iPhone X: Release date, price, features, pre-orders and everything else you need to know about Apple's new phone

The iPhone X is about to arrive.

The new Apple handset is the second phone of the season, after Apple released the iPhone 8. But it's the X that's receiving all of the attention, despite the fact that the 8 has much the same features.

Many people appear to be waiting for the release of the iPhone X before plunging in and buying one of Apple's new phones, if rumours about sales and production are to be believed. And it could be a sensible option: the iPhone X is perhaps the most anticipated, and most mysterious, Apple phone since the very first one.

It brings with it a range of new features, including facial recognition technology and a brand new kind of screen, which wraps all the way around the phone's front with the exception of two horns at the top. But those are so new and so untested that it might be worth waiting to see how they go down – and deciding whether to buy the iPhone X or its less exciting, more reliable sibling, the iPhone 8.

Here's everything you need to know about the new Apple phone.

The new phone comes out on 3 November. But pre-orders open a week before that, on 24 October.

If you want the phone anytime near when it comes out, you're going to want to keep that latter date in mind. Anyone who doesn't pre-order is probably going to have to wait – for reasons laid out below.

The release date might only be a few days away. But that doesn't mean you'll actually be able to get hold of one when it comes out.

All rumours suggest that supplies of the new phone are going to be very limited, in part because all the new technologies contained within it are so hard to make. That's going to mean that

All of that will become much more clear once the phone comes out. It will almost certainly sell out within hours of pre-orders opening, but we'll be able to tell exactly how hard it's going to be one by how quickly that happens, and how long Apple estimates orders will take.

If it drops back to a few weeks, for instance, then that's fairly normal. But if it's more than that, then we'll know that they're definitely in short supply.

The new phone is the most expensive one Apple has ever sold. By some distance.

The iPhone X starts at £999, or the same in dollars or euros. That will get you the 64GB version – if you pay an extra £150, you can get 256GB of storage.

Unlike the iPhone 8, the X only comes in those two storage options and in one size.

The iPhone 8 is already out there – readily available and far cheaper. So what's the difference between it and the X?

Both phones have many of the headline features of this year's release. Whichever model you get, you'll have Apple's new super-fast "Bionic" processor, wireless charging, the new augmented reality features and a vastly improved camera.

But with the X, the focus is on the screen – which uses new display technology and most notably wraps almost all the way over the entire front. It has an OLED screen and is the first time in years that Apple has introduced a new screen shape.

It's that screen shape that's the biggest unknown about the new phone. Developers are having to redesign their apps to take account of the little notch that's cut into the top – and some are having trouble doing so.

That notch houses the other standout feature of the new phone: Face ID. That's the facial recognition technology that replaces the fingerprint sensor, and although it is also mostly unknown and unreviewed, it's a little less strange than the shape of the screen.