After All the Leaks, 10 Big Questions Still Hanging Over Tomorrow's Pre-Dawn iPhone Event

There's still a lot about the iPhone X we don't know.

At 1 a.m. Wednesday, Beijing time, Apple unveils the new iPhone.

This is the iPhone's tenth year. Beyond the anniversary, tonight's event will feel unlike any iPhone launch before it.

The venue is the Steve Jobs Theater, inside Apple Park, the $5 billion headquarters Apple has just built. The project ran more than a year late before it was finished, and from now on the Steve Jobs Theater will be the permanent home of Apple's launches.

QDaily is already outside the venue. The place isn't finished, in fact — the ground around Apple Park is still a construction site.

Some of the surroundings are done, though, like the oddly shaped streetlights and bus stops.

A few Apple bicycles have turned up near the campus too: silver paint, faux-leather grips, and a hub motor that lights the front lamp as you ride.

Our impression after riding one: lighter and easier to pedal than any of today's shared bikes, and with no lock of any kind — you get on and go.

The new iPhone also opens a new product cycle for Apple. By the old rhythm of a major redesign every two years, this year should have brought an iPhone 7s that looks much like the iPhone 7. But every rumor now points to the same thing: the new phones are the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, upgraded versions of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, plus a third, a "tenth-anniversary special edition" called the iPhone X.

Something else is different this year. The leaks before the launch have been unusually murky, and even sources with a good record for accurate tips ended up contradicting themselves. Two months ago Bank of America Merrill Lynch even cited supply-chain sources saying the event would be delayed. That turned out to be wrong.

Only with the HomePod firmware leak in August, and the leaked iOS 11 GM code that appeared last weekend (the last build before the public release), did some of the questions get reasonably clear answers. The new iPhone will use a facial-recognition system called Face ID in place of Touch ID, which also turns a new set of Emoji into animations that mimic your own expressions. This generation will support wireless charging and a better camera. And the Apple Watch will support LTE, so it can take calls and receive messages without being tethered to a phone.

Plenty about the new iPhone is still unclear. Here are the 10 questions worth watching — the ones that may be answered in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

What Will the Two Non-Special-Edition iPhone 8s Look Like?

You've seen plenty of leaks about the high-priced iPhone X: an ultra-narrow-bezel screen across its face, and a price around $1,000 (about 8,000 yuan in China).

The other two, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, have been overlooked by comparison. The leaks so far say they will keep the sizes of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, 4.7 and 5.5 inches, and will use a glass back like the iPhone X, with the two cameras stacked vertically.

There may be new colors as well, which the event's brightly colored invitation poster hints at.

Not much of a change, then? Except that no credible leaked photo has shown what the glass back will actually look like.

And since they are called the iPhone 8 rather than the iPhone 7s, it's fair to guess they carry some larger upgrades too.

The expensive iPhone X is plainly the star. How does Apple, which needs volume, give the other two phones a sensible price and new features that make people buy, while still steering as many buyers as possible to the costly one? All of that is still open.

And the iPhone X? What Does It Actually Look Like?

There is more information about the iPhone X, but none of the leaks tells us directly what it looks like.

From the leaked photos, the new face is an ultra-narrow-bezel screen — though the way the edges are handled clearly isn't how the phone will ship. Jony Ive is still alive and well.

The size isn't settled either. Some say 5.8 inches, others say it will match the Plus line. If it's the former, the ultra-narrow bezels could leave the whole phone about as big as today's Plus.

Will the proportions change too? Some reports say the iPhone X will use the same 18.5:9 ratio as the Samsung Galaxy S8, with native resolution raised to 2436×1125 — in other words, it gets longer.

And will the display area of the full-screen front use curves instead of right angles? The Samsung S8 does: its panel and its display area both have rounded corners, which makes the edges of the screen easier on the eye.

How Will the New iPhone Software Adapt to a Full-Screen Display?

In the leaked iOS 11 GM, every iPhone-related icon has grown a "forehead." To make the front of the phone as close to a single sheet of glass as possible, the top of the iPhone X's screen has a notch cut out of it, holding the earpiece, the front camera and the proximity sensor.

That makes the whole interface an odd shape, with two raised corners at the top showing signal bars, battery level and other icons.

If you've used the iOS 11 beta, you may have noticed that some built-in apps, Messages among them, use oversized type at the top that pushes the whole interface down. That is indirect proof the "forehead" exists.

But nothing credible has been said about what happens to apps once that area is added, or whether developers will get to use the extra space.

Apple has an enormous number of developers, and making every app adapt is a big job. So Apple may not open those two top corners to developers at all. It may simply keep the battery level and signal bars there, or hide them and let them go black at times. What it actually does, we'll find out tonight.

The Home Button Is Gone. What Happens to the Old Way of Interacting?

This much is close to certain: the iPhone X drops the Home button, which has been there since the first iPhone.

It may be a compromise. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Apple planned to put the fingerprint sensor under the screen, but had to drop the idea because the technology wasn't ready.

The Home button carried too much of the iPhone's basic interaction: unlock the screen, exit an app, double-click for the multitasking view, hold it down for Siri. Take it away and something has to stand in for it. Bloomberg reports that the iPhone will use a virtual control bar — a Dock — in its place.

The thin bar sits at the bottom of the screen, and unlocking becomes a matter of dragging it up to the middle. Inside an app, one tap gets you out.

