iPhone X Notch: Everything You Need to Know

[roeiz]

My problem is having movies or series that supposedly fit the full screen natively..
Are we suppose to watch them with the notch?
Otherwise the big screen advantage is a failure. No?
If the 8+ is the same screen size, native full screen ratio stuff can be watched fully with no notch, but not on the X

 

[chatin]

Put a separate touch bar at the top so developers who want to play with the screen width could have their own API and opt-in on the changes.

 

[JosephAW]

Accessibility question for the iPhone X:
When my blind friend uses his iPhone and turns on the "screen curtain" while in VoiceOver, the back light is still on because you can see the screen in a dark room.
With the new OLED screen, will the screen completely turn off when enabling the "screen curtain" and not emit it any light because there is no backlight thus saving even more battery life for the him?

 

[827538]

Despite Phil's insistence, I'm still skeptical about burn-in. I've had it happen on other phones in the past. I also don't want to have to start thinking about what type of wallpapers, screens, etc. I use again, because they might draw more power.

I think the IPS LCD that Apple has been using for years looks great, isn't susceptible to burn-in like OLED, and because it's backlit the power draw is uniform regardless of what's on screen. I just think the resolution could be better, especially on the non-Plus devices.

It's a great display no doubt and burn in is obviously a concern. But I think OLED is at the point where burn in is very rare and the picture quality improvements of OLED are worth it. Perfect blacks really do make an image pop.

 

[prowlmedia]

Ugh. You might be right.

Although you say you won't notice it - surely Apple would do the same as with the iPhone and 'embrace it'.

It's a really good place for the Menu bar But You'd lose the Filename area.

 

[roeiz]

aren't there more things that are missing from the sides?
like service provider and 4G signal?

 

[DaveMoeDee]

Purely a marketing tatctic. If they hid the sensors within a small bezel, the phone would look just like an S8, G6 etc. they want this phone to stand out. When you see that notch you’ll know exactly what phone it is.

It isn't just the notch that is a marketing tactic. The claim of a 5.8" screen is pure marketing.

This screen is not 5.8" in the real world. This is especially bad if Apple insists on centering content or if content won't work with screen curves. Not only does a 5.8" diagonal require leaving the screen and landing on the bezel, it also runs through a notch ear, space that is unusable for a lot of content.

I have been trying to find the size of the "safe space" where many apps will live, but could not find it. Based on the phone panel being more narrow than the 8 Plus and based on the unusable notch area and the matching unusable space on the bottom in landscape, the X screen will effectively be smaller than the Plus.

It amazes me how poor reporting is on this. Reporters talk as if the display on the X is superior to the Plus, including in size. Such a shallow analysis. Hopefully an X Plus will be included in the next cycle as this phone is really meant for those who were unwilling to accept the width of the Plus.

To be fair to Apple, the screen does act like 5.8 when just using the OS since the icons would be at the top with or without a notch. But I doubt anyone gets a large phone to have for space for navigating the OS. People want the large screen for interacting with content, which is exactly when the X screen starts shrinking. I will also concede that there are many users who always deal with their phone in portrait using the kinds of content that would not lose screen real estate to the notch and the home slider. The X design seems quite nice for them.

 

[Anuba]

It isn't just the notch that is a marketing tactic. The claim of a 5.8" screen is pure marketing.

This screen is not 5.8" in the real world. This is especially bad if Apple insists on centering content or if content won't work with screen curves. Not only does a 5.8" diagonal require leaving the screen and landing on the bezel, it also runs through a notch ear, space that is unusable for a lot of content.

I have been trying to find the size of the "safe space" where many apps will live, but could not find it. Based on the phone panel being more narrow than the 8 Plus and based on the unusable notch area and the matching unusable space on the bottom in landscape, the X screen will effectively be smaller than the Plus.

It amazes me how poor reporting is on this. Reporters talk as if the display on the X is superior to the Plus, including in size. Such a shallow analysis. Hopefully an X Plus will be included in the next cycle as this phone is really meant for those who were unwilling to accept the width of the Plus.

