Most Apple iPhone iterations are simply incremental changes, now that the iPhone X took all the huge differences, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus remained more conservative for customers that do not a drastically changed experience.
So the screen sizes remain the same at 4.7 inches for the 8 and 5.5 inches for the 8 Plus and they are both water and dust resistant as before. Here’s a list of all the new features.
Screen
True Tone display from the iPad series finally comes to the iPhone. That is, the white balance of the screen changes according to the surrounding. Resolution, however, remains the same.
Security
Below the screen is the Touch ID. Unfortunately, the new Face ID has been reserved for the iPhone X only.
Body
The body is now made of glass on the front and back with an aluminum 7000 series frame holding it together. The glass on the front is said to be the “the most durable on any phone”. The body paint options include Silver, Space Gray and a new Gold that looks more like copper, but in a nice way.
Camera
The iPhone now has brighter 12MP rear camera at f/1.8 aperture size. The 8 Plus has a dual camera whose second sensor is still telephoto and with the same resolution of 12MP but brighter thanks to a f/2.8 aperture. The four-LED flash system from last year was upgraded to support slow-sync.
Cameras can now shoot 4K at 60fps, which is a world first in smartphones. 1080p or full HD videos can be shoots up to 240fps.
On the 8 plus, the telephoto camera has a neat new feature called Portrait Lighting. It scans the face of your subjects and makes it brighter and more vivid. The effect can be adjusted even after the shot has been taken.
The selfie camera remained at 7MP.
Under the hood
The new Apple A11 CPU has been improved over last year’s processor. It is a 6-core chip which two high performance cores that are 25% faster than last year’s A10 and four battery efficient cores that are a whopping 70% faster.
The GPU is the first ever that Apple has made in-house for the iPhone. It is 30% faster than the one on iPhone 7’s A10 Fusion chip.
In line with Apple’s tradition, the amount of RAM was never announced, but insider reports point to 2GB RAM for the 8 and 3GB for the 8 Plus.
Battery
The battery capacity was also not mentioned either. However, due to the glass construction, wireless charging was made possible. Fast charging was built in as wel;, it will fill 50% in just 30 minutes.
Audio
There are stereo speakers that are now louder than on the iPhone 7. The 3.5mm jack is still missing so you will have to depend on the lighting port for audio-out, but an adapter will be provide in the retail package.
Price and Availability
The Apple iPhone 8 and 8 Plus go on pre-order on September 15 and will be on shelves from September 22. The base model is double the capacity of the last year’s starting capacity, with 64GB, and will go for $699 for the iPhone 8 and $799 for the 8 Plus there are 256GB models available but their prices are yet to be announced.
