Apple iPhone X review

Telephony

The iOS 11 Phone and Contacts apps look almost the same as before utilizing a clean interface but with now stylized titles. You can force press around for some quick actions. Blacklist is available for those needing this feature.

The phone app with Favorites • phonebook • a contact • the dialer

FaceTime is naturally available for all compatible iOS and Mac devices and allows you to make free voice and video calls to any other FaceTime-enabled device. It now supports capturing a Live Photo from the stream in those video calls.

Apple is also offering Wi-Fi calling. If your carrier supports it, your phone can be set to automatically place calls over Wi-Fi whenever you prefer. Some carriers won't even count the talk time generated over Wi-Fi against your monthly allowance.

Speakers

As usual, we've tested the new stereo loudspeaker setup performance of the iPhone X. The iPhone X turned out among the loudest iPhones to date, though the 8th generation was a bit louder. The X's two speakers have balanced loudness with crisp and clear sound quality. They posted a Very Good score on our test, but our subjective opinion is that their sound quality is better than the speakers on the iPhone 8's with sound being even richer.

Messaging with Animojis

Apple's Messenger looks pretty much the same as last year - it's highly customizable with bubble animations, stickers, handwriting, various screen effects and newly added full-screen effects. Digital Touch is still available. The new Animojis will arrive with the iPhone X though the iPhone 8 and earlier will be able only to receive such.

Thanks to the detailed face scanning, Apple came up with what it hopes to become one of the iPhone X top features - the Animojis. Now the cute faces you use instead of punctuation have a life of their own as they mimic your facial expressions. You can send a 10s animated message with your voice and expression through iMessage. Any iOS11 iPhone would be able to receive them.

The Animoji templates are just a few for now, but if third-party developers such as Disney hop on the Animojis, they may as well become the next big thing for the Apple Messenger. And you can save Animojis as video files (full-length ones come out up to 2MB filesize) and then send them through other IMs or upload them to Facebook.

Messages app

Notable default apps

With every newly activated iPhone, you also get the complete iWorks suite including Pages (viewing, editing docs), Numbers (viewing, editing excel files), and Keynote (viewing, editing presentations).

The iWorks suite

Apps such as Calendar, Weather, Calculator and Alarm (now with repeating reminders) are available, naturally. Not that due to some bug with the key animations in the Calculator, it sometimes fails to detect hits on the operation buttons if you are typing too fast. Yes, Apple managed to break the Calculator, so you either type slow or find another app in the Store.

Calendar • Calendar • Weather • Calculator

The Notes app has everything from before like sketching, checklists, different formatting with bullets and lists, inserting multimedia, among others. With iOS 11 it was upgraded with table support and a document scanner - you can use the camera to insert scans in your iPhone notes.

Notes

There are two new apps coming with iOS 11 - Files and Clips. The new Files app finally brings basic file management to iOS. Don't get too excited though - it can browse and work with files from iCloud Drive and other cloud storages such as OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive - if configured. It also has its storage space where you can save files from different apps and then access them from Files. It's not a full-blown file manager for all on-device files, but more of a unifying app that at least finally gives you access to iCloud Drive via third-party apps.

Files

Clips is another new app and it's very cool - it helps you make fun videos easily. You can add texts, effects, graphics, audio, and more. Clips also supports easy sharing, so your friends could see your creations in an instant. The app will also support 360-degree clips with the new iPhone X that's coming in November.

Clips

Apple Maps is getting better, too. Apple Maps now has lane guidance (finally!), and it shows the speed limit. Indoor navigation is available for malls and airports, with the floor by floor directory and search (initial support will be for big US cities and a few foreign ones).

The TomTom-powered Maps keeps its previous features such as layers, third-party extensions such as Lyft and Uber, traffic and public transportations, among many others.

Maps