Feature Articles

First impressions of the new iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

By Alvin Soon - 31 Oct 2017

Watch out for augmented reality

AR is going to be big

A big takeaway for me from today’s Apple event is AR (augmented reality). After seeing the various demos, I think AR is going to be the bigger story that persists after this cycle of new iPhones. I think of how powerful smartphones are now by how many tools they’ve replaced — my iPhone has replaced the calculator, torchlight and camera in my life, for example.

Any useful new technology will increase the iPhone’s ability to replace another tool. With AR, the iPhones can measure distances in the real world like a ruler, they can replace the jobs of catalogs by directing simulating furniture in your house and a car in your driveway, and they can play some kickass games in the real world.

I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of what AR can do, and the iPhone X’s front camera notch is going to play a big part in that. It’s scary efficient how the camera can generate a 3D representation of your face for Face ID. 

Generating an accurate 3D mesh of your face using a phone is not an easy thing. Besides using it for deadly serious applications like Face ID, Apple is also using it to animate emoji, what it calls animoji. I think animoji are ridiculously cute, no matter what the cynics say. When Craig Federighi demoed how the technology is being used to generate virtual masks for Snapchat, it was impressive how accurate perspectives were in the demo.

 

This article was first published on Sep 13, 2017.

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