We’re now less than two weeks away from Apple’s iPhone X release date and just four days from iPhone X preorder going live. This Friday at 3:00 AM ET / 12:00 AM PT, pandemonium will ensue as tens of millions of people around the world flock to Apple’s website in an effort to get their hands on launch-day iPhone X inventory that will reportedly total between 2 million and 3 million units. In other words, things will not go well.
Anticipation for a new iPhone hasn’t been this high since 2014 when Apple finally released iPhones with larger displays. Coincidentally, that’s also the last time Apple release an iPhone that actually had a new design, which is exactly why people are so excited for the iPhone X. Of course, that new design has been a topic of much discussion over the past month, and now a new photo of the iPhone X in the wild gives us a small taste of the design many iPhone users had been hoping for.
A new wave of excitement washes over Apple fans each time the iPhone X is photographed in the wild. Since the phone has been announced, Apple now allows its employees to use the iPhone X in public. iPhone users are so starved for a new design that every single photo of the phone is apparently cause for celebration, and the latest new iPhone X photo was posted to Reddit early Monday morning.
This time around, however, the image is a bit different. Sure we’ve seen the iPhone X in the wild dozens of times now — in fact, we even saw a video of the iPhone X posted over the weekend — but this time it’s a bit different. Why? Because it almost shows us what the phone would look like in the wild if Apple had opted to approach the notch from a different angle.
Apple’s new design leaked long before the iPhone X was announced last month. Feelings surrounding the notch at the top of the phone’s display were mixed, and this particular design decision continued to be a point of contention among some Apple fans. But back in June, we explained how Apple could launch an iPhone with this design that doesn’t take a bite out of the phone’s interface.
Long story short, Apple could have reserved the area of the display on either side of the TrueDepth notch solely for status bar info, and the background could have always remained black. This would allow those portions of the screen to blend in with the black bezels on the phone’s face, essentially hiding the notch completely.
Apple instead decided the new iPhone X will wear its notch like a badge of honor, for better or worse. People will undoubtedly get used to the notch pretty quickly. Also, since Face ID is here to stay, the notch will continue to be an element of Apple’s iPhone design until the technology exists to allow the company to embed cameras and sensors underneath the screen. In the meantime, a new iPhone X photo posted on Reddit gives us a taste of what the phone would look like with the notch’s “ears” kept dark. What do you think — better or worse?