To be fair to Apple, the screen does act like 5.8 when just using the OS since the icons would be at the top with or without a notch. But I doubt anyone gets a large phone to have for space for navigating the OS. People want the large screen for interacting with content, which is exactly when the X screen starts shrinking. I will also concede that there are many users who always deal with their phone in portrait using the kinds of content that would not lose screen real estate to the notch and the home slider. The X design seems quite nice for them.

Maybe it’s a tad smaller than the 8 Plus display in the real world, but the big win here is that the physical object is much smaller and lighter. It’s 30 grams less... that’s halfway down from 8 Plus to 8.

I have a 6s Plus that needs to be replaced. I don’t have issues with the width or height of it, I have large hands and I can reach the upper opposite corner with my thumb without changing grip, so I don’t use Reachability. What makes it an unwieldy behemoth is the weight. When I go for a 6 mile run with the 6s Plus strapped to my arm I have to pull it so tight it feels like running with an inflated blood pressure cuff for 40 minutes straight. The 6s Plus in Apple’s comically oversized silicone case gives me flashbacks to brick phones circa 1995. Putting it in a jacket breast pocket involves deciding which side of the jacket should hang 5 inches lower than the other today. Sitting with it pocketed is uncomfortable. Et cetera.

So I’ve been considering going down in size to the standard 8, but I held a 7 in a store the other day and it was tiny with a screen like a damn stamp. So I’d need the 8 Plus. But they managed to make it even heavier than the 6s Plus, which was 192 grams (up 20 from 172 due to switching to 9000 series alu after the 6 Plus “bendgate”). The 7 Plus was 188. The 8 Plus is 202 grams. 202! With an Apple silicone case that’s almost half a pound.

That’s why the X seems like the perfect balance between screen real estate and physical dimensions. If the notch shaves off a few mms of safe space, it’s a small tradeoff.

 

[DaveMoeDee]

Maybe it’s a tad smaller than the 8 Plus display in the real world, but the big win here is that the physical object is much smaller and lighter. It’s 30 grams less... that’s halfway down from 8 Plus to 8.

I have a 6s Plus that needs to be replaced. I don’t have issues with the width or height of it, I have large hands and I can reach the upper opposite corner with my thumb without changing grip, so I don’t use Reachability. What makes it an unwieldy behemoth is the weight. When I go for a 6 mile run with the 6s Plus strapped to my arm I have to pull it so tight it feels like running with an inflated blood pressure cuff for 40 minutes straight. The 6s Plus in Apple’s comically oversized silicone case gives me flashbacks to brick phones circa 1995. Putting it in a jacket breast pocket involves deciding with side of the jacket should hang 5 inches lower than the other today. Sitting with it pocketed is uncomfortable. Et cetera.

So I’ve been considering going down in size to the standard 8, but I held a 7 in a store the other day and it was tiny with a screen like a damn stamp. So I’d need the 8 Plus. But they managed to make it even heavier than the 6s Plus, which was 192 grams (up 20 from 172 due to switching to series 9k after the 6 Plus “bendgate”). The 7 Plus was 188. The 8 Plus is 202 grams. 202! With an Apple silicon case that’s almost half a pound.

That’s why the X seems like the perfect balance between screen real estate and physical dimensions. If the notch shaves off a few mms of safe space, it’s a small tradeoff.

I do feel like the X will be the sweet spot for many people for the reasons you give. Personally, I would like a 7" phone. I would even wear cargo pants to make it work.

There is a pretty high chance I get a 256gb 8 Plus. It pains me to pay so much for 192gb of storage when I can get a class 10 SD card on my Note 4 (which seems to be fast enough to store 4k video) and swap it even when it is full. But the resale value is so high for iPhones that I can go for a larger iPhone when one comes out and suffer through a 5.5 screen (and an absurdly long phone for 5.5).

