iPhone X
iPhone X dropped the Home button for a 5.8-inch OLED display that filled almost the entire front. Face ID unlocked it with a depth-sensing TrueDepth camera, and the A11 Bionic added Apple's first Neural Engine. It started at $999.
The story.
2 min read · Written by Invite Archive
Behind the invitation
For years, Apple held its September iPhone events in rented venues or a small theater on its old campus. In 2017 that changed. The invitation, sent on August 31, said Let's meet at our place, and named a location no reporter had visited before: the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park, Apple's new ring-shaped headquarters in Cupertino.
The line had two meanings. It was a welcome to the new campus, and a reminder of the man the theater was named for. It was also the tenth anniversary of iPhone, and nearly every rumor pointed to a redesigned model with an edge-to-edge screen.
What Apple showed
The event began in silence, with Steve Jobs's voice played over the speakers before Tim Cook walked out to dedicate the theater to him.
Then came a long list of products. Apple Watch Series 3 added built-in cellular, so a watch could make calls without a nearby iPhone. Apple TV 4K brought 4K and HDR video. iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus switched to a glass back that enabled wireless charging. Apple also previewed AirPower, a charging mat for several devices.
The finale was iPhone X, pronounced "ten":
- A 5.8-inch OLED display that covered almost the entire front, with no home button.
- Face ID, which replaced Touch ID with a depth-sensing camera system in a cutout at the top of the screen.
- The A11 Bionic chip, with Apple's first Neural Engine for machine learning.
- Animoji, which turned your facial expressions into animated characters.
It started at $999, the highest launch price for an iPhone at that time.
The reaction, then and now
The live demo had an awkward moment: the first time Craig Federighi tried Face ID on stage, the phone asked for a passcode, and he switched to a backup device. Apple later explained that the phone had been handled by other people before the demo. Critics also debated the cutout at the top of the screen, soon known as "the notch," and the price.
None of it slowed the product down. The notch appeared on many Android phones within a year, Face ID became the standard on iPhone, and the gesture-based design without a home button set the template for every flagship iPhone that followed, starting at Gather Round in 2018. AirPower was quietly cancelled in 2019.
Today, Let's meet at our place reads as the start of a new chapter: a new campus, a new theater and a new iPhone design, all on the same day. See the full iPhone timeline.