I ordered an iPhone X and picked it up Friday. The Apple Store asked if I was excited and I told them no. I just figured why not. I signed up for the upgrade program and it is easy to get a new iPhone every year.

First impressions was how much smaller the iPhone X is vs. iPhone 6/7/8 Plus.

It was easy to set up the phone. Although the Verizon activation servers were hammered and I hit "try again" screens at least 3-5 times.

So how is it? The Facial ID takes a bit of time to get used to. But today figured I could pick up the phone. Swipe up immediately and in parallel facial recognition recognizes me. When I was holding up the phone waiting for facial recognition, then swiping up it felt much longer than touch id. Facial ID so far is way faster and more accurate than touch ID.

The main reason I wanted the iPhone X was for the facial recognition hardware to experiment with and to have the latest A11 processes for both ARKit and ML.

So how good is the camera? Well I took a picture of one of my favorite things. My pizza oven. :-) No it is not my favorite thing, but thought a flaming picture would be a good test.

Before I took the above picture I took another picture of the oven when it was cold. There is so much detail in this picture I was tempted to not use it. But all those details could useful if you took pictures for maintenance events.

Here is some roasted broccoli from the pizza oven.

It's cold here in Redmond and we got some snow.

We had our dog in the car and I bundled her up to keep her warm when we were out watching a high school football game. I think she was warmer in the car, then we were in the bleachers.

Actually I notice a bigger change switching to the iPhone X than I expected. It is fast and feels smooth using the UI.