The Apple Discussion Thread

[Jr Mouse]

iPhone X reviews are coming in. Some sites had less then 24 hours with their review units and as such are framing their articles as initial impressions, rather then full reviews. Reading the article on the Verge, some things jumped out at me.

Viewing angles for Face ID seem pretty limited. In fact it almost sounds like the fear that you would have to hold it to your face as if taking a selfie might not be that far from the truth.

In my early tests, Face ID worked well indoors: sitting at my desk, standing in our video studio, and waiting in line to get coffee. You have to look at it head-on, though: if it’s sitting on your desk you have to pick up the phone and look at it, which is a little annoying if you’re used to just putting your finger on the Touch ID sensor to check a notification.

You also can’t be too casual about it: I had a lot of problems pulling the iPhone X out of my pocket and having it fail to unlock until Apple clarified that Face ID works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimeters away from your face, or about 10 to 20 inches. That’s closer than I usually hold my phone when I pull it out of my pocket to check something, which means I had to actively think about holding the iPhone X closer to my face than every other phone I’ve ever used. “You’re holding it wrong” is a joke until it isn’t, and you can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong.

Now contrast that with the promotional video Apple showed at the keynote that has lead a lot of people to believe Face ID has fairly wide angles and can be activated naturally even when your phone is laying on your table.

The Verge staff also had issues getting Face ID to consistently work in sunlight and under florescent lights.

Face ID works great in the dark, because the IR projector is basically a flashlight, and flashlights are easy to see in the dark. But go outside in bright sunlight, which contains a lot of infrared light, or under crappy florescent lights, which interfere with IR, and Face ID starts to get a little inconsistent.

I took a walk outside our NYC office in bright sunlight, and Face ID definitely had issues recognizing my face consistently while I was moving until I went into shade or brought the phone much closer to my face than usual. I also went to the deli across the street, which has a wide variety of lights inside, including a bunch of overhead florescent strips, and Face ID also got significantly more inconsistent.

I don't know. Maybe these are just growing pains with generation tech or something Apple will be able to tweak via software updates, but in comparison to Touch ID it doesn't sound ideal.

The full article is worth reading. It seems like it will be some time before developers are able to get their apps properly coded for the screen and many of them are currently broken on the X. Full screen video playback doesn't seem all that great either. You get to choose from having the notch block part of the image or a much smaller video surrounded by a large black border. This is something that was known, but I don't think people expected the black bordering to be this bad.

There's a lot of positive mixed in there. It's not all bad and I still kind of want one down the line. Yet you do get the impression that the X isn't as polished as it could have been. Or should be for a phone that costs $1000.

 

[jcman311]

I think one of the things I'm hopeful for is that the Face id issues can be solved with software updates. Its not like a fingerprint button that doesnt work or an extra dongle to buy. If enough people make a stink, it will improve or be gone.

 

[jcman311]

Yet you do get the impression that the X isn't as polished as it could have been.

Yes, but it is something over the same damn form factor for the last 4 years. This is what apple is supposed to do. Not sit in the status quo like they have been.

 

[Jr Mouse]

Yes, but it is something over the same damn form factor for the last 4 years. This is what apple is supposed to do. Not sit in the status quo like they have been.

I agree! But I also dislike they fact that they finally decided to break that mold with a phone that costs $1000.

It used to be that you could walk into an Apple store and spend $650 knowing you were getting Apple's best phone. Now you have to spend one grand. It's an issue and I think a large part of why I think these problems some reviewers are noting really stand out. When you are asked to spend $350 more on a product then you ever used to, your expectations are a lot higher that they get things right.

 

[jcman311]

I dont know, a few hours in and this thing is sweet. Responsive and faceid works every time. The wife even was looking at the form factor and holds it up towards me and unlocks the phone. Hmm, I guess this isnt good for those hiding texts, pics, etc. The oled display is awesome. Setting up the phone, the intro screens looked like a white piece of paper with printed text.

 

[MarketTarget]

I'm liking it as well. Face ID has been unerringly good and works better at variations of distance and angle than I expected after reading early impressions. Already prefer it to the fingerprint sensor. I was also expecting to miss the home button but don't. The gesture replacements are easy to get grooved in on, with the exception of activating Reachability which seems overly sensitive to where on the screen it is performed.

The screen is top notch. Love that they didn't go the oversaturated direction, it just looks good.

 

[HRoi]

Good god these video emojis are hilarious

 

[hopkins_student]

I'm annoyed. I bought my 7 on the upgrade plan. My dad has since changed our family plan to a business plan (don't hate for me still being on a plan with my dad). Phones on the business plan aren't eligible for upgrade via the upgrade plan. Not sure where to go from here at this point. I guess buy a new one outright and sell my phone that's on the upgrade plan. Anyone have other thoughts?

 

[ethanm]

Buying unlocked phones outright and then selling after upgrading is the way to go.

The iPhone X has caused me to leave Apple. Have an s8 on the way. That notch and side bezels are unforgivable.

 

[otc]

No pixel 2?

 

[ethanm]

No pixel 2?

Pixel 2 is lame looking and the XL is too big for my tastes in addition to the price and host of problems it's having.

I'm rocking an iPhone 6 with a battery degraded to 900 mah and the call speaker is so low I can only hear phone calls in total silence. Looking forward to this upgrade and lifestyle change. Which, speaking of, is really painless EXCEPT when it comes to photos. iCloud photo syncing between devices is ridiculously good and the Photos desktop app really is superb.

 

[otc]

Pixels sync everything to unlimited google photos storage

But I also have dropbox set to auto-upload all photos. It dumps them into a folder that is monitored by Lightroom. Everytime I open lightroom, it removes all of the photos in the dropbox folder (so I don't use up all of my space) and puts them in my library.

I'm sure there are other workflow options, ans some may be better (maybe lightroom could pull the photos directly from Google), but I've been using dropbox forever so just kept doing it with this phone.

 

[ethanm]

There are lots of ways but they all have a dead end. What I would want is an app that lets me edit in Photos on my Macbook and have it update the cloud and my phone and the same if I edit on my phone. Why Google doesn't make a desktop app for Google Photos is beyond me but I'll deal.

 

[suited]

I'm liking it as well. Face ID has been unerringly good and works better at variations of distance and angle than I expected after reading early impressions. Already prefer it to the fingerprint sensor.

But you can't unlock the phone when it's sitting flat on a table, or unlock it discretely under a table. I do both of those frequently throughout the day. If they figure out a way to make a small section of the screen a fingerprint sensor, I'd be all over it.

 

[ethanm]