Today’s iPhone launch, coming a full decade after the release of the original iPhone, will feature a device quite similar to Apple’s first ever smartphone. The newest iPhone, whose name has already leaked out as iPhone X, will be like the original in that it will be higher in price than most people are used to paying for phones, it will be constrained in availability due to the difficulty of its manufacture, and it will serve as a status symbol for its owners. Some will purchase it to signal their wealth, many will acquire it as a totem of their Apple fandom, and almost all will desire it simply by virtue of its limited availability and exclusivity.

When Apple launched the original iPhone, it was wildly different from the devices we called “phones.” In 2007, Nokias with T9 keypads were doing battle with BlackBerrys sporting full, three-dimensional QWERTY keyboards. Today, it’s no longer possible for any company to break so far from the norm — the mobile market moves too quickly, leaks are abundant, and phone designs are too mature for such revolutionary change — but Apple’s goal with the iPhone X is to indeed signal a new path for mobile devices. Sure, the Cupertino company will have the usual iterative updates to its lineup in the shape of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus models, but the X version will be the one that tells us where Apple wants to go.

The most immediate and obvious change will be in the obliteration of the bezels above and below the iPhone X’s screen. Together with the round home button, those bezels have come to define the iPhone (and even smartphones in general) in simplified graphics and emoji. Apple’s decision to do away with them seems only cosmetic, but it also moves the company away from the fingerprint authentication technology that the iPhone’s Touch ID helped to usher into the mainstream. Where the iPhone X is going, it won’t be needing either a home button or a fingerprint sensor, and the rumors ahead of its launch indicate that Apple will move to less proven forms of biometric ID like facial recognition.