14 DAY TRIAL // The iPhone X notch is without a doubt one of the most controversial features introduced by Apple lately, with people across the world mixed on whether Cupertino made the right call to embrace such a design for its anniversary iPhone.
The purpose of the notch, however, makes it a key part of the iPhone X, and this is exactly why Apple says it’s important to have it on the device. In an interview with Tom’s Guide, Apple's vice president of iPhone, iPad and iOS product marketing, Greg Joswiak, defended the notch, explaining that it’s actually living proof of the way the company innovates with every iPhone generation.
“With all of those components, this is one of the most densely packed technology areas I think we've ever done. It's one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology we've ever done in such an incredibly small space,” he explained.
Apple says it never wanted to put Touch ID in the screen
The notch is part of a facial recognition system which people close to the matter said it wasn’t supposed to be there, but which was eventually implemented after Apple failed to embed the fingerprint sensor into the glass. Joswiak says this is completely inaccurate, as the company planned to go with facial recognition from the very beginning and never looked into tech to embed Touch ID into the screen.
“Forget all those stories you heard about us trying to map fingerprints into the back, we had a line of sight on how to do real facial recognition, in a way never done before. It would be really hard to do, but we just didn't want to do it the way others had, which could literally be spoofed with a picture,” the Apple official explained.
And last but not least, Apple has been criticized for being late to the wireless charging party, with the iPhone X adopting this feature a few years after Android devices got it. But Joswiak says it’s not the feature itself, but the way it works, though in the case of wireless charging, the iPhone X is way behind its rivals in terms of charging speed.
“It doesn't matter if you're first to a general idea, it's about being first to making it fantastic, and that's what we try to do. Whether it's the chip team working with our hardware team or our software team with our human interface team -- it is one team here. No one else can match that,” he said.
Apple’s iPhone X is available in two different versions, with 64GB and 256GB storage, and pricing starts at $999 in the United States for the base model.