Everyone and their grandmothers working for or with Apple on the iPhone X is no longer afraid to use the already announced phone out in the wild. We’ve seen numerous iPhone X units in use around the world, and the phone’s notch design is what always gives them away. Anyone familiar with the iPhone X’s all screen design will instantly recognize one.
Someone posted a brief iPhone X video on Reddit that shows the phone opening an app. It’s just a 10-second clip, but it’s enough for any iPhone user to recognize a significant issue: the notch user interface. However, you shouldn’t freak out about it just yet.
The people using iPhone X already are either Apple employees or people who work with carriers to test out the phone before its November 3rd launch. And while they have access to the hardware before anyone else, they obviously don’t yet have access to app updates.
Apple already released app development guides for the iPhone X, telling devs how to handle the top notch so their apps look great on the bigger iPhone X screen, without actually interfering with the notch.
As you can see in the video at this link (screenshot above), the current version of the Instagram app looks absolutely horrendous on the iPhone X. The top screen elements are way too close to the “ears” and the notch itself. That’s because we’re looking at an application that has not been optimized for the iPhone X.
Well, Instagram is probably working on a new iPhone X design that will be made available once the phone launches, or soon after that. And hopefully all your favorite apps are going to get similar updates that will make everything look good, or at least bearable.
So, come November 3rd, when you get your iPhone X delivered to your door and start using it, don’t freak out about the app experience. It’ll all get better. You’ll get used to the notch, we all will, even if we don’t end up liking it. But all of the incoming app updates will at least make it more tolerable, so hopefully developers are hard at work getting ready for next week’s iPhone X release.
