Reviews of Apple’s latest phone, the $1,000 iPhone X, hit the internet today (Oct. 30), ahead of the device becoming available in stores this Friday.
In years past—and as recently as last month, for the iPhone 8—Apple has handed out review units of its iPhones to a bunch of news outlets, such as The Verge, TechCrunch, and Forbes. But this time, it seems the company has only given an iPhone X to Steven Levy at Wired, who reviewed the first iPhone a decade ago, plus a smattering of YouTubers and outlets publishing directly to YouTube.
It’s likely that many standard iPhone reviews will still appear in the next few days. (Axios, for example, seems to have gotten one, and loaned it to a teen to play with.) But beyond Levy’s nostalgic look at how Apple progressed from the first, revolutionary iPhone to the X, which, among other tricks, enables facial recognition and can animate people to look like the iconic poop emoji, the only other available reviews are tersely edited YouTube videos. The YouTubers spend most of their time talking about the iPhone X’s new cameras, FaceID facial recognition technology, and augmented reality capabilities.
Here’s a quick list of some of the reviews of the iPhone X out today.
Fashion Magazine’s video listicle of what it thinks are the top 10 features of the new phone:
YouTuber “Soldier Knows Best” walks through the iPhone with a “receding hairline at the top”:
BoredAtWork.com doesn’t seem that bored as it explains how the X differs from previous iPhones:
Popular Science showed off the X, interspersing its review with footage of 1960s-era technology:
Highsnobiety ran down the same features—the new camera, facial recognition, and Animoji—that everyone else covered:
YouTuber UrAvgConsumer went through his favorite features, which were—you guessed it!—the new camera, facial recognition, and Animoji:
Here’s that information one more time in French, from blogger TheiCollection:
Oh ok, also in Turkish, with ShiftDelete.net:
Most of the vloggers were, unsurprisingly, effusive about the new phone. We’ll have to wait for the full reviews to see if the iPhone X is worth the extra $200 over the iPhone 8 Plus.