If Android phones were keeping up on the CPU front, I would be tempted to get one of their larger phones. Unfortunately, that is not the direction they are going in. To be honest, the main thing that has made it hard for me to leave Android is Android Humble Bundles.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

This may help. https://twitter.com/0therPlanet/status/909788913702785026/photo/1

 

[coolerkid]

Apple design has fallen off a cliff. There is some really impressive technology here. But that notch and the way they use it drives me crazy. So much that I don't know if I can buy one. I'm a stickler for pixel perfect design to the point of being OCD about it and I don't know if I could look at that notch and the off center and cramped indicator icons. They should have made bigger top and bottom bezels, or blacked out the sides of the notch and used it purely for indicator icons like a lot of the mock ups. Apple should really hire a lot of the designers that do these pre-release mock ups, they tend to be way better than what Apple is putting out there days. Not trying to be a troll, but this year's iPhone announcements left me shaking my head and annoyed. First year since the iPhone release that I won't be buying any new Apple products.

 

[roeiz]

aren't there more things that are missing from the sides?
like service provider and 4G signal?

Can anyone provide an answer? Tnx

 

[jamesrick80]

Letterboxed is the default setting for videos, but you can choose full screen if you wish.

Letterboxing on all 4 corners of the screen area is a rare occasion LOL. Someone should fire Tim and his designers. iFans seem to accept anything.

 

[roeiz]

Letterboxing on all 4 corners of the screen area is a rare occasion LOL. Someone should fire Tim and his designers. iFans seem to accept anything.

totally agree. watching the smaller size is like going back to a smaller screen size phone,
which misses the whole point for people who want a big screen.
even the gif example above is sad to watch.
just because of the notch and problematic screen aspect ratio.
it's a plain and simple bad decision.
it should have been a "Jobs no-no!" - the minute they knew this problem.
the only option to really enjoy the screen to it's advantage is to
zoom in, crop parts of the movie AND get the notch on the left.
wonderful work. really. top billion dollar company design. Kudos.

 

[Anuba]

Apple design has fallen off a cliff. There is some really impressive technology here. But that notch and the way they use it drives me crazy. So much that I don't know if I can buy one. I'm a stickler for pixel perfect design to the point of being OCD about it and I don't know if I could look at that notch and the off center and cramped indicator icons. They should have made bigger top and bottom bezels, or blacked out the sides of the notch and used it purely for indicator icons like a lot of the mock ups. Apple should really hire a lot of the designers that do these pre-release mock ups, they tend to be way better than what Apple is putting out there days. Not trying to be a troll, but this year's iPhone announcements left me shaking my head and annoyed. First year since the iPhone release that I won't be buying any new Apple products.

It’s all about Samsung. If they hadn’t introduced horizontal edge to edge before Apple, the X would’ve looked like the Galaxy S8. It was the next logical step for iPhones. In fact it’s what the 7 should’ve looked like. And since Apple is too proud to copy their old copycat, they had to come up with a way to differentiate the iPhone X from the S8. In the process, they had to think so hard they popped a brain artery, and the notch concept is the result of that stroke.

 

[Bacillus]

In the process, they had to think so hard they popped a brain artery, and the notch concept is the result of that stroke.

If not Joni had to be called away from the ApplePark trees, tripped over some old designs and got into the rounded corner & rabbit ear craze

 

[Roller]

Letterboxing on all 4 corners of the screen area is a rare occasion LOL. Someone should fire Tim and his designers. iFans seem to accept anything.

Serious question, since you know more about design than anyone at Apple: If the sensors and IR sources at the upper end of the phone couldn't be made to work under the glass, would you have had bezels at the top and bottom like the Samsung S8+? Not saying that would have been a bad decision, but there aren't many choices.

 

[Bacillus]

Serious question, since you know more about design than anyone at Apple: If the sensors and IR sources at the upper end of the phone couldn't be made to work under the glass, would you have had bezels at the top and bottom like the Samsung S8+? Not saying that would have been a bad decision, but there aren't many choices.

Serious answer: if they had started bezel depreciation in time and gradually, just like Sammy did, instead of refurbing the iPhone 6 design for 3 times in a row, everybody would have been happy now - without ludicrous notches, rabbit ears, round corners and other debris nobody asked for.
Just a small black topbar containing all the cameras and stuff

 

[Anuba]

Serious question, since you know more about design than anyone at Apple: If the sensors and IR sources at the upper end of the phone couldn't be made to work under the glass, would you have had bezels at the top and bottom like the Samsung S8+? Not saying that would have been a bad decision, but there aren't many choices.

