We just got a quick chance to play with the iPhone X, Apple’s new flagship phone arriving later this year.

The thing that a lot of people want to talk about with the iPhone X is its $999 starting price, but when you have the phone in your hand, it feels… worth it. The X is an extremely beautiful device, with a stainless steel band and glass back curving into a 5.8-inch OLED display that stretches all the way across the front of the phone. It’s a bigger display than the 5.5-inch Plus-size iPhones, but a much, much smaller body. Those bezels — turns out they’re huge. Happily, the X is also a little thicker and less slippery than the iPhone 7, which was basically suicidal in its ability to fly out of my hands. If anything, the X evokes the original iPhone more than anything, with that stainless steel band and black front. Compared to what Samsung is doing with curved OLED displays on Galaxy devices, it’s very different: there’s still a black border around the display. The phone feels small, but in a differnt way than, say, the S8.

Apple’s calling this a “Super Retina Display” with 1125 x 2436 pixels of resolution, making it the highest-density screen on any iPhone. It’s super sharp to look at and punchy and vibrant as you’d expect from an OLED screen. It has all of Apple’s signature tech, too, including 3D Touch and TrueTone automatic calibration. I’ve generally preferred LCDs to OLEDs, but the X OLED display doesn’t seem to share any of the extreme oversaturation or pixel matrix weirdness of other OLEDs I’ve seen.

THE SCREEN IS THE STAR OF THE SHOW, AND FACEID ACTUALLY WORKS

The screen dictates everything about the iPhone X’s design, including its lack of a home button. This will probably be one of the most controversial things about the phone among iPhone users, but Apple has done a lot of work to make iOS feel natural without a home button. I couldn’t test out the new FaceID authentication myself without setting it up, but it was configured for one of Apple’s demo assistants, and it worked every time he showed it off, even under the frenetic conditions and bright lights of the demo area.

FaceID works because of the TrueDepth camera system that’s tucked into the display notch at the top of the phone — there’s a lot of sensors packed in there, including a IR depth camera and a projector that throws 30,000 infrared dots on your face. The systems reads the map, matches it against the stored image on the phone using a neural network processor built into the phone, and unlocks the phone. Apple says it won’t work if you’re not paying attention, and sure enough, the phone wouldn’t unlock when the demo assistant had his eyes close. When he opened his eyes, the phone quickly unlocked. It was pretty impressive.

Apple says the system learns your face, even if you’re wearing glasses, a hat, or change your hairstyle. And importantly, it says the system can’t be fooled by a photograph of you. Overall it’s all much better than the face-unlock systems we’ve seen on other smartphones, but we’ll have to really test it out in harsher conditions. And try to fool it, of course.

The lack of a home button does lead to some new interface patterns you’ll have to learn, though. You wake up the screen with just a tap — or better, by picking it up, which turns on the screen automatically. That makes sense, but my muscle memory got in the way of the new vertical gestures several times: where swiping up used to open Control Center, it’s now how you multitask: you swipe up to go home, and swipe up and hold to enter the app switcher. Control Center is now a swipe down from the right top edge, and the notifications shade is a swipe down from the top left.

Apple Pay is now different as well: instead of pointing your phone at the card reader and using Touch ID, you first double-click the (larger) side button, authenticate with your face, and point the phone at the reader. It’s a little less smooth than just grabbing your phone and pointing it to pay, but it’s not terrible either.

All these new gestures definitely feel a little messy — especially that swipe-and-hold move, which took me a few tries to get right. But I suspect it’ll be a quick adjustment once we have the phone for real.

THE FRONT CAMERA IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE REAR ONE

That front camera system powers a whole bunch of stuff, including new animated emoji that react to your face and some extremely impressive new filters in Snapchat. Portrait Mode is now also available on the front camera, as is Apple’s new Portrait Lighting effect. We’ve reached the point where the front camera on the iPhone is now more important and interesting than the rear one.

The rear camera on the iPhone X hasn’t been ignored, though, and it’s largely the same as the new dual-camera iPhone 8 Plus. It’s dual lens, but with a brighter f/2.4 telephoto lens that has OIS just like the f/1.4 wide angle camera.

The back of the phone is less unique than the front. It’s the same glass and metal sandwich as the iPhone 8, with dust and water resistance and wireless charging based on the Qi standard. Apple’s selling Mophie and Belkin Qi charging pads in its stores, but next year it’s putting out a new charging pad called the AirPower that can charge an iPhone, AirPods, and an Apple Watch all at once, with power information sent to the iPhone display. (Apple also says its working with Qi to make all of that part of the standard, but we’ll see how that goes.)

Apple says the iPhone X lasts two hours longer than the iPhone 7 between charges, and of course claims its A11 Bionic chip with two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores is faster than ever. But we’ll have to wait until we’re able to review it to put those claims to the test.

Oh, and there’s no headphone jack, which is uniformly annoying on every new phone that omits it. But Apple’s all about wireless now, so make sure you save up for AirPods or Beats X or some other wireless headphones as well.

The iPhone X doesn’t arrive until November, and based on what we’ve seen in our brief impressions, it’s going to be quite popular when it does. Even if it does start at a thousand dollars.

Connecting your phone to your Windows 10 PC has never been easier—and with the hints Microsoft has dropped as part of the Fall Creators Update, it looks like the phone will be a big deal in future PCs.

Right now, if you own either an Android phone or an Apple iPhone, you can reply to texts right from your PC. In the future, you’ll be able to take webpages you were reading on your train ride and send them to your Windows PC at the office. Passwords? Who needs ‘em? And now, with a dedicated Phone section within the Settings menu, Microsoft appears to be setting up a framework for even stronger connections in the future.