A similar design is already on the iPad, where you can drag a Mac-like Dock up from the bottom with your apps on it.

But there its job is mainly to make switching apps easier, not to replace a Home button. If the iPhone uses a Dock as its basic tool, a whole set of other interactions has to change with it.

It's hard to imagine Apple swapping a Dock in for the Home button with no regard for how people already use the phone.

Is Face Recognition Actually Fast Enough?

The leaked iOS 11 GM has already turned up Face ID's setup screens and video. It will take over everything Touch ID does now: unlocking the phone with your face, standing in for a password, authorizing Apple Pay and purchases.

From the test video, setting up facial recognition takes ten-odd seconds. A new feature called "Animoji" will also let people use the facial-recognition sensors to make their own 3D animated expressions.

Touch ID, which arrived with the iPhone 5s, stopped being one "feature" long ago; like the Home button, it became the iPhone's main way of securing itself. Of the 200 million iPhones in use worldwide, the great majority are models with fingerprint recognition.

So the biggest question is whether Face ID is efficient enough that people can adapt to the new method at the lowest possible cost.

Samsung and other Android makers already offer facial recognition, but in use it has been slow going: poor recognition rates, the need to fit your whole face in the frame, fussy demands about the angle.

Apple has never put flashy but unripe technology into its products, so Face ID will have to be convenient and quick before it ships.

The Price Brings a Whole Set of Problems

The iPhone's price will be higher than ever: a starting price above 8,000 yuan means it costs more than a MacBook Air.

Apple has always run a high margin, pricing its products above rivals with comparable specs. That's easy to understand — a high price means a bigger return. It works especially well in mature markets such as the US and Western Europe, where most buyers will be people upgrading from an older iPhone. Over the past year, as the market waited for the 2017 models, Apple's share price has risen nearly 50%.

But in emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia, where smartphone sales are still growing fast, a high price does Apple no favors against the many Android makers.

In Brazil, for example, only 8% of the country's 125 million active smartphone users this year are on an iPhone, according to figures from the research firm Forrester.

So the question comes back to the other two iPhones: what price will Apple set to reach buyers with less to spend?

Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program, which lets people swap an old phone for a new one each year at a set discount, may also have to be adjusted because of the high price. If the phone costs too much, buyers may prefer to pay in installments, or sign up through a carrier plan, rather than hand over the money all at once.

Other Hardware Is Changing Too

The Apple Watch draws the most attention. What's known is that it has LTE and shares a data plan with your phone. Without a phone nearby, the Apple Watch will make calls, send and receive messages, and run apps on its own.

That's good for users. Until now the Apple Watch has needed an iPhone alongside it to be of much use.

But for Apple, the Apple Watch's place in the lineup shifts again. It began as an iPhone accessory, and giving it its own connection makes it look more and more like an iPhone. Will the Apple Watch still be an accessory after this?

The AirPods, the wireless earbuds released last year, may get a small update too — moving the charging indicator to the outside of the case, for instance. Whether shipping times will get any shorter may also come up tonight.

Apple TV, the unreleased HomePod and the Mac Pro may all show up at the event as well.

Will AR Vanish as Quickly as VR?

At its developer conference in June, Apple opened up ARKit, encouraging developers to build apps with augmented-reality features.

Over the past three months, developers including IKEA have published demo videos showing AR used for things like placing virtual furniture. Last month Apple invited a small group of press to New York to show off more AR apps.

AR is the new thing Apple keeps coming back to lately, so it will appear at this event as well. Expect Apple to show off more finished AR applications.

Those apps may settle a question or two. Will augmented reality really become something useful? Or will it end up like 3D Touch, a feature you can take or leave?

The First Public Look at the Steve Jobs Theater and Apple Park

This is another Apple product. As the site of the event, Apple Park will be shown to the public for the first time in any real sense.

Bloomberg's information is that the Steve Jobs Theater holds 1,000 people, and that every seat is upholstered in real leather and costs as much as $14,000 (about 91,000 yuan).

Inside there is also a rotating escalator, an effect much like the magic staircase to Dumbledore's office in Harry Potter: you stand on a step and it carries you to the top.

Reportedly, once the event ends, a huge centrally controlled wall will rise to reveal a hands-on area for the products.

As the place where Apple shows its products to reporters, the Steve Jobs Theater surely has more tricks than these.

A Special Deal With WeChat?

On the earnings call in August, Tim Cook said WeChat's wide use was an opportunity, and that Apple would work more closely with Tencent on "mutually beneficial products."

Not long after, Pony Ma took a group of Tencent executives, including WeChat chief Zhang Xiaolong, to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino to meet Cook.

What they discussed wasn't made public, but the Chinese market matters more and more to the iPhone. Over the past five quarters, Apple's revenue in Greater China has fallen steadily while the US, Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia-Pacific have grown. The figure for this year's second quarter: leaving China out, Apple's revenue everywhere else rose 18%; China dragged the worldwide growth rate down to 11%.

China is still Apple's second-largest market after the US. Among the moves that follow from that, Apple named Isabel Ge Mahe, previously a vice president of technology, as managing director for Greater China. She used to lead the development of China-specific iPhone features, and is now the only executive on Apple's top team whose job is a regional market.

Tonight you should see more news about China, and Apple's ties with Chinese companies will only get closer.