Universal Information Services

A Message From the Future, “You’re Late”

Like many around the country I received the iPhone X last Friday, after a surprisingly quick shipping period. As most already know, these new features for Apple are already found in other phones like the Samsung Galaxy. But even if Apple is late to the game, I don’t think it matters.

Universal’s Alpha Clips service looks great!

I pre-ordered my phone on the 27th and my patience finally paid off. Since using the phone for a whole day, I have mostly top marks. However, those high marks are not without a few grievances. From my pre-order experience to the actual use of the phone throughout the day, I’ll break down my thoughts and rate everything I touched on the iPhone X. Maybe the working title for this post is, “iPhone X: 24 Hours with Teddy”.

The Pre-Order: By far the worst part about any iPhone is the process of ordering, which at this point should be expected. I had given up hope of using apple.com on the day it becomes available because it seems to always crash. Plus, in order to get my upgrade discount (which was essential with a $999 retail price tag) I had to go through my carrier, Verizon Wireless. Verizon’s web interface  was by far my worst online experience EVER. As you can tell by my string of heated tweets at 2:30am, I was not happy with the performance of the cellular giant’s site. Error after error resulted in an hour and a half of work time, plus a call to customer support in order to complete the order. However, I was still able to pre-order so I can’t completely fail them in this category. It seems Verizon has done well to roll up their industry, and I believe they’re making good money. So why is it they can’t manage an eCommerce website? Grade: D-

Unboxing: This being my forth iPhone I was no stranger to the “pleasant to the touch” material of the box and the packaging of the iPhone. However to my disappointment, when I opened it up and lifted out the device, there was not wireless charging pad. I thought for sure with a price that high I would get the wonderful gizmos shown with the iPhone X. But I was greeted with the all too familiar USB-Outlet block and lighting charging cable. Next came the ear pods, which had been rumored to be the wireless bluetooth Air Pods, since the X has no auxiliary port. But no, the same wired ear pods as my 5s and 6s. They did include the auxiliary jack to lighting adapter, which is at least something. My disappointment is partially my own fault for in my pre-order haste I did not read the packaging contents. Next time I’ll take their promotional videos with a grain of salt.. Grade: B+

The Phone: The biggest part of the X is of course Face ID. Which I love, even with the loss of the home button, it was easy to set up and is incredibly responsive in the dark and at odd angles. How you return to the home menu is simple and easy. Activating the different corners of the screen now reveals different menus (notifications & control pad).  The “Hey Siri” functions seems to be an improvement and actually useful this time, with it easily understanding commands. Portrait lighting might not be unique to the X but it is a super cool feature that has been improved by allowing the front facing camera to use this ability. The A11 bionic chip feels like a standard speed increase from the previous generation. The OLED Supper Retina Display is probably the largest improvement from my last phone, colors truly pop off the screen. My only gripe with the device is I wished they would have integrated more VR oriented features, as advancements in the technology have been made since the last generation. As a side note, in testing a beta version of Universal Information Services’ new AI enhanced news monitoring service, Alpha Clips looked awesome. Grade: A- for the iPhone, A+ for Alpha Clips

All in all, I enjoy this phone a lot and it does look and feel like it’s ahead of it’s time. I look forward to the two-years we will spend together in my cellular contract. Hopefully the next iteration of the iPhone will have industry leading features so those of us supporting Apple don’t feel like late arrivals… again.

 This has been another post by Teddy Murphy. I’m keeping my eye on what’s next for Universal Information Services.