iPhone X Revealed: How Apple Changed Smartphones Forever

When Apple unveiled the iPhone X in September 2017, few could have predicted just how profoundly it would reshape the smartphone landscape. Eight years ago, the iPhone X set the table for everything that has come since, marking what Tim Cook called a device that would "set the path for technology for the next decade". The iPhone X was not just another incremental update. It was Apple's most important and most expensive smartphone in four years, introduced specifically to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the original iPhone. More than a feature dump, it reset design, interaction, and expectations for what a phone should feel like in your hand.

Where do we go from here?

Eight years on, the iPhone X's fingerprints are everywhere. More than six years after its launch, the influence of the iPhone X is still evident in modern smartphones. Key trends that originated with the iPhone X, such as edge-to-edge OLED displays, facial recognition, computational photography, gesture-based navigation, and premium pricing strategies, have become standard in flagship devices across brands.

Even Apple seems to view it as a pivot point. Apple is reportedly working on a bold new design for the iPhone 20 to coincide with the iconic device's 20th anniversary in 2027, with the tech giant planning a major "shake-up" comparable in scope to the iPhone X launch. If true, that is a nod to the X era as a north star.

The legacy is bigger than any one spec sheet. Its impact goes beyond just design and features—it reshaped how users interact with their phones, how manufacturers innovate, and how the industry perceives premium smartphones. The iPhone X showed that genuine change was still on the table in a market many called mature.

Eight years later, we are still living in the world the iPhone X created. The all-screen designs, the gesture interfaces, the computational photography, the premium pricing, these are not just iPhone features anymore, they are industry standards. The iPhone X did not just set the path for the next decade of technology, as Tim Cook promised. It reset what we expect from our most personal devices, proof that a single phone can bend the curve of an entire industry.