iPhone X Review: Better Than I Thought

That’s right. Mr. FrugaLee got a new 256GB iPhone X for a whopping $1,149 plus tax. Not very frugal, you say? To me, frugality isn’t about not spending any money. I love spending money. Who doesn’t? I like to think about it as spending on things that are high quality and add value in my life while minimizing spending on the many things I find unnecessary. Time really is money. We spend many hours of our lives working to earn money. It’s all time away from our family, our kids, our friends, our hobbies, etc. Anyway, enough about that. Let’s talk about the new iPhone X.

I wasn’t really thinking about getting the iPhone X, but my 16GB iPhone 6 kept running out of storage space, so I had to keep backing up all my photos on the cloud using Google Photos. Like every week. I think other parents of young children can understand. I could never download the latest iOS update because my phone kept running out of space. I didn’t have space to download apps, so I had to be very selective. I had the phone for almost 3 years, so I felt like I got a decent amount of value out of it. Sprint was offering a $350 trade-in for the new iPhone X. For all these reasons, I finally decided to take the plunge. I didn’t just get the 64GB version for $999. I opted for the 256GB version for $1,149, so I wouldn’t have to worry about running out of space, at least for a while. It turned out to be much better than I thought. Here’s why.

• Face ID – This is one feature that I thought was totally unnecessary before I got the phone, but now that I am using it, I love it. Not only does it save time when unlocking your phone, but most apps now have an “Enable Face ID” feature where there used to be an “Enable Touch ID” feature. Once it’s set up, all I have to do is be looking at my phone, and I have access to my app. No more typing in passwords, touching the home button for Touch ID. It saves a few seconds every time I have to access an app. Think about how many apps you access per day. Saving a few seconds each time will really add up. I’m big on saving time, so this has turned out much better than I expected.
• Processor speed – As I mentioned above, I had the iPhone 6 before this. I didn’t think it was super slow, but once I started using the iPhone X, I quickly noticed the difference in speed. When opening apps or browsers, it is so much faster. Even if I save just 1-2 seconds each time, it all adds up over time, and time is valuable.
• Portrait mode – I wasn’t too sure what this was, but now I think this is my favorite feature. It sharpens the foreground and naturally blurs the background. It makes my pictures look much more professional. Here are some examples below. Note that it’ll ask you keep the object in the forefront within about 8 feet for it to work.
  

• OLED screen – You can definitely tell that there’s a huge difference in the display quality. There’s a higher contrast ratio, darker blacks, better brightness, and a sharper picture. This alone wouldn’t have convinced me to buy the phone, but it’s nice to have.
• Lack of home button – I thought this would take a long time to get used to, but Apple did a pretty good job. Instead of pressing the home button, you just swipe up from the bottom of the screen (a small bar shows up at the bottom). This allows for a much bigger display without compromising phone size.
• Wireless charging – While I haven’t tried this yet, I took a look at some chargers online. I thought they would be really expensive, but there are a lot of Qi chargers for less than $20. Even my carrier sold a charger for $25. I will probably get one in the future, and I imagine it will be a small yet nice added convenience.
• Storage space – This was the main reason I got a new phone. I got 16x the space I had before (16GB –> 256GB). I’m having a lot of fun downloading apps I didn’t have the space for and taking pictures and videos of my son without having to worry about running out of space.
• I’m sure there are plenty of other features that I haven’t mentioned, but these are the ones that made the biggest difference to me so far.

Those are some of the pros for the iPhone X. Here are some of the cons or potential cons:

• Price – Obviously, it’s a pretty big expense to drop over $1,000 on a phone, but if you think you’ll get that much value out of it, then maybe, just maybe, you can justify the cost.
• Cost of repair – Another con that has to do with money. From what I’ve researched, it would cost $549 to repair a cracked screen (or back). Both the front and back are made of glass (to allow for wireless charging). Because of this, I think it’s a much more complex (and expensive) process to make repairs on this phone. Invest in a nice case, and be careful!
• Weight – This doesn’t really bother me much, but it is noticeably heavier than the iPhone 6 that I used to have.
• Face ID in the dark – I was curious whether Face ID would work in the dark. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. Since the screen lights up when you touch it, it provides some light for the phone to detect your face. However, sometimes it’s just not enough light. In these cases, it asks you to type in your passcode.

I think that’s all I can think of for now.

In the end, I’m very satisfied with my purchase and have no regrets. It wasn’t very impressive to me at first, but as I use it more, I am appreciating all the little details and the thoughtfulness that Apple has designed into the iPhone X.

Photo credit: apple.com