This iPhone X Feature Makes it Worth $1,000

You’re driving in the car, come to a red light and decide to check e-mail. You double click the home button to open the mail app, delete a few emails and then look up after you hear the horn of the car behind you to see a green light. As you place the phone back in its holder, you begin to accelerate through the intersection.

Suddenly, you remember, you want to open the GPS app as you pass the intersection and proceed to the entrance ramp of the highway or freeway. You think about hard pressing the left of the screen and swiping to another app but you realize the phone holder is not so secure. Instead, you press the home button and then look on the screen for the GPS app and press it.

All of this takes time and attention and the eye of the driver leaves the road for longer than it should.

Thankfully the scenario above will soon only be seen in the rear-view mirror.

The new iPhone X allows users to simply slide left or right on the line at the bottom of the screen to get to other apps which are running. All previous apps are on the left of whatever application is currently open.

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It may seem like a minor improvement but it is really life-changing if you are constantly switching between apps like mail, Safari, Slack, Quora, Facebook and others.

This, we believe is the killer feature of the iPhone X, making it worth it’s price.

Things we don’t like are the swipe from the bottom which replaces some of the home button functions. Let us clarify. These gestures are quite intuitive – they allow you to get back to the home screen and get to the app switcher. What makes it annoying is if you have a case on the phone, it is an unnatural feeling to swipe from the case to the bottom of the phone.

The battery is said to last longer than previous devices but our real-world testing over eight hours using Waze, email and other basic functions left us shopping for a battery case. The phone does charge quickly with a 12W charger so that is a positive. We didn’t have a 29W charger handy to test its fast-charging ability.

Face ID worked 9 or 9.5 times out of ten. Unfortunately this means 1 out of 20 tries in a car won’t work, causing the user to have to type in a password.

Apple is an absolute master at making phones the right size and weight so even though we prefer a thicker phone with a larger battery, we do believe Apple knows better than we do – at least on this issue.

The screen is big – luxurious for an iOS phone but to date we haven’t been blown away by its clarity – we haven’t noticed much of a difference between it and previous Apple phones. We were surprised this was the case.

The speed of the phone is amazing. Speech recognition is more accurate than previous phones and far faster – especially when comparing to a 6S Plus.

The volume has increased as well. We can now hear the phone more clearly from the shower – although we confess just one of us were in there at a time. smiley-wink

Animoji is well – stupid. We are way too old to understand why this is a feature a phone needs but then again, we never thought convincing people to get into the car of a stranger was a multi-billion dollar idea.

We continue to give Apple a tremendous amount of credit. We feel Facebook and Google are monopolies. Apple is not. There are many more powerful phones on the market with better screens and functions but Apple can charge more than double the average phone price for similar components.

Sure, Face ID is a giant leap forward in usability – surprisingly good albeit less secure than Touch ID in our opinion. Otherwise, the iPhone hasn’t evolved that much.

Having said that, the iPhone X is the best iPhone by far. There are numerous touches throughout the iOS unique to this phone which will boost your productivity. It’s all evolutionary but together – somehow it becomes revolutionary.

You also – surprisingly will get used to the absence of a home button after about a day.

Yes, $1,000 is a lot to spend on a phone but it is only a few hundred dollars more than an iPhone 8 Plus and is a far better device. It fits nicely in the hand and will let the user be more efficient at whatever it is they are doing – from watching videos to proofreading contracts.

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