One week with the iPhone X! My impressions (Part II)

On my last post, I talked about my initial impressions of using the iPhone X. I talked about the screen, the phone size, the overall build, the famous notch (love it or hate it, it is gonna be there) and the flagship feature, FaceID.

Battery

Battery life is great. However, I do feel that the plus size models of the iPhone (like the iPhone 7 plus and iPhone 8 plus) offer slightly longer battery life than the iPhone X. It is not a game breaker, it can still do wonderful things without draining battery too much too fast. The phone can still last the entire day without needing a recharge. However I still feel that battery life on the new iPhone X is slightly shorter than I am used to. Perhaps this could all boil down to the OLED screen. When the OLED screen is bright and pushes out white or bright colours, power consumptions on the OLED screen can be quite high. There have been videos on YouTube showing that if you minimize bright coloured pixels like white, blue or green, the battery life of the iPhone can clearly be extended by a significant margin. So it’s not surprising that the main feature of the phone, the OLED screen, could potentially be a hard feature that consumes the most battery. Certain apps have night mode options, which I will enable it without hesitation to save some battery life.

App switching is quick and responsive

App switching requires new gestures, now that the phone has no home button. You simply swipe up and stay there for a fraction of a section to cycle through the app that are current open and running, or simply swipe up and flick right to switch app back and forth. Appe switching is fast, not just the action of swiping but the fact that the app immediately ‘wakes up’ and responds to your touch the moment it is active on your screen. It is near instantaneous to the point that I now switch app incessantly, without feeling the frustration of waiting for the app to refresh, load or respond to my touch the moment is becomes the active app. Clearly the blazing fast processor that is in the current iPhone X is fast enough for that task at hand.

Overall, I am loving the iPhone X. Sure, it is crazy expensive and it is definitely not for everyone. But coming from an Apple fan, Apple has clearly rejuvenate their smartphone lineup with an exciting new design and new technology that is perfect in everyway, especially when it is supposed to be a 10-year anniversary phone. 10 years is not a very long  time in tech terms but the improvements made from the software and hardware point of view where Apple’s smartphones are concerned are measured by leaps and bounds. Who knows what smartphones would look like in the next 10 years?