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The Watch Psych 2: Lassie Come Home OnlineiPhone X is finally available for pre-order, and we couldn't be more excited.

Apple has, of course, been slammed by demand for the phone since preorders started six days ago. The estimated delivery time has already jumped from 2-3 weeks to 5-6 weeks, and rumors of its limited supply are still swirling. Basically, if you ordered one, it's going to be a while before you actually receive it.

SEE ALSO: First impressions of the iPhone X

Even with the high demand, it's still hard for many loyal customers to justify the iPhone X's $999 starting price tag, especially when there's a perfectly good iPhone 8 available for $300 cheaper. While there's plenty of excitement about the iPhone X, actual data shows that sales might be significantly lower than the device's pre-release hype suggests.

So is the iPhone X worth the extra cost? Here, you can take a look at what exactly you're paying for with that extra $300, and decide for yourself.

The Screen

The iPhone X is the only model to feature what Apple has dubbed a "Super Retina" display. At 458 pixels-per-inch (ppi), this screen has the highest pixel density ever seen in an iPhone. It dwarfs the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which clock in at 326 ppi and 401 ppi respectively.

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While the iPhone X is smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus, its edge-to-edge display is the biggest of the three, measuring 5.8 inches diagonally to the 8's 4.7 inches and 8 Plus' 5.5 inches.

The iPhone X also uniquely features an OLED display, a lighting technology that produces a superiorly vivid and realistic feature. This gives the iPhone X's screen a 1,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio, while the 8 Plus has only 1,300 to 1.

Finally, the iPhone X's display supports HDR (high-dynamic range), meaning the movies and videos you watch will be hugely superior in quality to those on the iPhone 8. In short, the screen is kind of a big deal. It looks better than any other in a phone.

The Camera

The iPhone X's front-facing camera can't be beat. It's what Apple refers to as the first "TrueDepth" camera, and it has a laundry list of exclusive features. The most notable is "Portrait Mode," which allows a user to take portraits that look better than most professional headshots.

With a tap of your finger, the TrueDepth camera module sharpens your face and blurs the background, putting the focus squarely on the subject of the portrait.

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The Portrait Lighting feature also allows you to apply several sophisticated filters to your portraits, including "studio light" which brightens your face, "contour light" which adds dramatic shadows and highlights, "stage light" which spotlights your face and blacks out the background, and "stage light mono" which casts your entire picture in black and white. Selfies have never looked better.

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And while the iPhone 8's rear-facing cameras both include optical-image stabilization, the iPhone X features dual optical-image stabilization, meaning both of its rear cameras will stabilize photos and images. In sum, all of this means photos and videos taken on the iPhone X will be smoother and less blurry than any other phone.

Face ID

One of the Apple's most highly anticipated and controversial features, Face ID, makes its debut on the iPhone X. It uses a combination of the iPhone X's infrared camera, flood illuminator, and dot projector (which are crammed into "the notch" at the top of the phone) to recognize your face.

It's supposedly orders of magnitude more secure than Touch ID, which the iPhone 8 still employs.

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The iPhone X's advanced camera is able to project and analyze more than 30,000 dots to create a precise map of your face. According to Apple, Face ID has a 1 in 1,000,000 false acceptance rate (identifying someone else as you) compared to Touch ID's 1 in 50,000.

The iPhone 8's front-facing camera, while still of high quality, has nowhere near the capability to be able to do this. Face ID is also compatible with Apple Pay, which means its owners can now check out with just a glance. This should save everyone time doing really basic tasks on their phone.

Animoji

Okay, so here's where the iPhone X really stands out. The iPhone 8's emoji have nothing on this.

Animoji are half-adorable, half-terrifying, 3-D emoticons that mimic your facial expressions to a scarily accurate degree.

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Though they seem like child's play, Animoji are actually fairly complicated to construct, and require a phone's camera to track more than 50 different muscle movements in your face.

Needless to say, these critters are exclusive to the iPhone X.

Design

Unlike the iPhone 8, which is made of glass and aluminum, the iPhone X is made of glass and stainless steel.

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The X is reinforced with a stainless steel band, which Apple claims makes it more durable. All three of the newly released models, however, are covered on both sides by the same Gorilla Glass (a brand of toughened glass made by Corning).

Battery Life

All three models of new iPhones charge at the same speed, and support Qi-certified wireless charging. The iPhone X's battery, however, lasts much longer than the iPhone 8's does, according to Apple.

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The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus both last about as long as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (up to 14 and 21 hours of talk time respectively). The iPhone X it lasts about as long as an iPhone 8 Plus (21 hours), but about seven hours (talk time) longer than the iPhone 8.

In sum: The iPhone X has a better screen and better camera than every other phone out there, and it also comes with creepy animals that mime your facial expressions. If that sounds like it's worth an extra $300, then this is the phone for you.

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Topics Apple iPhone