iPhone 8
It’s good. Just not exciting
From £699 from Apple, apple.com/uk Features 4.7-inch Retina HD display with True Tone, A11 Bionic chip, 12MP camera, wireless charging
The iPhone 8 is here, and, it’s more or less exactly what you’d expect a new iPhone to be. Apple has improved the camera, tweaked the design, and extended the battery life, as well as introducing useful new features.
The iPhone 8 measures 13.8x6.7x0.7cm – fractionally larger than the iPhone 7. The size makes it a easy to hold and use onehanded, which could be the killer reason to buy the iPhone 8 over anything else.
The iPhone 8 comes in silver, gold, and black. The gold is much truer to real rose gold than the previous ‘pinkness’. It boasts IP67 water-resistance, so it should survive in one metre of water for up to 30 minutes.
The stereo speakers are now louder – a clear improvement, but they still lack bass for true audiophiles. They do, however, create a pleasingly wide soundstage.
You don’t get the bezel-less display of the iPhone X and, as the iPhone 8’s design isn’t a massive departure from the iPhone 6 and 7, that does make it feel more dated. The iPhone 8 features a 4.7-inch 1334x750-pixel IPS LCD display which has a pixel density of 326ppi. That’s the same number of pixels as the iPhone 7 (and the three-year-old iPhone 6!). That’s quite surprising, as we were expecting a bump in resolution considering some Androids now pack QHD screens.
While the resolution of the iPhone 8 hasn’t been upgraded, what Apple has focused on improving is the brightness and colour representation. Apple has also added True Tone technology. This monitors the ambient light around the handset, and calibrates the screen to perfect it under your current lighting conditions.
The aluminium unibody design of previous iPhones has been replaced by a glass back, and this allows for wireless charging. The glass back feels great – it has a grippy coating that makes it feel secure in your hands. The camera lens still protrudes from the rear casing and, like the iPhone 7, there’s no headphone port.
Bionic power
The iPhone 8 comes packing Apple’s new and speedy A11 Bionic hexa-core (six-core!) processor. It’s the most powerful processor Apple has ever put in an iPhone. Tearing through different apps, playing music, watching video, and checking emails are all uninterrupted by the hardware (as is usual for a new phone). What’s super impressive is how instantly apps are ready when switching between numerous jobs.
Where the added processing power will really become apparent is when running the more intensive apps (which use ARKit, for example). Hopefully, it’ll also stay quick for a lot longer as well.
Apple has claimed the iPhone 8’s battery life is comparable to the iPhone 7, but we found it exceeded our expectations. We’re not talking two-day battery life, but we found it comfortably lasted a day with mixed usage.
And there are two new ways to charge – wirelessly and quickly (and yes, those are mutually exclusive). The new glass-backed design means that you can set the iPhone 8 down on a wireless charging pad and it’ll
instantly start sucking up juice. It’s the universal Qi standard as well. It’s a nice touch and convenient, but at the moment it’s rather slow. Also onboard the new iPhone 8 is ‘fast charging’, which charges the battery up to 50% in 30 minutes, but you’ll need to buy an additional USB-C to Lightning cable. On paper, the iPhone 8’s camera looks unchanged from the iPhone 7. You get the 12MP f/1.8 lens setup as you did previously, but now the sensor is larger and the software is smarter. The result is a big improvement, with the camera now capable of taking some stunning shots with great detail and contrast. It’s a shame you can’t get Apple’s dual camera system on the smaller phone; it means missing out on Portrait mode and optical zoom. The 7MP front facing camera, however, is also excellent, as is the 4K video recording at 60fps. That all means the iPhone 8 is a great smartphone. The battery life is decent, the camera improved, and the addition of wireless charging adds convenience. We like the glass-backed design and, thanks to the small screen, it’s one of the most ergonomic phones we’ve used. There’s one X-shaped problem. The iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus are both overshadowed by their more exciting, more expensive brother, and if you’re looking for the latest, greatest iPhone, you’re going to want the iPhone X. Of course, the iPhone 8 is considerably cheaper than the £999 iPhone X, coming in at £699. And that’s where our problem with the iPhone 8 lies: it’s now the ‘cheap’ iPhone.