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Say what you will about Apple's overly expensive products, locked-down ecosystem and its habit of playing catch-up with key technological features, but the original iPhone was undeniably groundbreaking. Released a decade ago this year, it established a new paradigm for the mobile telephone, stripping away the then commonplace numerical pad in a move that was, at the time, seen as brave and perhaps even a little impetuous. History has judged that Apple's bold move was the right one, and now almost every smartphone sold today adheres to the same basic design. For the tenth anniversary of what has become one of the company's most iconic products, Apple's designers clearly wanted to make a splash - and the iPhone X (that's ten and not "X", by the way) does just that.There are two key elements to this device which make it noteworthy - aside from the jaw-dropping price, which we'll come to later - its screen and the way in which you unlock it. For the former, we're talking about a pin-sharp 5.8-inch "Super Retina HD" screen which has a resolution of 2436x1125 pixels and uses AMOLED technology - the first Apple product to do so. The bright and punchy screen fills the front of the phone, with very thin bezels surrounding the edge. The exception is at the top of the screen, where a black "island" is found - this houses the second key element of the iPhone X, its controversial Face ID camera.
Making a phone with such a massive display has forced Apple to drop what was previously one of the most recognisable and comforting elements of the iPhone design: the home button - and by extension, its fingerprint scanning Touch ID sensor. Over the past 10 years, pushing this button has become programmed into the muscle memory of many an Apple fan; tapping the home button is your way of exiting apps, unlocking your phone using your fingerprint, firing up the multitasking menu, invoking Siri and (more recently) getting your phone ready for making contactless mobile payments in stores. All of that is now gone, and Apple hasn't seen fit to follow the example of other handset makers by placing a fingerprint scanner on the rear of the device. In its place we have Face ID, which uses a Kinect-style 3D imaging camera to gain access to your device. According to Apple it's more secure than a fingerprint, but it has already been fooled, albeit with the use of a $150 mask.
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