I’ve been an avid user of Apple products ever since grade 7, when the revolutionary(at the time) iOS 7 was released. Naturally, when I heard that there was going to be a “Special Event” hosted by Apple, I was very excited, although I thought that it was probably just going to be a new iPhone with a couple small revamps to the overall phone. I was dead wrong.
That home button that has been a staple on Apple phones since the very beginning? Gone. Touch ID? Gone. Metal back panel? Now it’s glass. Hated charging cables? Now just throw your phone on a mat.
And I thought that getting rid of the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 was a big deal.
Nobody liked the extra dongle that was required to use headphones on the iPhone 7
Initially after the iPhone X reveal, I was completely shocked and excited. However, after giving it a bit more thought, I began to realize a couple potential issues with the new iPhone design, and I thought that they would be worth sharing.
1. The Lack of a Home Button
The Home Button has been on every iPhone since the very beginning, and for a very good reason. Steve Jobs himself said that through all of the applications that would have a variety of touch controls, it was important to be able to have a single button that would do the same thing reliably every single time, in order for the phone user to build trust with the phone. The home button is the manifestation of this idea. I personally can attest to the idea that the Home Button helped to ease me into using an iPhone, as if I screwed up in the application somehow, I could always press the Home Button and reopen the application. The Home Button was invented in a time when touchscreens were not widely accepted and it was important to have a physical button, and the reasoning behind why Apple got rid of it now is understandable, as touchscreens are literally everywhere. However, seeing how much significance the Home Button had in my first experiences with the iPhone, I’m not sure that new users will have that same experience. Only time will tell if this new, screen-heavy design will be embraced by the public!
2. Face ID
With Touch ID gone, Apple needed a new innovative sign-in system, and thus Face ID was born. The selfie camera takes pictures of your face, and analyzes a ton(30,000 to be precise) of invisible dots to create a computed image. When you want to sign into your phone, all you do is simply let it scan your face to let you in. It’s an amazing concept, but it also has some shortcomings. We all know that selfie cameras are not exactly known for their resolution. If this is the case for the iPhone X as well, could people with similar faces, or even people using masks, open other’s phones? Could this be a potential problem of security? Another issue could be that the person who has Face ID set may get a scar or another sort of alteration to their facial features. If and when Face ID does not let them into their phones due to this, what will they feel? Will they feel self-conscious about the change in their features, and is that really what we want? Considering that the Face ID demonstration experienced technical difficulties during the iPhone X presentation, these could all become realities very soon.
3. The Price
$1300 +. I think this is probably the biggest problem for the iPhone X. Sure, there are two hi-def cameras on the back side. Sure, the screen is big. But really? That much money? I could buy McDonald’s burgers for life using that money. Or almost 0.5% of a single share of Berkshire Hathaway. Personally, I immediately lost passion for the device after seeing the price. There’s just simply no way, with any sort of advertising, that any company can convince me to scrape over the equivalent price of almost 600 bus tickets for a single phone that’s probably going to go out of fashion in a year or two. Again, not sure about others’ perspectives, but this price probably won’t go down well for most people. We will know soon enough!
Of course, all of these have simply been my own speculations of possible challenges that the iPhone X will face. Seeing the rising stock price of Apple, we can see that the public still has a great amount of confidence in Apple’s new device. I’ll be bugging my friend to buy one so I can play around with it, and maybe I’ll write a follow-up sometime down the road once we see how the iPhone X performs!
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