The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, two of the three smartphones released in Apple’s 2017 lineup, went on sale last month but have been met with low demand. “The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are virtually perfect phones. And yet it’s already obsolete,” Business Insider’s Steve Kovach, in his review of the latest iPhone models, said.
Indeed, even with all the new specs, the newest iPhone models have not drawn large crowds or been in high-demand like previous smartphone releases. Analysts predict that buyers are waiting for the third release in Apple’s lineup, the iPhone X, which will be released in November. It’s predicted to have many radical changes in terms of operation and design.
Although new models, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are almost indistinguishable from their predecessor. The home button and screen size is still the same as the iPhone 7 model, it’s water resistant, and there’s still no headphone jack. The design is reminiscent of the iPhone 6 release in 2014, with even less color options than the iPhone 7 model (space gray, silver, and gold).
Still, Apple has made some improvements. Their 4.7 and 5.7 inch retina HD displays have been upgraded with Apple’s True Tone technology, which adjusts the screen’s white balance based on ambient light in the room, rendering whites correctly under any light source.
However, the most controversial change to the iPhone 8 and 8 plus is in the new glass back cover, which enables one of the largest internal changes—wireless charging. It also makes the phone heavier and more fragile. Place the phone on a Qi standard charging pad and it will charge right up but when it comes to battery life, it will only last about the same time as the iPhone 7.
In addition to the newly introduced wireless charging capability, the new line of phones utilize an updated A11 Bionic processor. With a six-core chip, two high-performance cores run 25 percent faster than the proceeding A10 Fusion and four high-efficiency cores run 70 percent faster. This basically allows apps and background tasks to be intelligently scheduled onto the appropriate cores, making load times faster and more efficient and improving gaming experience and battery life.
Apple also moved away from the PowerVR graphics processing unit (GPU), ending its long-term relationship with Imagination Technologies. Its newly constructed custom GPU design is 30 percent faster, with the same performance as A10 fusion, at one-half the power. The new GPU, paired with the A11 processor, has revolutionized smartphones by optimizing Apple’s digital assistant, Siri, and bringing machine learning capabilities to the palm of one’s hand.
Apart from the design and internal upgrades, the iPhone 8 camera has optical image stabilization (OIS) and a standalone 12 megapixel rear camera with an f /1.8 lens, improved sensors, and flash. The 8 plus adds one more camera lens with a f/2.8 aperture and new features like the portrait mode, which creates more depth of field by allowing an in-focus image in the foreground with a blurred background.
Overall, the iPhone 8 is a marked improvement on its predecessor because of upgrades like wireless charging, a faster processor, and better camera. Even so, there’s no getting around the fact that it will soon be overtaken by the iPhone X.
