iStore has announced the cash pricing for Apple’s iPhone X which officially goes on sale locally on 24 November.
As expected, X is the first mainstream handset to cost over R20 000 (Huawei’s Porsche Design Mate 10 which costs R26 999, will only be available in very limited numbers). According to iStore, the iPhone X will be available “from the starting price of R20 499 to R23 999.”
iPhone X is unlike any previous iPhone to date. It has a nearly bezel-less design, no home button and what’s being hailed as the best iPhone so far.
iPhone X has a 5.8-inch OLED display – which Apple calls Super Retina – which supports Dolby Vision and HDR10, as well as True Tone.
The most noticeable change is Face ID, which replaces Touch ID and the home button.
Face ID uses a state-of-the-art TrueDepth camera system made up of a dot projector, infrared camera and flood illuminator, and is powered by A11 Bionic to accurately map and recognise your face. These advanced depth-sensing technologies work together to securely unlock iPhone, enable Apple Pay, gain access to secure apps and many more new features.
Face ID works by projecting more than 30,000 invisible IR (infrared) dots. The IR image and dot pattern are pushed through neural networks to create a mathematical model of your face and send the data to the secure enclave to confirm a match, while adapting to physical changes in appearance over time. All saved facial information is protected by the secure enclave to keep data extremely secure, while all of the processing is done on-device and not in the cloud to protect your privacy. Face ID only unlocks iPhone X when customers look at it and is designed to prevent spoofing by photos or masks.
“iPhone X is the future of the smartphone. It is packed with incredible new technologies, like the innovative TrueDepth camera system, beautiful Super Retina display and super fast A11 Bionic chip with neural engine,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPhone X enables fluid new user experiences — from unlocking your iPhone with Face ID, to playing immersive AR games, to sharing Animoji in Messages — it is the beginning of the next ten years for iPhone.”
iPhone X also has new cameras including a new 7-megapixel TrueDepth camera that enables Face ID features wide colour capture, auto image stabilisation and precise exposure control, and brings Portrait mode to the front camera for stunning selfies with a depth-of-field effect.
iPhone X also features a redesigned dual 12-megapixel rear camera system with dual optical image stabilisation. The ƒ/1.8 aperture on the wide-angle camera joins an improved ƒ/2.4 aperture on the telephoto camera for better photos and videos. A new colour filter, deeper pixels and an improved Apple-designed image signal processor delivers advanced pixel processing, wide colour capture, faster autofocus in low light and better HDR photos. A new quad LED True Tone Flash offers twice the uniformity of light and includes Slow Sync, resulting in more uniformly lit backgrounds and foregrounds.
One of the most talked about features of iPhone X are Animoji’s.
Animoji’s are literally animated emojis. Working with A11 Bionic, the TrueDepth camera captures and analyses over 50 different facial muscle movements, then animates those expressions in a dozen different Animoji, including a panda, unicorn and robot. Available as an iMessage app pre-installed on iPhone X, customers can record and send Animoji messages with their voice that can smile, frown and more.
