The Review of iPhone X

It’s safe to say that the iPhone X has been the most-talked about tech product of 2017. The anticipation for the tenth anniversary iPhone started last year, well before the usual time for the iPhone rumour mill to start whirring. While the launch itself may have been without too many surprises - thanks to the generous number of leaks, the biggest from Apple itself - that didn’t stop the iPhone X from grabbing everyone’s attention, not least because it made Rs. 1 lakh phones a reality.

The iPhone has never been about specifications, and that’s never been more true than with the iPhone X, which shares most of its internals with the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, but is nothing like any other iPhone - new or old - in terms of design or how you interact with it on an everyday basis. With Face ID and a UI paradigm reimagined without the Home button, Apple says the iPhone X is “the future of the smartphone”.

The first time we saw the iPhone X from the back, it reminded us of older iPhone models, specifically the pronounced rounded corners and general ‘chunkiness’ of the iPhone 3GS. No, the iPhone X is nowhere near as thick as the iPhone 3GS - thankfully - but at 174g, it’s a fair bit heavier than any iPhone model to date that hasn’t carried the ‘Plus’ moniker. If you are moving from an iPhone 7 or earlier ‘regular’ sized model to the iPhone X, you will certainly notice the additional weight.

The glass back is a huge fingerprint magnet, and, again, just like the other two new iPhone models, the iPhone X is prone to sliding off surfaces that are even slightly slippery or have even a bit of an incline. Be sure to protect your ‘precious’ in some sort of a case, or you could end up with a repair bill that rivals the GDP of a small nation. The dual rear cameras on the iPhone X are laid out vertically, as opposed to horizontally on the Plus-sized models. We found the mute button on the iPhone X to be stiffer than expected, requiring more force than usual to toggle on two different units that we tested.