A bezel at the top is really all it needed, as project "eliminate everything at the bottom" appears to have been a smashing success. And personally I'm convinced that they would've done a thin continuous bezel at the top (and possibly bottom) if it hadn't been for Samsung. I picture it going down just like the South Park episode "Simpsons Already Did It", with a frustrated Jony Ive in a Professor Chaos costume, finishing a design he's very proud of, not realizing it's an S8+ clone until one of Ive's interns dressed as General Disarray informs him that "Samsung did it! Samsung did it!". In a towering rage, Ive throws the prototype into a wall while screaming out an endless string of four-syllable adjectives from the Oxford Dictionary. "SPORADICAL! AMPHIBIOUS! MALEFICENT! ALLOCUTIVE!!" Now he only has 24 hours to come up with a new design. He spends 5 seconds prying off the top bezel and 23 hrs 45 mins on machine polishing the stainless steel band, leaving only 15 minutes for the poor GUI designer to somehow make the WiFi, LTE and battery icons all fit into a space that shouldn't hold more than two of them if you're concerned about aesthetics.

Joking apart, I have a sneaking suspicion that the design was changed late in the game. I mean, they talked about how they had been working on this thing for aeons but honestly, the way they shoehorned the icons into those little nooks looks like a half baked mockup by some fanboy. It's an OCD nightmare like nothing I've ever seen from Apple. Forget all those little things that have made perfectionists groan over the years, like the iPhone 4 antenna band gaps and visible screws. This is on a whole other level that goes way beyond taste and preference. This is plain wrong.

 

[roeiz]

the way they shoehorned the icons into those little nooks looks like a half baked mockup by some fanboy. It's an OCD nightmare like nothing I've ever seen from Apple. Forget all those little things that have made perfectionists groan over the years, like the iPhone 4 antenna band gaps and visible screws. This is on a whole other level that goes way beyond taste and preference. This is plain wrong.

and also, as i asked above, i myself have a few more icons at display (network provider, 4G signal). where would they be?

 

[RodoBobJon]

and also, as i asked above, i myself have a few more icons at display (network provider, 4G signal). where would they be?

I think I saw somewhere that they are in control center.

 

[roeiz]

I think I saw somewhere that they are in control center.

really? odd solution.

 

[Anuba]

and also, as i asked above, i myself have a few more icons at display (network provider, 4G signal). where would they be?

Well they obviously decided that you don't need to see the battery percentage in numbers and that the provider name is superfluous info to have visible at all times. And you know what, I'm actually on board with that. But even after ditching those things it still looks like a hack job. Any fellow pixelpusher knows what I'm talking about. All the years we spent agonizing over layouts until we get them just right, if not for the client (who often can't tell good design from grizzly bear droppings) then at least for ourselves. And then Apple, APPLE of all companies, comes along with an anniversary iPhone with some GUI elements that seem to say "Hey, please eat this bowl of snot we made for you".

 

[roeiz]

Well they obviously decided that you don't need to see the battery percentage in numbers and that the provider name is superfluous info to have visible at all times. And you know what, I'm actually on board with that. But even after ditching those things it still looks like a hack job. Any fellow pixelpusher knows what I'm talking about. All the years we spent agonizing over layouts until we get them just right, if not for the client (who often can't tell good design from grizzly bear droppings) then at least for ourselves. And then Apple, APPLE of all companies, comes along with an anniversary iPhone with some GUI elements that seem to say "Hey, please eat this bowl of snot we made for you".

i suppose they'll somehow deal with that in time.

 

[itguy06]

So you would rather have a Touch ID sensor on the back? Not user friendly at all.

Have you actually used the fingerprint on the back? It's as natural as on the front as when you pick up the phone your fingers are.... ON THE BACK. It's a simple movement - pick up the phone, rest my right or left index finger on the depression and my phone unlocks.

Compare that to the iOS way - pick up the phone, use the other hand to press a button on the front to unlock.

I've used both and find the back better in most instances. For the table unlock it's double tap and enter PIN.