By this point you probably know that the iPhone 10 is the most expensive Apple has ever offered and you might have also heard that it’s the best the company has ever made both of these things are true but to me the question is whether that phone is worth the thousand dollar price tag I’m Michael Fisher and this is the mr. mobile review of the iPhone 10 brought to you by tech 21 if you’re unclear on the difference between a hands-on video and a review this is the perfect opportunity to clear the waters last week when I had just a few hours with the iPhone 10 I found it’s gesture-based interface complicated and clunky its face ID locking mechanism only on par with samsung’s similar system well it turns out this is the kind of device you have to live with for a while I’m not saying they’re flawless the gestures are less intuitive than on the blackberry and palm platforms that inspired them and an unlock mechanic that makes you look at your phone is still less convenient than a fingerprint sensor but after almost a weeks use in the world this phone’s gestures now feel natural enough to make the old home button seem archaic and I’ve discovered that in about four out of five cases face ID is so fast that I don’t even notice it’s working I just swipe to unlock the occasional inconvenience of having to punch in a pin isn’t great but it’s also not a deal-breaker on paper the side keys on the iPhone 10 are so confusing that Apple included a cheat sheet right in the box but again you get used to it something Siri with the side key feels natural enough if you’ve ever used a walkie-talkie and I think it’s worth the side effect of now having to use two buttons turn the phone off as for Siri herself well you also have the option of mapping a five-click shortcut to 9-1-1 so you can call the police quickly in a sticky situation yes I still notice the notch in day-to-day use but I’ve come to look at more not less no other phone looks quite like this and when iOS calls attention to the notch it does so in just the right way developers have been adapting their apps to accommodate it so rapidly that many of my complaints from a week ago no longer apply now practically speaking those looking for the maximum amount of screen area will still be better served by the iPhone 8 plus and that phone’s LCD technology is also less prone to the burn in that the iPhone tends OLED panel might suffer over time so the 10 is still the less practical choice the
phone for flashy folks maybe there’s no better illustration of that flashiness than an emoji which uses face mapping to do this yeah this is a dumb feature but it’s here to showcase apples emergent focus on augmented reality so expect this tech to be used for more important features in the future I was more excited for the portrait mode capability on the front-facing camera but so far I got to tell you that’s been a big letdown edge detection just isn’t good enough to reliably separate subject from background so you get awkward artifacts and bleed overs just like we’ve seen since the first days of portrait mode over a year ago Google has Apple soundly beat here with its pixel two line and it got there with far less trial and error in more traditional photography the iPhone 10 brings the same great performance as the iPhone 8 now with optical stabilization on the telephoto camera as well as the primary also like the 8 the 10 can shoot 4k video at 60 frames a second and Full HD slow-mo at 240 that’s something not many Android phones can do yet since the current top-of-the-line Qualcomm silicon doesn’t support it but again with the exception of those selfie portraits and an emoji both of which are terrible you can get nearly the same output from the iPhone 8 plus and the competition from Samsung holds its own those who don’t like the galaxy no dates punchy or colors and higher contrast have a full suite of manual controls right out of the box I’m using the no data as an example because of its price similarity to the iPhone 10 but between Samsung Google LG HTC and Huawei the ranks of really good cameras in the smartphone world are getting crowded to its credit the iPhone 10 does really nail the fundamentals it’s voice calls are crisp with good side tone its dual speakers are clearer and louder than ever its battery is big enough to get you through a long day with no problem even with a few hours of hot spotting and it’s glass and steel frame feels every bit the luxury indulgence it’s advertised to be and yet look I’m the biggest phone nerd I know and even I can’t get over this thing’s thousand dollar price tag the note eight I keep referring to is up there in price too but it’s 50 bucks cheaper and brings so many more features that comparing the two is not even apples to oranges that we were talking to a palang meanwhile the iPhone 8 which shares so much of the iPhone 10’s DNA starts at $700 that’s a massive markup for a
look this is not the first time Apple has pushed the limits on price back in 2007 the first iPhone was expensive too and it lacked features like 3G and GPS that even at the time were considered essential but that iPhone was a revolutionary rethinking of what a smart phone should be the iPhone 10 isn’t nearly as ambitious the edge to edge screen the dual stabilized cameras the wireless charging the gesture interface they’re all great but we’ve seen them before and even on this thousand dollar smartphone Apple charges an additional 75 dollars to let you fast charge it a feature that comes standard on every Android flagship it’s kind of hard not to see that as a cynical cash grab by one of the richest companies on the planet now here’s why none of that matters Apple has a well-earned reputation for excellent customer service and it’s got an ecosystem that people are willing to spend more to be a part of in a country like the US where carriers lets you spread the cost of a phone across one or two years someone who wants to stay in that ecosystem but doesn’t want a boring old design suddenly has the option of paying 40 or 50 bucks a month for this truly beautiful hardware if I were a lifelong iPhone user I definitely be one of them because there’s so much to love about this device but I come from the Android world where there’s so much quality available for half or even a third of this phone’s price then I just can’t get past it the iPhone 10 is a great smart phone for rich people or for the Apple loyalists who wants to splurge to celebrate the iPhones 10th anniversary if that’s you you’re gonna love this device if that’s not you then almost any other option will be a smarter use of your money one more thing the iPhone 10 also seems to be no more durable than any other glass on glass smartphone so if you do take the thousand-dollar plunge set aside another few bucks to protect your investment with a protective case from today’s sponsor tech 21 these folks have been building phone cases for over 10 years using scientific materials tested in partnership with the National Physical Laboratory the tech21 evo range with flex shock material gives you an ultra slim profile with 10-foot drop protection designed specifically for your iPhone 10 to keep it covered drop after drop get yours from Verizon Wireless at the link in the description below be sure to subscribe to the mr.mobile on YouTube for more reviews just like
this one till next time thanks for watching and stay mobile my friends you .
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