Apple's 'Three Minutes' films a real CNY train-platform reunion on iPhone X

In early 2018 Apple wanted to push the iPhone X camera in China before Chinese New Year, in a market where it was losing share to Huawei. A 2017 shot-on-iPhone film, Détour, had already shown the format could carry a story.

Film a true three-minute train-platform reunion between a conductor mother and son entirely on an iPhone X, proving the camera through emotion, not specs.

Apple hired Hong Kong director Peter Chan to film the true story of a train conductor who used a three-minute station stop to see her son — an on-screen countdown drives the drama. Every frame was shot on an iPhone X, and Apple China published making-of and camera-tips content alongside the film.

The film drew 68M+ views in less than a week and became Apple's first Chinese New Year short — the template it has repeated every CNY since (One Bucket (一个桶) in 2019, The Daughter (女儿) in 2020).

Apple entered the 2018 Chinese New Year season needing to sell the iPhone X camera in China, where it had launched the previous November amid growing competition from Huawei. Its answer was not a spec commercial but a short film: Three Minutes (三分钟), a 7-minute piece based on a true story, released on 1 February 2018 on Apple Singapore's YouTube channel and Chinese platforms.

The story: a mother who works as a conductor on one of China's longest train routes cannot take leave during Spring Festival, so her sister brings her young son to a station stop. The pair has exactly three minutes together, and the mother spends them making the boy recite his multiplication tables. An on-screen countdown gives the reunion urgency, and real footage of families meeting at stations reinforces the emotion.

The film was directed by Hong Kong director Peter Chan and shot entirely on an iPhone X. Apple paired it with a making-of page on apple.com.cn explaining camera settings and stabilisation, turning the advertisement into a mobile-filmmaking tutorial. The Apple logo appears only at the end.

According to Adweek figures cited by Marketing Dive, the film received more than 68 million views in less than a week of airing. It was Apple's first Chinese New Year short film, and the annual shot-on-iPhone Chinese New Year film has continued every year since: One Bucket (2019, Jia Zhangke), The Daughter (2020, Zhou Xun), and later editions.

It anchors a product claim in a real, emotionally charged human story, so 'shot on iPhone X' is demonstrated by feeling rather than asserted as a spec.

The three-minute real-world constraint gave the narrative a built-in countdown clock and inherent dramatic tension.

Making-of and camera-tips content extended the ad into a teaching tool, widening its audience beyond potential iPhone buyers.

It created a repeatable annual format, turning a one-off campaign into a ritual Chinese audiences now anticipate each Spring Festival.

Prove a technical product claim with a story people already care about: 'shot on iPhone X' becomes moving proof when the subject is a mother's three-minute reunion.

Apple repeated the format every Chinese New Year with increasingly high-profile talent — Jia Zhangke's One Bucket (2019), Zhou Xun and director Theodore Melfi's The Daughter (2020), and later films such as Awaken (阿年) and Passing the Five Passes (过五关) — making the shot-on-iPhone Chinese New Year short a fixture of Chinese social media. Three Minutes remains the canonical example of a brand proving a camera through narrative, and it is widely cited in mobile-filmmaking and advertising case studies.