The iPhone X? Meh.

If you own an iPhone X or plan to get one, please don’t take my words to heart. This is just my opinion and it really doesn’t matter what I think, it matters what you think.

I finally got to see an iPhone X on display at the local Source store but they keep their Apple products locked to the panel so I can only use the screen, I couldn’t hold it in my hand. Here are my thoughts on the mere two minutes I spent with it.

I have to say I was not overwhelmed by it. Using it was a non-issue because I know enough about the X that I was able to navigate it like I’d had one for weeks. The notch? Admittedly far less intrusive than I expected, and yes, it is very easy to get used to that. I couldn’t try FaceID but I suspect it would work well as advertised.

I changed the wallpaper to match the one I’m using which is currently the purple, cloudy looking live wallpaper, and I also made sure True Tone was on and the brightness was set the same so I could get a good comparison between the two. The X’s whites were slightly whiter on the OLED screen but the colours themselves didn’t seem to jump out at me as much as I thought they would. Both screens displayed very well. I looked through the videos album in Photos to see what might be stored in this display unit, but I couldn’t rotate the device to watch it in landscape mode so I didn’t put too much time into that.

The photos looked great as expected and it’s always entertaining to see what other customers come up with in these display units when they try the front-facing camera. I didn’t bother trying a selfie with the TrueDepth Camera, I’ve done the selfie thing with my 8 Plus’s rear camera and pretty much know how it would turn out.

The bottom line for me is, and as nice as the iPhone X is, I’m glad I went with the 8 Plus because, for the difference in price, the extra features available in the X don’t do enough for me to draw me in. It would be nice to have the latest, new design but I’ve heard rumblings about FaceID getting hacked or fooled, however I don’t put a lot into things like that because they’re too inconclusive.

I’ve been on the “s” cycle of iPhone since my first one, the 4s, and this is an upgrade year for me. The 8 could have been labelled as the “7s” but I think the all glass design change was great enough to warrant the new monicker. Plus I think it will be the final iteration of the design we’ve seen since the introduction of the 6. The iPhone X style is what we’ll see next year and beyond until the next design change happens. The new designs are tempting when they come out but I like to wait for a year for the improvements. That being said, I might be in a pickle in two years if Apple decides to introduce a new design because the X in new now.