Apple iPhone 8 vs 8 Plus vs iPhone X
Apple iPhone 8 vs 8 Plus vs iPhone X
About midway through Apple's event, Apple's head of marketing Phil Schiller showed off the upgrades to the main iPhone line. Clad in an aluminium and glass skin that comes in Silver, Space Gray, and Gold, the new devices are speedier with sharper screens and better battery efficiency. The phones will also accommodate wireless charging. Schiller said chargers will be made by third-party vendors and appear at partner coffee shops and retail stores, as well as some new cars.
The new smartphones have revamped cameras that will use a feature called "portrait lighting" that will automatically optimise the lighting in your photos. The cameras also have substantially improved slo-mo video recording.
Schiller took some time to tout the smartphones' ability to do more in augmented reality -- which is expected to be a key area of growth for video games and other software apps. An app from Major League Baseball, for example, will display live stats over players when users look at the field through their iPhone screens.
Apple is bumping up the base storage of an iPhone 8 to 64GB at a price of $699. The larger iPhone 8 Plus will start at $799. Both will be available for order on September 15 and ship on September 22.
The iPhone X
After the iPhone 8 presentation, Cook retook the stage to offer, in Jobs's iconic words, "one more thing" - the iPhone X.
The phone, he said, was the "biggest leap since the original iPhone." (The company is pronouncing it the iPhone ten).
The iPhone X will start at $999 - considerably more than the base price of previous models. It will be available for pre-order on October 27, and ship on November 3.
The iPhone X has an advanced array of cameras for facial recognition, which allows the phone to become unlocked just by looking at it. The cameras can learn a user's face and note gradual changes. And it can be used at night or day.
But Apple promised that it would not collect the data on all of those faces. The information would only be kept on the smartphone, not sent to Apple servers.
The facial recognition technology has other applications as well. Apple introduced "animoji" - animated emoji that imitates your facial movements and lets you record animated messages through texts.
The new high-end smartphone has a 5.8 inch display that covers the entire surface of the phone. Unlike its cheaper sibling, the iPhone 10 comes in space grey and silver and sports a "super" retina display, which Schiller said was much sharper than any other iPhone because it uses OLED display technology.
Notably, there also is no home button. Users must swipe and use gestures to close an app. Calling up Siri can now be done with a new side button.