iPhone X Review – Pushing Me to Android
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,773 words · ~8 min read
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yeah i know my video's late because i didn't get an
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iphone 10 until d brand actually bought one skinned it and shipped it to me but
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unlike some people i'm not going to make a big salty song and dance out of it
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because frankly if i was apple i probably wouldn't feel like spending the
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thousand dollars or even 370 dollars to
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hear what i'm about to say about their latest and greatest either
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especially in front of their store which is under renovation i wanted to do this
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in front of the cube today's video is brought to you by mac weldon i was going
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to wear the shirt but it's so cold mack weldon believes in smart design premium
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fabrics and simple shopping use offer code tech tips at the link below to get
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20 percent off on your next order
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now if the iphone 8 and the 8 plus are fraternal twins then the 10 is kind of
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like the love child from that brief but intense affair that everyone knows mom
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had but that no one talks about unless uncle gordon's had too much to drink
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apple reused almost every major internal
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component making the 10 with its beefy battery three gigs of RAM and dual rear
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camera system something familiar kind of like a plus in a regular sized body and
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yet something totally different because as i fix it revealed in their fantastic
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tear down to achieve this spectacular
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density they actually went back to a technique so old we haven't seen it
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since the original iphone a dual pcb
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internal layout that in another creative move uses dual lithium ion batteries for
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maximum density but while in some ways physically the 10 is
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what i've been asking out before for years
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less concerned with reducing thickness and weight and more with increasing
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battery life and features like wireless charging this comes at the cost of it
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feeling well kind of heavy and thick
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to be clear i still vastly prefer the form factor of the 10 compared to the 8
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plus its size makes it much easier to hold on to even if it's slim bezels mean
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an accidental drop is more likely to be fatal
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it's just that the slight increase in unwieldiness compared to the 8 is
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compounded by the 10's unfamiliar new gesture based controls
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before i get to those though let's talk about the screen
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i am sorely disappointed that my 120
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hertz prediction didn't come true but otherwise it's everything that you could
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hope for from a top of the line phone in 2017. apple took the best mobile OLED
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screen technology on the market from samsung and tuned it to damn near
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perfection it's the brightest OLED i've ever seen making for the best direct
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sunlight viewing experience that i've seen yet and the best rendering of HDR
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content that i've seen yet and the ultra tall or
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ultra wide depending on how you look at it aspect ratio combined with the stereo
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bottom firing and earpiece speaker combo makes it great for watching cinema
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aspect ratio content like movie
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is what i would say if it weren't for the notch
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now for the vast majority of the content that you'll find on youtube or netflix
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it and the rounded bottom corners will end
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up cut off by pillar boxes but in movies
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it is a literal black mark on what is otherwise the standard by which mobile
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displays can be measured and while it's far less obnoxious i did
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also notice it in day-to-day use a lot of people might not care about
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something like this but there's no room at the top anymore for your battery
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percent or your vpn connectivity status
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requiring a swipe down from the top right to bring up the control center
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blah so what do we get in return then in
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tech enthusiast terms we get a marvelously densely packed not to
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mention incredibly sophisticated array of sensors emitters and cameras that had
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me hardcore nerding out but everyone else just calls it face id
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without getting into the theoretically reduced security i mean no one that i
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know was able to unlock my phone here's what it does really well
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downloading apps buying stuff or logging into websites is in a word
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amazing it worked nearly flawlessly
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across all manner of challenging conditions from cold days where you
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don't feel like taking off your gloves to touch to bright sunlight to pitch
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blackness and even with a kid in my arms or a toothbrush hanging out of my mouth
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and the feature that hides the details of your notifications until it
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recognizes you is a biometric authentication game changer okay cool
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now here's what's less awesome because the 10 only auto wakes when it's right
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side up and has no obvious landmarks
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when the screen is off like an always-on clock for example and because it
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requires a swipe after it identifies you
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i often found that it took me longer to unlock the 10 when i wanted to use my
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phone face id to be clear is much better
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than samsung's iris scanner across the board but it still requires a special
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dance move to do something on your phone while it's sitting on the desk or table
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next to you and back to that notification hiding thing i really wish
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that it was a little bit faster like i've been using my old iphone 6 as an
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mp3 player lately and man
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i forgot how much worse first gen touch
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id was and how much better fast biometrics are compared to just having
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them at all all right fine then apple a notch in the
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display for unlocking with wet hands
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okay i can wait a little longer for you to put all this stuff behind the panel
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and besides the notch actually bothered me far less than the interface and
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navigation changes that were necessitated by the tens lack of a home
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button all the new gestures are easy to remember and felt natural within minutes
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to the point where i actually found myself swiping up on other devices
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but multiple aspects of the new control scheme are marginally slower reinforcing
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my belief that apple is either run by or caters to people who just
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don't have a lot to do these people i assume have all the time
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in the world to type names into their address book like a cave person instead
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of using t9 dialing interact with their touch screen however
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little it might be to quick launch their camera instead of double tapping a
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hardware button they have time to pause mid gesture to wait for multitasking to
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show up instead of pressing one button though the slide to the right is quite a
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bit better they have time to hold
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then swipe or reach to the top of the screen to force close a frozen app and
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finally and yes i'm repeating this one they don't mind swiping their screen
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every time they unlock their phone
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now i'm not saying that apple did nothing right here control center from
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the top right is much more reliable now that it no longer gets confused by the
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on-screen keyboard and on that subject the dictation button under the on-screen
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keyboard is super convenient which wait a second under the keyboard
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leave it to apple to figure out the most obvious stuff that everyone else missed
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i've been complaining for years that on devices with small chin bars it's harder
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to touch type and they just went and put a space in there brilliant anyway in fairness to
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apple the navigation isn't terrible it's just also not as advertised it's
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not like a quantum leap forward in the way that i interact my phone and if
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anything it makes me miss the Android back button even more than i normally do
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on iOS not less now i'm not going to spend a ton of time on the camera or
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animojis other than to say that if you like the excellent eight plus camera
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and if you're a portrait mode focus fiend you'll like the tens camera and
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that until apple allows animojis to be recorded and sent as video clips in
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third-party chat apps easily i will be even less inclined to create awkward
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moments in public than i already am so that brings me then to my conclusion
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the original iphone was first gen execution of a brilliant idea and the
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device that was created to celebrate its 10-year anniversary is brilliant
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execution of what feels like a gen idea it really
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seems to me like apple was trying really hard to make an innovative device then
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make you like whatever they ended up with rather than looking forward to what
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people wanted to do in their lives and building a solution around that an
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approach that probably would have involved some more investment in siri so
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bottom line then the iphone 10 is what it took to make me more excited about
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the 8 and the 8 plus and ultimately
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go back to the s8 so that i can stop carrying around this stupid bag of
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headphone dongles
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so this video was brought to you by the dbrand grip
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my mother is so present never drop your phone again its key features include
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their revolutionary grip their world-class d3o shock absorbing
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technology an industry first carbon composite frame
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full dbrand skin compatibility so you can customize it still however you want
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using the dbrand site and finally ultra tactile buttons i don't know quite how
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they did it but they managed to make the buttons on your phone feel better for
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having their case on it so check it out down at the link in the video
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description so thanks for watching guys if this
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video sucked you know what to do but it was awesome get subscribed hit that like
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button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
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description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like the one
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that i'm bundled up over top of and our community forum which you should totally
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join