A lot has changed in the decade since Apple shared its first iPhone with the world, but most people's relationships to their smartphones have not changed for a while. After an explosion of innovation, we’ve mostly seen incremental updates to processing power, security features, screen size, cameras, and software in recent years. These have added up over time, but the progress has rarely revolutionized this product area or its users' experience.

Generally, people have understandably been fine with that. Stability is good for consumers. We now see our phones as practical tools, not as anything extraordinary—not anything that opens up exciting and relevant new possibilities in our professional and personal lives like those earliest iPhone and Android phones did.

Some enthusiasts have nevertheless lamented that this is no longer the Apple whose products, once perceived as truly groundbreaking, excited them. But even more so than usual, Apple wants buyers to see this new phone, the most expensive iPhone yet released, as revolutionary. It has positioned iPhone X as a blueprint for all handsets to come.

But is the iPhone X that significant? Is the future actually here—for real this time, after that marketing suggestion has been thrown around so much that we’ve tuned it out? And even if it is, is it worth the potential pains of early adoption for newer technologies like Face ID and OLED?

I’ll give you a hint: this phone does three notable new things, all in one device. As a certain turtlenecked man once said, "Are you getting it?"

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