iPhone X Release Date Was Meant for 2018, Explaining Apple’s Odd Triple Phone Launch

The all-screen iPhone X we're holding in our hands wasn't meant for this world – at least not this year, revealed an Apple executive in a new interview.

While the iPhone X release date is Friday, November 3, 2017, the original plan was to launch the redesigned smartphone next year in 2018, according to Dan Riccio, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering to Mashable.

This suddenly accelerated release date gives us the first solid reason as to why Apple announced three iPhones at once and strangely sidelined the attention the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus could have received.

Why did the iPhone X shift to 2017?

There was a serious gamble to launching the iPhone X with untested technology like the TrueDepth camera a year sooner than Apple had originally anticipated.

Why would Apple risk suddenly pivot from the original timetable? Riccio doesn't say, but we do know that alluring all-screen Android phones were stacking up this year, like the Samsung Galaxy S8, Note 8 and LG V30 to name a few.

Hastening the iPhone X schedule also meant that any of Apple's usual 11th hour changes weren't going to happen on the nearly bezel-less smartphone.

“As far as last-minute design changes? Actually, we didn’t have time for it,” said Ricco in the interview. “Quite frankly, this program was on such a fast track to be offered [and] enabled this year. We had to lock [the design] very, very early."

Even more fascinating, he noted, “We spent no time looking at [putting] fingerprints on the back or through the glass or on the side.”