Clearly John loves the new iPhone X, but it’s this bit that sticks with me:

Tapping the display to wake the device, seeing a list of truncated notifications on the lock screen, and then seeing those notifications expand to preview their content once you’re recognized by Face ID — this just makes the iPhone X feel alive in a way that no other device does. You tap it to get its attention, and it recognizes that you are you.

The lock screen is far more useful now: you can just tap any notification to jump to it. With Touch ID, after you tap a particular notification in the middle of the display, you then must move your finger down to the home button to authenticate. I always found that annoying. Now that I’m used to the iPhone X, I find it to be intolerable.

This might have been the most immediate feature I noticed on the iPhone X. I thought the lock screen had a glitch, but then the notifications expanded, as though the iPhone itself was alive. It’s quite the surreal feeling.

But John nails it here:

Is the higher price of the iPhone X over the iPhones 8 justified? The 64 and 256 GB iPhone X models cost $999 and $1149, respectively. That’s $300 more than the equivalent iPhone 8, and $200 than an iPhone 8 Plus.

But you also get something you can’t put in  a checkmark comparison  — a sort of joie de vivre.

“Joie de vivre.” Yes. Absolutely spot on.

The iPhone 8 Plus and (especially when $0 on contract) the iPhone 8 both offer far greater value — specifications between the 3 phones are largely the same and 99% of apps are basically the same.

But there’s a certain intangible factor when using the iPhone X. Something that makes the phone so much fun to use. I haven’t been this excited about a new iPhone since the iPhone 4 (my very first iPhone).