COMMENT: NRL Player Nobbled By iPhone X, It Has To Happen

As Apple brags that their new iPhone X is their “biggest leap forward” it is when it comes to price and we all know that Apple likes to price gouge with the new top end iPhone set to retail for over $1,800 in Australia.

• Apple chief Tim Cook in pointing out that the iPhone X is really the iPhone 10 leaves one wondering whether there  will actually be an iPhone 9? and whether the elimination of a fingerprint scanner in favour of facial recognition will actually work.

It now appears that the new Apple Face ID is an over-engineered fix that Apple designers were forced to include because they couldn’t integrate a fingerprint scanner into the screen.

The iPhone X is pretty much a complete redesign of the iPhone. It ditches the iconic home button in favour of a screen that takes up the entire front of the phone, in the biggest change to Apple’s handset to date.

Out goes the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, in comes “Face ID”, Apple calls it an advanced form of facial recognition that uses an overhauled front camera system to wake and unlock the phone when you look at it.

What the iPhone X has done is make the new iPhone 8 look inferior especially when one looks at the maturity of the technology in the Samsung S8, the Nokia 8 and the HTC U11 all devices that are significantly cheaper have richer specifications than the iPhone 8 offering.

As for the elimination of the fingerprint sensor for a facial scanner raises questions as to what will happen if one is wearing a Burka or wanting to discreetly access one’s phone in a restaurant or even for a blind person.
By ditching the home button Apple has suddenly created the arm salute a move that will quickly identify which phone someone is using as they must bring the device up to their face to simply activate it.

And one must question whether this process is secure, for me I am waiting for the first tabloid story of someone who’s phone has been accessed by a partner while they are sleeping, it must come and it will make news.

“NRL Player Nobbled By iPhone X”.

Wired Magazine said straight after the launch that ‘The very notion of using your face as the key to your digital secrets presents some fundamental problems… It’s very hard to hide your face from someone who wants to coerce you to unlock your phone, like a mugger, a customs agent, or a policeman who has just arrested you’.

“In some cases, criminal suspects in the US can invoke the Fifth Amendment protections from self-incrimination to refuse to give up their phone’s passcode. That same protection doesn’t apply to your face.
While Apple claims that their iPhone X is the most powerful iPhone ever one must remember, that Apple does not make components such as memory or display screens which is why there is a whopping price difference between the$1,579, 64GB iPhone X and the $1,829 256GB iPhone X.

Until we get the phones side by side with other smartphones we will not know how the iPhone X stacks up but I suspect that because of the iOS software Apple will deliver a better optimization between hardware and software.

I for one, and after using both the HTC U11 and the Samsung Note 8 now for several weeks am not a big fan of a bezels that run around the screen. I think this is old hat and not the future. What I suspect is that Samsung wanted to keep their wraparound technology for themselves.

The Financial Times said of the new iPhone 8, all the focus was on the innovations in the X. But it all made the new 8 looks like a rather boring, “plain old” iPhone – and the price for that has just gone up $50 as well”.