Honestly, looking at images of the iPhone 10 today feels like looking at a time capsule from the exact moment the smartphone world shifted. It was 2017. Apple was celebrating a decade of the iPhone, and they decided to basically set their own rulebook on fire. No home button? A massive cutout at the top of the screen? It sounded like a disaster on paper.
But then the first official press shots hit.
You've probably seen those high-contrast marketing images of the iPhone 10—officially called the iPhone X—with that colorful, flowing "sand" wallpaper. It was a deliberate choice to show off the deep blacks of the first-ever OLED screen on an iPhone. Before this, we were all used to the slightly washed-out grays of LCD panels on the iPhone 8 and earlier. The iPhone 10 changed the visual language of what a "premium" phone was supposed to look like.
The Design That Forced Us to Love the Notch
When you browse images of the iPhone 10, the first thing your eye hits is "the notch." Back then, people were genuinely upset about it. Critics called it a "design fail" and mocked the way it bit into videos and photos. But Apple didn't hide it. In fact, their own design guidelines for developers specifically told them not to mask the notch with black bars.
They wanted it to be an icon.
The notch wasn't just a weird shape; it was the house for the TrueDepth camera system. If you look closely at high-res close-up images of the iPhone 10's top bezel, you’re seeing a tiny engineering miracle. There’s an infrared camera, a flood illuminator, a proximity sensor, and a dot projector that blasts 30,000 invisible dots onto your face. It replaced the fingerprint sensor entirely, moving us into the era of Face ID.
💡 You might also like: Why Everyone Is Talking About the Gun Switch 3D Print and Why It Matters Now
It's kinda wild how fast we got used to it. Within a year, almost every Android manufacturer was putting out their own version of a notched display.
Stainless Steel and Glass: A Heavier Kind of Luxury
If you compare side-by-side images of the iPhone 10 against the iPhone 8 (which launched at the same time), the difference in materials is startling. The X used a surgical-grade stainless steel frame. In the Silver model, this was polished to a mirror finish that looked almost like a piece of jewelry. The Space Gray version had a darker, PVD-coated finish that felt more stealthy.
It was heavy. Seriously.
At 174 grams, it felt significantly more substantial in the hand than previous models. That weight, combined with the all-glass back (needed for the new Qi wireless charging), gave it a "heft" that most people associated with high-end watches.
The Vertical Camera Bump: Function Over Symmetry
One of the most distinct ways to identify the iPhone 10 in a gallery of images is the rear camera housing. Unlike the iPhone 7 Plus or 8 Plus, which had horizontal cameras, the X flipped them vertically.
📖 Related: How to Log Off Gmail: The Simple Fixes for Your Privacy Panic
Why? Because the TrueDepth sensors for Face ID took up so much horizontal space at the top of the phone that the rear camera hardware had to be moved to clear them.
The specs were top-tier for the time:
- Dual 12MP sensors: One wide-angle ($f/1.8$) and one telephoto ($f/2.4$).
- Dual OIS: This was the big win. Both lenses had optical image stabilization, which made those zoomed-in 2x photos much less shaky.
- Quad-LED True Tone Flash: Tucked right in the middle of the two lenses to keep the footprint small.
How the iPhone 10 Display Redefined "Screen"
Basically, before the iPhone 10, every phone had a "forehead" and a "chin." You had big thick bars at the top and bottom. The iPhone 10 used a flexible OLED panel that actually folded under itself at the bottom. This allowed Apple to connect the display controller without needing a thick bottom bezel.
When you see images of the iPhone 10 today, it still looks surprisingly modern. The 5.8-inch Super Retina display had a resolution of $2436 \times 1125$ pixels. That gave it a pixel density of 458 ppi, which was the highest ever in an iPhone at that point.
The colors were tuned for accuracy rather than the "neon" saturation you often saw on Samsung phones of that era. Apple worked with Samsung Display to manufacture the panels, but the calibration was all in-house. It supported HDR10 and Dolby Vision, which made watching movies a completely different experience.
👉 See also: Calculating Age From DOB: Why Your Math Is Probably Wrong
Real-World Legacy and Practical Takeaways
Even though we’re years past its release, the iPhone 10 remains a pivotal design. It was the first phone to cost $999—a price point that seemed insane at the time but is now the standard for flagships. It also killed the home button, forcing us all to learn swipe gestures that we now use without thinking.
If you are looking at images of the iPhone 10 because you're thinking of buying a refurbished one or just researching tech history, keep these nuances in mind:
- Check the Frame: In used images, the Silver stainless steel frame is almost always covered in micro-scratches. The good news? You can actually polish them out with a bit of metal polish.
- The Screen Curve: Notice how the screen corners perfectly match the curve of the stainless steel body. This "squircle" design is much harder to manufacture than it looks.
- OLED Aging: If you're looking at a real-life photo of a powered-on iPhone 10 today, check for "burn-in" on the status bar or home bar. Early OLEDs were prone to it.
The iPhone 10 wasn't just a phone; it was a prototype for the next decade. Every iPhone since, right up to the latest Pro Max models, still carries its DNA—from the gesture-based navigation to the obsession with premium metal and glass. It's the design that proved Apple could still shock us, even when we thought we'd seen it all.
To get the most out of your iPhone 10 research, compare its "Silver" finish images against the "White" finishes of later models; you'll notice the X has a much more "creamy" or pearlescent look under the glass that Apple eventually moved away from.