Qualcomm are pushing active IR 3D scanning for the Android set too, so if an OEM puts in a phone with a very good camera I'll get it.
Til then, very tempted by OnePlus 5T, shame the camera is only average and there's no waterproofing - but these concessions take a couple of hundred quid off the sticker!
Incredible price, fixed battery, fixed storage. No thanks, Mostly the same with tha Samsung Note 8.
I still have my old Note 4 which a superb phone with a nice big sd card, just replaced the battery for under ten quid. No thoughts of upgrading for these new mega price monoliths, might look at some of those Chinese models though.
STOP right there. Almost every company, especially ONLINE (even when European based sales) are trying to claim you have ONE year. They offer to sell extended warranties.
SOGA, all of EU, inc UK and many other countries by law, you have TWO years MINIMUM.
Batteries need to be user or cheaply locally replaceable as they are essentially a consumable and if heavily cycled may not last two years. There needs to be a MINIMUM duration specified for 50% capacity. That's a lack in current consumer law.
SOGA was updated/replaced in the UK by the Consumer Rights Act in 2015.
Timing is tricky. I'm not sure your blanket '2 years minimum' is stricty accurate. It's an EU directive and doesn't overrule SOGA/CRA. It depends on what has happened, when, and where the burden of proof lies, the vendor or purchaser. The time limit can be reduced to not less than a year if agreed between seller and purchaser (most likely there in the small print) Plenty of reading online about it.
Issues under a year are usually straightforward, over a year less so with a normal maximim limit in the UK of 6 years.
"If a fault develops after the first six months, the burden is on you to prove that the product was faulty at the time of delivery."
There's the kicker. Have as long as you like, but prove it....
Yes, a lot of warranties are overpriced, high margin, upsells and usually barely worth the paper they are printed on.
Knowing your law & rights, along with plentiful patience and perseverance, is better value. It's saved me a few bob.
I've wondered for a while why no one has brought a challenge against phone makers for non replaceable batteries.
Satisfactory quality. I reasonably expect a higher value item to last longer than a cheap one. I don't think it is unreasonable for my expensive mobe to last me for 3-4 years. My S6 is 2 years old and no noticeable performance issues, barring a dying battery. I'd expect it to last a couple more years. In which case either the battery has to do the same, or should be easily replaceable.
No cure, no fee, anyone? It's got to beat ambulance chasing.
Yes it's got a bezel.
It's also stupid with the notch and curved corners. Pure style ignoring function. It took TV and monitor screen makers nearly 60 years to be able to have the rectangular image go close to the edge of the actual display (Plasma and Mono LCD first).
Now Apple purely for style (watching too much Holywood SF) spoils the display. We are not Cardassians (I never understood why they had those weird displays on DS9).
The price is mental. BT ear is lower quality tech than universal compatible analogue 3.5mm jack. It adds an extra pair of codecs and then lower quality analogue from digital than is possible inside the phone. It's saving 30c and allowing sale of expensive buds that have to be charged.
The increasing trend to remove SD card slots and smaller SIMs is stupid. My watch takes a micro SD and a larger SIM.
It's a phone designed purely on appearance rather than function.
A guy crashed his Porsche, and was standing there weeping, "My Porsche... my Porsche..."
Somebody came along and said, "You're a materialistic jerk. You're standing there weeping over your stupid car, and you've not even noticed that one of your arms is torn clean off."
The Porsche crasher wailed, "Ahhhh Noooo!!! My Rolex... my Rolex..."
Were that it has a massive "bezel", no matter how you look at it. ;)
That a fingerprint scanner could have been put literally anywhere, like all the other handsets have!
That it is entirely a design choice for the "notch". As other brands have put a single top or bottom bar for camera etc. OR they could use the extra real estate for extras, instead of removing the normal full width notification, they could keep it, then put extra info in the "notches". So removing it entirely is a design choice, not an engineering limitation (Likewise they could do full screen with side and/or top bars for playback, instead they choose full screen with notches cut out of your video. Pure insanity if you ask me!).
To be fair, if you want to find something on Microsoft’s site, you don’t to Microsoft.com you go to Google. That’s pretty much true for anything...
The camera “bump” is irrelevant. The first thing you do (if you’re not an idiot) with a $1000+ phone is put on a screen protector and put it in a drop proof, water proof, nuke proof case.
That said, I’m not sure why anyone would buy a $1000 phone... maybe if you had a really small penis.
I’m shocked how many people presumably do... even women. There must be something in the water..