For those of you frantically waving Windows phones—yes, you too can connect your phones to your PC, via the Continuum experience Microsoft debuted a little more than a year ago. Unfortunately, with limited hardware and tepid customer support, Microsoft’s Windows phone aspirations are basically dead. Instead, Microsoft has focused on bringing its ecosystem to the far more popular iPhone and Android platforms.  There’s just one catch: You’ll need stable and Insider beta builds right now, at least until (hopefully) the Fall Creators Update unites the two.

1. Reply to texts right within Windows

If you’re like me, you probably work best without distraction—and most of your electronic gadgets are primarily designed to distract you, with notifications, popups and audible tones to get your attention. Texts and phone calls are the worst, in part because we’ve programmed ourselves to prioritize those needs above everything else. Now, Windows 10 allows you to treat a text like just another email.

Here’s what you’ll need: an up-to-date Windows 10 PC, an Android phone or iPhone—and, most importantly, the Microsoft Cortana app for Android or Cortana for the iPhone. If you wish, Cortana can step in and largely replace your phone’s digital assistant. Even if you refuse her assistance, however, Cortana operates behind the scenes as the connective tissue between your phone and your PC. We’ve used the most popular phone platform, Android, for this article.

The key to connecting your phone and your PC lies within the Cortana app’s cross-device settings (Go to the app’s “hamburger menu” in the upper left-hand corner, then go to Settings > Cross device.) Make sure that the top three settings (Missed call notifications, Incoming message notifications, and Low battery notifications) are all toggled on. You can also toggle on App notifications sync, though of the four apps Cortana detected, some were obsolete (my discontinued Basis Peak fitness band app) and others were of dubious value, such as Google’s VR services.

A bit strangely, the ability to sync Cortana itself is off by default. If you toggle it on, the app warns that Cortana will have the ability to read all your messages. For now, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to do so, though it’s certainly possible that in the future your spouse might be able to text you a reminder—“pick up eggs at the store” and Cortana will interpret it as a formal reminder.

As you might expect, the capabilities that the Cortana app toggled on enable the corresponding abilities within your PC. When your phone’s battery drops below a certain point (usually about 15 percent) a low-battery notification will slide in from the lower right-hand corner, and will archive itself within your Action Center notifications. If you miss a phone call, another notification will appear. Texts sent to your phone will also appear as pop-up notifications.

What makes this especially convenient is the ability to reply to phone calls and texts right at your PC. If you miss a text, for example, you can click the notification (look for the downward-pointing caret) and a text box opens up. Within it, you can send a reply, and Cortana will talk to your phone and send it on its way. Even if you miss a call, you can send a text letting the other party know you’ll respond soon. Windows doesn’t allow you to actually call the other party back—either by phone or by Skype—though this could, presumably, be added to the future.

If there’s a drawback, though, it’s that this capability still isn’t as reliable as it needs to be. If you move among multiple Windows PCs, Windows can get confused about which one you’re working on, and send notifications to another. But even if you’re not switching PCs, Windows has an annoying habit of not always sending notifications until you shift focus between apps, or resume working from sleep or hibernation. Then a string of notifications pop up on your PC. Fortunately, you can still go into the Action Center and respond via text from the notification itself.

2. Pick up where you left off, on the web

Microsoft is still adding features to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, and Windows 10 Insider Build 16257 finally added one of the features Microsoft had originally promised: the “pick up where you left off” capability for phones. The idea is that you should be able to move seamlessly between Windows devices, specifically your phone and your PC. Again, this should be eventually part of the Fall Creators Update, due in September or so.

To enable this feature, you’ll need to do two things: link your phone within Windows, and download the required mobile app.

Insider Build 16257 adds a new section to the Settings menu: the Phone settings menu. There, the relatively spartan Phone settings asks you to connect your phone to your PC. To do so, you’ll need to enter your phone number to text yourself a link to the app you’ll need—Microsoft Apps, which began life as an index of the Microsoft apps within the respective app stores. A recent update enables the app to connect your phone to your PC. (It’s not clear whether you’ll eventually need both the Cortana apps as well as the Microsoft Apps to connect your phone to your PC, but for now, you do.)

Now, when you surf to a webpage—even on Android’s Chrome browser—you’ll have the option to “share” it to your PC, just as you might share it to Twitter or Facebook. You’ll have the options to share it now or share it later. Sharing it now immediately opens a webpage using Windows’ Edge browser. Sharing it later should place the link inside the Action Center’s notifications for later viewing, though a bug seemed to prevent that from working on my machine. (It appears that Build 16273 may fix this, based on the update notes.)

Right now, the sharing options are not available on the mobile Office apps, though you can always auto-save documents to OneDrive for later editing on the PC.

Note that Microsoft already provides a PC-centric “pick up where you left off” capability within Cortana, where users who work on more than one PC can theoretically resume their work on another PC. However, it’s of limited use. Click the Cortana search box, and then the “I’ve got more for you…” box just above. Cortana will then show you the apps you were previously working on. That’s of limited use: You’re really going to forget that you were working in Outlook?)

3. Bypass your Windows password and use your phone instead

By now, you’ve probably heard of two-factor authentication, where your phone is used as an additional authentication beyond your password. Use it!  But you may not know that you can avoid using your Windows password and use your phone as the primary login method to certain Microsoft apps and services—theoretically, at least.

Remember, two-factor security is based on any two of these three factors: what you know, what you have, and what you are. Normally, two-factor authentication works by asking you for your password (what you know), then texting a code to your phone, or using an app (what you have). Microsoft’s Authenticator app for Android and iPhone is the approved way to receive that code. The combination of the password you know and the code Microsoft sends to your device secures the transaction.