The iPhone's biggest ever design change

The basic pitch for the iPhone X is this: Take the iPhone 8 Plus ($600 at Cricket Wireless) and cram all of its features into a body that's closer to the size of the iPhone 8 ($500 at Cricket Wireless). Add Face ID but subtract the Touch ID home button, a casualty of the new, nearly all-screen design. That's the iPhone X.

To be clear, except for that home button -- and Touch ID -- all of the other iPhone 8 Plus features are here, including a blazing fast six-core A11 Bionic processor, water-resistance and -- unfortunately -- no headphone jack. The iPhone X also boasts dual rear cameras which are even a bit better than the already superb ones on the Plus. (More on that later.) Wireless charging is on board too, as is the glass-backed design needed to enable it. Yes, you'll need a good case. And you should strongly consider Apple Care Plus, because repair costs for smashed front or rear glass on the iPhone X 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Face ID and that depth-sensing front camera

Back to that notch. In addition to the a microphone (for ambient noise), speaker and ambient light sensor you'd find on other phones, it houses an infrared camera, "flood illuminator" and a dot projector and the 7-megapixel selfie camera. Collectively, Apple calls these imaging portions the "TrueDepth camera system."

TrueDepth enables the iPhone X's signature feature: Face ID. It's like a mini Microsoft Kinect -- yes, Apple bought the company that developed that Xbox accessory back in 2013 -- using your face as the authenticator to unlock the phone and for any transactions or passwords. It totally replaces Touch ID -- Apple's fingerprint reader.is nowhere to be found on iPhone X. Logging into the iPhone X  with your face feels weird at first, but I've come to love how automatically it fills in username and password data on apps and Web pages. It's starting to feel like a far more automatic future. 

Face ID was the biggest "what if" for the iPhone X, but the good news is that it performs very well. It recognized me with my beard and without, with glasses and without, with sunglasses and even in total darkness. (The infrared camera is doing the heavy lifting, not the selfie camera.) It didn't unlock for anyone else I tried it with, either.