By: Seth Householder –

You might think that the X in the new iPhone X stands for eXpensive, but the wizards at Apple have plenty of eXtraordinary features to justify their one-thousand dollar price tag.

On the stage of the new Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, California, the iPhone X was announced Sept. 7 along with the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Among the X’s many new features is wireless charging – which will be made possible by the the new durable glass on both the front and the back of the phone.

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres even weighed in on the new design, saying, “The glass is not only in the front. It’s in the back, so now you can break it on both sides. It’s for those of us who cracked the front and thought, ‘I can do better.’”

But the iPhone X takes it up a notch. Not only does it have augmented reality (a technology that superimposes a computer generated image on the user’s view of the real world, think Pokemon Go), wireless charging and the front and back glass, but it also has no home button, a huge step up from the designs of the previous iPhones, all of which have home buttons. It may look a bit strange not having that cute little circle at the bottom of the phone, but it’s a welcome change.

When asked about the absence of a home button, Cameron Sharp (11) said, “The home button is nice to have, like sometimes when my screen doesn’t work, I have the home button to work with.”

Taking the place of the Touch ID used for previous generations of iPhones, which would memorize your fingerprint to unlock your phone instead of the classic passcode, the iPhone X also has a few more things up its sleeves: enter the all new Face ID. The Face ID memorizes your face. Your face is your password.

“All you have to do is scan your face once,” said DeGeneres. “And then again after you get a haircut. And then again after you get a nose job. And then again after you buy a hat.”

The Face ID should make it easier to open your phone, but there are some concerns about it. Chief among them is, “What about identical twins?” Since they look the same, can they unlock each other’s iPhones?

Sharp is an identical twin, but is not concerned about the potential security issues posed by the Face ID “[It] depends on the quality of the software. The lesser quality, the more discrepancies it’ll have, meaning twins can get into each other’s phones. If it’s good quality software, the phone will be able to tell the difference between twins.”

The iPhone X also has a full screen display, the best camera in any Apple device, 21 hours of battery life, and the most powerful processing chip ever (in a smartphone). The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus aren’t as jam-packed as the X, but they still come with wireless charging and augmented reality.

You can pre-order the iPhone 8 now, with shipping starting on Sept. 22 for $699.99 or get the bigger model, the iPhone 8 Plus for $949.99. Also, you can pre-order the iPhone X on Oct. 27 for $999.99. It ships on Nov. 3 and supply is supposed to be extremely limited.