It appears it was not just odd for us, but also for Apple, to launch the iPhone X alongside the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Dan Riccio, the senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple, has revealed that the iPhone X launch was originally planned for 2018 - not 2017.
In an interview with folks at Mashable, Riccio stated that "with a lot of hard work, talent, grit, and determination" Apple had ultimately brought the iPhone X before time. The decision for an earlier had left no time for the iPhone team to make any design changes, the executive mentioned.
Apple was initially rumoured to include a fingerprint scanner on the back of the anniversary-edition iPhone. However, as Riccio pointed out, the company eventually considered facial recognition tech - Face ID - as the only solution. "We spent no time looking at [putting] fingerprints on the back or through the glass or on the side," he said in the interview.
The TrueDepth sensor-equipped Face ID technology brought some production issues at the initial stage. Apple managed to stabilise the supply ahead of the final shipments of the new iPhone, though. A recent report by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that the Cupertino company is set to continue the adaption of Face ID for its iPhone models in 2018.
It is quite clear that the growing competition of bezel-less Android smartphones must have played a vital role in pushing the launch of the iPhone X to as early as September this year. Apple even started a new trend of bringing facial recognition to the mainstream, although it was already available on some Android smartphones before Apple's development. Having said that, the new iPhone model is yet to receive feedback from the masses.
iPhone X becomes available on November 3 in the first wave of launch countries, including India. The first shipments will be to customers who successfully pre-ordered the handset starting late last month.
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