What’s new in the iPhone 8
In June, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told Bloomberg: “We don’t feel an impatience to be first. It’s just not how we’re wired. Our thing is to be the best and to give the user something that really makes a difference in their lives.” He was talking about the unveiling of the HomePod, Apple’s late entrance to the smart speaker market pioneered by Amazon. But Cook could just as well have been talking about the next iPhone.
Due out this fall, the new smartphone arrives with lofty expectations. After all, this is the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone, a gadget that upended the industry and created an ecosystem of apps and accessories. However, the new iPhone won’t be a case-study of innovation, more a matter of perfecting features that are already out there in rival devices. Time and again, Apple has followed this “best, not first” philosophy, seizing on technologies and features bungled by rivals and implementing them well enough to spur widespread adoption. Proof of concept? More than 1.2 billion iPhones sold in the last decade.
Of course, plenty of other companies have employed the follow-and-perfect model. To cite one recent example, Facebook has debuted several photo features invented by social-media upstart Snap. But arguably no one does this better than Apple. The next iPhone will seamlessly mesh screen and charging technologies invented by others with such Apple innovations as a 3-D face scanner that unlocks the phone in a few hundred milliseconds. Apple declined to comment.
As previously reported by Bloomberg, Apple plans to release three new phones: successors to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus as well as a new, revamped model that sits at the high-end. All will have the usual upgrades like faster processors, but the revamped model is where Apple will flex its best, not first, muscles, as well as some features that haven’t been tried before.
The two most noticeable involve the screen. The display will use a technology called OLED, which makes for better color | OLED screen Samsung S8, Motorola Z2 Force, OnePlus 5 phone | Nearly all-screen design Samsung S8 and Essential phone | Glass front and back iPhone 4 & 4S | Stainless steel edges iPhone 4 & 4S | Inductive charging Palm, Samsung, Motorola, Sony and apple Watch | Longer power button | Slimmer bezels
Samsung S8, Essential phone, LG G6 | Tap to wake Android phones reproduction and deeper blacks and whites. The screen will also take up nearly the entire front of the phone, save for thinner bezels and a notch at the top of the front to fit in the camera and new sensors. OLED screens have been the core of Samsung’s devices for the past few years, while the nearly all-screen front with no home button design was popularised by Samsung’s S8 and also appears in the Essential Phone Android co-founder Andy Rubin debuted last week.
Other likely new features, spotlighted by code strings inside of an accidently released software package for the upcoming HomePod, include the ability to tap the phone’s screen to wake it up and inductive charging.