Do you need Apple's $2100 iPhone X?

An edge-to-edge screen, facial recognition, OLED display and wireless charging — none all of the iPhone X's hero features are new to the world of smartphones. 

But they are new to Apple users. So is it worth the $1800 (64GB model) or $2100 (256GB)?

Below is a quickfire review-of-reviews.

A couple of quick things first.

One, worth noting that either because of constrained popularity or unexpected popularity of a super premium-priced phone (investors have chosen to believe the latter), you'll be in for a three to four-week wait if you order an X today. That's down from five to six weeks when Apple started taking pre-orders a week back. As of Saturday morning, Spark and Vodafone both listed two to six weeks depending on colour and model. 2degrees simply says "out of stock" with its next back expected on November 14. Spark and Vodafone had a small number of Xs in store on Friday for contract customers. 

Two, there have been the usual grumbles about the NZ price being high, particularly if all iPhone X's are being assembled in China (meaning roughly the same shipping costs are involved to the US and NZ). So how does $US1000 for the entry-level model become $NZ1800 here?

There is the exchange rate, which of course is volatile in these Coalition times. Today, $US1000 = $NZ1471 (according to the ASB's foreign currency calculator).

Then there's the fact that in the US, prices don't include sales tax, which varies by state. In NZ, of course, we have 15% GST, which takes our like-for-like to $NZ1691. So there still seems to be a wee dollop of gravy on top.

One other thing: for now, the iPhone X's wireless charging feature can only be used with a third-party charger that supports the Qi standard. Reviews complain the process is slow. That might improve when Apple brings out its own wireless charging station, which is promised for next year. Apple's recent purchase of Auckland company PowerbyProxi will help on that front.

ABOVE: With its 5.8-inch screen, the iPhone X (middle) falls between the iPhone 8 (left) and iPhone 8 Plus (right). The iPhone X display is edge-to-edge bar the black "notch" at the top for sensor housing, which annoyed some reviewers.

Anyhow, to the reviews:

Wall Street Journal: Yes, there are reasons to pay Apple $1000

The first 48 hours with the iPhone X elicits a feeling similar to the one you get assembling mail-order furniture using a poorly drawn 45-step instruction manual. After a lot of fumbling and missteps, you wonder: Am I an idiot, or is this thing’s maker out to crush my soul?

But then comes the moment when the much-hyped new iPhone feels so natural to use that when you go back to even the brand new iPhone 8, it’s like picking up an old BlackBerry.

The iPhone X is a huge change—no more home button, no more fingerprint sensor, no more wide-as-a-Costco -aisle edges around the screen. The surprise for me was, it’s also a fabulous smartphone, one I can recommend even for its $1,000 price tag.

New York Times: The iPhone X Is Cool. That Doesn’t Mean You Are Ready for It.

Apple’s newest iPhone takes a big leap from past models. It lacks a home button, which makes it less intuitive to use than previous iPhones. The device is also the first iPhone to feature a face scanner for unlocking it. And for many people who have developed 10 years of muscle memory from using iPhones a certain way, these may seem like abrupt changes.

Yet for all these caveats, be prepared to get caught up in the buzz of the iPhone X

Tests revealed that the phone was incredibly fast and took exceptional photos, which helped me arrive at this verdict: Splurge on the iPhone X if you care about having a phone with the fanciest mobile camera in a compact body. The iPhone X’s camera is superior to the one on the iPhone 8 Plus, and yet the iPhone X is smaller, which makes it easier to carry around.

The Verge: iPhone X: Face of the Future

The most important feature change on the iPhone X is Face ID, the system that unlocks the phone by recognizing your face. Even that’s an understatement: the entire design and user experience of the iPhone X is built around Face ID. Face ID is what let Apple ditch the home button and Touch ID fingerprint sensor. The Face ID sensor system is housed in the notch — it’s the whole reason the notch exists. The Apple Pay user flow has been reworked around Face ID. Apple’s Animoji animated emojis work using the Face ID sensors.

If Face ID doesn’t work, the entire promise of the iPhone X falls apart.

The good news is that Face ID generally works great. The bad news is that sometimes it doesn’t, and you’ll have to actively move the phone closer to your face to compensate.

The iPhone X has a IR light, a dot projector, and an IR camera, all tucked into the notch at the top of screen. (It’s basically a tiny Xbox Kinect.) When you wake up the phone, the IR light goes off, and if the IR camera sees a face, the dot projector flashes a pattern of 30,000 dots. The camera then takes a 2D photo, which gets turned into mathematical depth model, sent to the secure authentication chip, and matched against the stored value. If it matches, you’re in.

And, of course, there’s the notch in the display – what Apple calls the “sensor housing.” It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though — it makes landscape in general pretty messy.

Tech Radar: Finally, the rebooted iPhone we've been waiting for

The iPhone X was a huge gamble from Apple, but one that really paid off. Losing the home button and altering the design was a dangerous move, but one that was sorely needed after years of similarity and the premium design, extra power, all-screen front mix together to create - by far - the best iPhone Apple's ever made. It's impossible to give a perfect score to something that costs this much - but this is the closest to smartphone perfection Apple has ever got.

The first thing you’ll notice about the new iPhone is hard to miss: the new screen blazes into your eyes the second you pick up the handset.

The 5.8-inch OLED display is, quite simply, by far the best thing Apple has ever crammed into an iPhone. It’s leaps ahead of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus for so many reasons: the sharpness, the quality, the fact that it fills the whole front of the phone, and the color reproduction.

It’s also using a new, longer, screen, but while it looks larger than the iPhone 8 Plus’ 5.2-inch display on paper, it’s only marginally bigger in terms of actual screen real estate – it’s just stretched upwards.

Mashable: the iPhone, reborn

There is no home button, just a stunning 5.8-inch screen that hugs the edge, reaching for the silver band that’s just millimeters away. All of it is so beautiful, save for that peninsula of darkness at the top — the notch that intrudes on the otherwise perfect industrial design of the iPhone X, but also proves critical to its operation and serves as yet another signal that this is not just another iPhone.

Like the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which also have glass backs, the iPhone X is wireless charging-capable and works with any Qi-compatible charging base. I found the iPhone X charges slowly on a Mophie wireless charging base, but Apple says a software update coming later this year will raise the wireless charging wattage threshold from 5 watts to 7.5 watts, which should increase wireless charging speed by 50%