Page 22 - Computeractive - January 2, 2018 UK

R e v i e w s

PHONE ❘ £999 from A pple www.snipca.com/26316
DoI r eally n eed...
AppleiPhone X aneighth-

A g rand phone gen e r a tion
processor?

The iPhone X i s p ronounced ‘ iPhone 10’,
and c osts £999 – y es, n ine h undred and What does it do?
ninety-nine pounds. T o p rotect your The eighth g eneration of Intel’s Core
investment, A pple h as made it entirely processor line brings more p owerful
out of glass. The front i s g lass. The back i s i3, i5 and i 7 c hips. Confusingly, w hile
glass. There’s a b it of metal in between, previous generations have been given
but that won’t h elp i f y ou drop it on the one geographical codename, this h as
floor. I t’s n ot fully w aterproof, e ither – three: K aby L ake R , C offee Lake and,
just splash-resistant. some time i n 2 018, Cannon Lake.
Apple c harges £286 to replace the
screen. A ny other d amage, including a
cracked b ack, costs £ 556, i f i t c an be fixed
at all. Alternatively , when you b uy your
iPhone X y ou can pay a n e xtra £199 for
AppleCare+, which r educes these costs t o
£25 a nd £79. Or you c an sign up for
Apple’s i Phone U pgrade Programme,
which g ives you i nterest-free credit for 2 0 Why would I w ant i t?
months, f ree A ppleCare+, and t he option Kaby Lake increased speed by a f ew
to upgrade t o n ext y ear’s i Phone. It’s per cent, but the n ew processors
better value, but you h ave t o g o t o a n promise m uch bigger gains, largely
Apple s tore for a c redit c heck. thanks t o e xtra cores. D esktop i3
characters that lip-sync your voice. processors w ere d ual-core; now t hose
Apple’s fi rst OLED screen looks
A g ood-looking if fantastic, a nd the t all, narrow shape i s with i3-8 numbers a re quad-core,
boosting p erformance i n d emanding
fragile p hone, b ut is it easy to hold a nd slip in a b ag or pocket. tasks ( see page 20). The i5-8 and i 7-8
There’s bags of processing power. The
chips h ave s ix cores. For l aptops, f our
really w orth £999? basic 6 4GB o f s torage is probably enough new q uad-core i 5-8 and i 7-8 chips w ith
(and it can’t be expanded), while t he
v oltage,
the ‘ U’ suffix, standing f or low
face- ecognition system, which r eplaces promise t o b eat t heir p redecessors b y a
This d oesn’t feel like £ 1,000 of phone. fingerprint reading, is less a nnoying t han huge 40 per cent in overall p erformance
The screen doesn’t g o r ight t o t he edges we feared, i f r ather a wkward when using while h elping to increase battery life.
like S amsung’s, and a lthough it’s great Apple P ay. H owever, t he battery l asted
that there’s n o b order a t t he bottom, just nine hours and 2 2 m inutes in our What’s the c atch?
there’s a w eird notch at the t op, w here video p layback t est. Overall, this is just a The new s ix-core
the c amera, speaker a nd TrueDepth good phone, n ot a s ell-your-grandmother processors r equire n ew
augmented r eality sensors live. I t’s n ot phone. A pple h as hinted that more motherboards, s o P Cs
quite a s s lim as an iPhone 8 P lus, yet t he TrueDepth c leverness w ill enhance it later. featuring t hem won’t b e c heap, a nd you
similar d ual-camera sticks out a m ile. The Well, O K. We’ll w ait, and s tart saving. can’t p ut them into existing P Cs. A MD’s
telephoto l ens i s a b it better in the X , a nd rival R yzen p rocessors ( pictured), with
its optical s tabilisation improves on one VERDICT: If you h ave a n a rm and a six o r e ight cores, have set a h igh b ar for
of the b est e ver p hone cameras – b ut it’s leg t hat you d on’t r eally n eed, t his i s a desktop CPUs, a nd Intel will struggle
still not great i n l ow light. The front good phone, albeit a r ather fragile o ne. to match their p erformance p er pound.
camera i s v ery g ood, t oo, a nd now h as its Otherwise, forget it Ryzen l aptops are a vailable now.
own P ortrait ( blurred background) mode ★★★☆☆
thanks t o T rueDepth, but it doesn’t w ork So can I d o w ithout it?
reliably. W e l iked the ‘ animoji’ cartoon ALTERNATIVE: Samsung For n ow, y es. Over the n ext f ew months,
Galaxy Note 8 £785 there s hould be a f ew bargains a mong
SPECIFICATIONS Deep discounting i s m aking PCs w ith 7 th-gen chips ( numbers s tarting
5.8in 2 436x1125-pixel s creen •• 2x 12-megapixel r ear Samsung’s top p hones l ook i3-7,i5-7ori7-7),butit’ll b e w orthpaying a
cameras •• 7-megapixel f ront camera •• 64GB flash attractive, a nd this h uge one bit more f or the n ew ones. Competition
storage •• 802.11ac W i-Fi •• Bluetooth 5.0 •• 3G/4G ••
iOS 1 1 • • 144x71x7.7mm ( HxWxD) •• 174g •• One-year no longer catches fi re with AMD s hould help b ring prices down.
warranty www.snipca.com/26316

22 20 December 2017 – 2 J anuary 2 018