When it was made available for pre-order it sold out in minutes. This year Apple took a different approach to its distribution of iPhone X review units, giving one of the original iPhone reviewers, Steven Levy at Wired, a phone for a week before anyone else. Then Apple followed up with a slow drip of fashion videos and lifestyle magazine reviews, before selected technology sites were allowed to publish their thoughts.
The Guardian’s review of the iPhone X will be available in the next two weeks, once it has been bought and thoroughly tested. In the meantime, here’s the consensus from those who have had early access. Levy’s first impression of the big new feature of Face ID, Pretty much. It seems reliable at fending off intruders. I have thrust my phone into several people’s faces - though considerably fewer than the million punims that Apple says I’d have to try before a false positive - and it has not fallen for any of them.
I even offered up my own head shot to the camera: no go. How it has dealt with my own real-life face is another matter. There have been times when, despite a clear view of my face, the iPhone X has ghosted me. Apple tells me that perhaps I wasn’t making what the iPhone X considers eye contact. I wouldn’t want it to turn on every time my face was within camera range, would I, Eventually I devised a strategy.
When waking my iPhone I think of it as De Niro’s mirror in Taxi Driver. You talkin’ to me, Well, I’m the only one here! I then see if the little lock icon on the screen has released its latch. Size-wise, the iPhone X is smaller than you’d probably expect.
Now Apple’s decided to cleave away the unnecessary body around the display, it appears slightly smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus but slightly larger than the iPhone 8, and looks more modern for it. It feels more compact in the hand than the Plus models, but that glass front and back lends it a certain heft - making it feel sturdy rather than slippery. Face ID’s accuracy is truly impressive.
While you need to look at it squarely (it wouldn’t unlock when I held it up at an angle to the sides of my face), it’s swift and reliable, and I couldn’t trick it with a photograph of me. It had no problem recognising me with and without contact lenses and while wearing glasses, but struggled to recognise me wearing polarised sunglasses.
Apple’s Craig Federighi has previously said Face ID should work with most sunglasses, but that some may sport coatings which block infrared light. It was able to unlock it while wearing two less opaque pairs of sunglasses, but it refused point-blank to unlock when I was wearing the polarised pair. Is this a big deal, Not really. Living in the UK, I wear sunglasses far less often than my actual glasses, and it’s not exactly a hardship to take them off or simply to tap in my PIN.
It would be a far larger issue if it failed to register my contact lenses, for example, because the fact I wear them daily would effectively rule out Face ID as an option for me. Face ID is not perfect, but it’s very, very good. It works in low light, and even in pitch darkness (although, to be fair, the screen lights up when you lift the phone or tap it, so this casts some light on you).
It works with glasses on, glasses off, contact lenses, even with some sunglasses, though not mine, it turns out. Is it 100% reliable, No, but it’s pretty close. The only times it didn’t recognise me were when it was lying flat on the table and I was leaning in too close.
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