How Apple built the iPhone X


Mashable has a nice interview with Apple VPs Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Dan Riccio on the development of the iPhone X. There are a lot of interesting bits of information on the design decisions including Touch ID, the home button, the top notch, and other user interface changes.

It's also interesting to have insights on the development cycle of the iPhone and various components.

Depending on who you ask, work on the iPhone X (pronounced "10") either started almost three years ago or way back in 2007.

It was around 2014 that Apple's silicon team decided to include a neural engine inside what would eventually become the A11 Bionic CPU. "At the time, we didn't know exactly what we'd use it for, but because silicon takes a lot of time in the oven, we knew we had to include it back then," said Riccio.

That silicon enabled things on the device like augmented reality and powerful Face ID facial-recognition features. The groundwork, though, for an all-screen iPhone was laid a full decade ago. "It's been a dream we've had since iPhone 1," said Schiller. "We've had a dream since Day One to make it all screen, edge to edge."

In the article Riccio was quoted as saying the iPhone X's features were locked in as early as last November.