"for the Rolex wearers" - spot on my friend! Both require you to pay much more than something is actually worth to get a product that is good but not nearly as good as it's reputation and can be beat by less expensive competitors. In other words, people who care more about appearance than practicality.
I say this having recently switched to an iPhone 7 myself (US carrier had a buy-one-get-one promotion) and I am thoroughly unimpressed. I finally joined the cult to get a device where all apps are available & full featured, plus it works with everything I want to integrate it with. This is much more due to the popularity of the phone than it is to any design or feature advantage. I'll keep using mine until it dies, gets dropped or stolen. No interest in the X, even at half the price.
Tangential : When I first worked down the road the RCJ had just been sand-blasted from top to toe and were a gleaming light cream colour. And when I say "gleaming" I mean ray-bans were required on a sunny day. In old(er) British movies which take in that end of Fleet Street and the Aldwych you could see the walls went from grey at the top to matt black at the bottom, so the sand-blasting was a very effective facelift. Presumably the first time ever.
London smog and pea-soupers are a thing of the past - yes? It looks like the RCJ could do with a spring-clean, but still pretty good after 40 years. Oh alright 40+.
Its good to get reviews by people just slightly annoyed with the people who make the thing. Its left me more interested in getting one (or at least one of the next versions of a ‘home buttonless iPhone”).
With regards to moving pictures onto a laptop, you don’t need to enable Photostream (which should be killed as its pointless and confuses people with duplicated. For me the photos go to iCloud pretty quickly (within an hour?). Maybe historic photos were still trickling down to the phone over the first couple of days.
With this:
“I’m warming to the lack of a Home button. I now think it’s a triumph of smartphone interface design in iOS 11.
It means there is one fewer physical moving part to go wrong on the iPhone X. The Home button on my old iPhone 5 regularly used to need cleaning to remove fluff getting underneath the contacts.”
The last couple of iPhones have not had a physical home button anyway. Its quite strange when the clicky button iPhone 7 disappears when its switched off.
"A Rolex wristwatch can cost a lot more than an iPhone X, for example, and all it does is show the time."
"A top-end smartphone isn’t just for Christmas: it’s for 18 months, maybe two years, two-and-a-half at a push".
I've had the same Rolex since about 1980. It still tells the time -- and pretty accurately.
A top-end smartphone isn’t just for Christmas: it’s for 18 months, maybe two years, two-and-a-half at a push.
Do most people replace them this frequently?
I get for some it's a fashion statement, and the latest is important (to them), but for people who buy a phone to use, do they really replace it this frequently?
I bought an 8+ last September when they came out, having been an iPhone user for 7 years. It's my 3rd; and I fully expect it to last me 3 to 4 years. (I only replace the last one as I didn't use a case and repeated drops had finally made the screen a little cracked. Still works though, and still in daily use). The previous one replace only when software updates stopped. This should mean I'll have a total of 3 phones in 10 years. Surely that's more common?
Other than my friend who always has the latest and greatest (iPhone X now), my other iPhone owning friends all have 5s's and 6's. Do these 18monthers really exist? (Or is it just a London thing??)
In the end it is just an expensive phone that doesn't do anything special, it's just different, expensive, different, expensive and different.
It does a couple of complicated software tricks that everybody else will have in 6 months time.
Meanwhile world + dog buy cheap £150-200 phones which are little less than pocket super-computers.
Just to put it in perspective - one you would change in a few years and the other is an amazing experience. It really is a nuts price for a phone isn't it? (And I say this as someone who always buys a mac for the house and has had some overpriced howlers like the LC475 and PowerPC 4400).
Regarding keeping gloves on at tube and train gates and when getting on busses: I give you the simple wonder that is the contactless card. Or, for a bit of extra slinky technological wrist-motion pizzaz, a cheap older iPhone and a first-gen Apple Watch which, both together, would still cost way less than an X — press button on side of watch with gloved digit, then waft wrist (with watch) in direction of the reader pad.
Regarding getting photos off an iPhone: PhotoSync all the way. [Just a humble user, not associated].
Whilst the watch may cost more it is at least reasonably durable and unlikely to fail within ten year years of use. Additionally after ten years the rolex would still be worth selling where the apple would just go in the bin
For $K I would want a product that came with a guarantied service life of atleast five years and then a signifcantly reduced upgrade price on the product that replaces it. If Apple want me to support them then I expect the same in return and given the price the support should have been automatic and hassle free.
As things stand the chance of having to shell out enough to buy an equivilent product within what should be a reasonable lifetime for a mobile phone make this an obvious guillible tax on their loyal customers.
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