AYEPHONE OR NOPHONE?
APPLE fans have been treated to an unusually generous harvest this year.
The Californian tech firm launched two very different smartphones recently: the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X.
6
Which leaves Apple fans facing a HUGE decision.
The iPhone 8 and 8+ will hit the stores tomorrow and are likely to prove extremely popular.
These two phones are undoubtedly the best on the market right now and the most powerful Apple has ever made, as our review revealed earlier this week.
Yet the £999 iPhone X is inevitably going to knock them off the top branch when it's released on November 3.
So is it worth waiting and saving up for the iPhone X or should you get online and buy an iPhone8?
To help you find out, we've drawn up a list of five reasons why you should get an iPhone 8 - and one why you might want to hold off.
6
The iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus tech features and specs
The iPhone 8
- Comes in space grey, silver and gold
- A glass back design
- 4.7-inch Retina display
- A11 Bionic, the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone, features a six-core CPU design with two performance cores that are 25 per cent faster and four efficiency cores that are 70 per cent faster than the A10 Fusion, offering industry-leading performance and energy efficiency
- 12 MP rear camera
- Wireless charging
- Splash, water and dust resistant
- 64GB and 256GB capacity models starting at £699
The iPhone 8 Plus
- Comes in space grey, silver and gold
- A glass back design
- 5.5-inch Retina HD display
- Dual 12-megapixel cameras with Portrait mode with Portrait Lighting, bringing dramatic studio lighting effects to iPhone, allowing customers to capture stunning portraits with a shallow depth-of-field effect in five different lighting styles
- Wireless charging
- Splash, water and dust resistant
- 64GB and 256GB capacity models starting at £699
The iPhone X
- All glass design
- 5.8-inch Super Retina display
- Face ID that recognises your face
- 7-megapixel TrueDepth camera that enables Face ID features
- Splash, water and dust resistant
- Dual 12-megapixel cameras with Portrait mode with Portrait Lighting, bringing dramatic studio lighting effects to iPhone, allowing customers to capture stunning portraits with a shallow depth-of-field effect in five different lighting styles
- Wireless charging
- A11 Bionic, the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone
- Animoji
- 64GB and 256GB models starting at £999
Apple fans will feel right at home with the iPhone 8
The design of the iPhone X is a massive break from tradition for Apple, as it features a distinctive "infinity screen" which covers its entire face.
The iPhone 8, on the other hand, feels more like a traditional iPhone.
It comes in three cool new colours, including the usual space grey and silver as well as a striking, warm and unusual shade simply called "Gold", a pinkish, orangey tone which reminded me of old school Andrex toilet paper (sorry Apple).
OVER X-CITED OR UNDERWHELMED? Apple iPhone 8 goes on sale – but smaller queues spark claims that hardcore Apple fans are waiting for the iPhone X
The iPhone 8 is definitely visually striking, with a metallic band around the edges and a beautiful all-glass body.
If you're in the market for an upgrade and are an iPhone fan, you can't really go wrong with the 8.
It isn't a huge surprise, but it's a solid, luxurious-feeling upgrade which is noticeably more powerful than previous models.
It's the cheapest and most immediate option
You can pick up the basic model of iPhone 8 for £699.00 and the larger plus model for £799.
This is significantly cheaper than the £999 cost for the iPhone X.
It's likely that the super-powerful processor and glossy display of the iPhone 8 will satisfy most Apple fans.
So if you need an iPhone NOW and want to save a bit of money, you should definitely go and get an 8.
Demand for the iPhone X is likely to be off the scale, so you might have to wait a few weeks or even months to get one after its release date later in the year.
If you want a new iPhone immediately, you need to get the 8.
6
The iPhone 8 features cutting-edge wireless charging
Obviously, Apple is keeping a few clever tricks back for the iPhone X.
The 8, for instance, does not feature Face ID, which lets users unlock the iPhone X by scanning their face rather than typing a password.
But it most certainly does feature wireless charging, which is brilliant.
This means you just put the phone on a "plate" to fill it up with juice, rather than plugging it into a wall.
Cleverly, you can even leave your phone in its case whilst it charges, as long as you've bought an official Apple case.
6
This is a bit of a slow process right now, so you're best just leaving your phone on the charger overnight.
I was really impressed by wireless charging, which feels very futuristic and will one day liberate you from the hundreds of cables we call keep around the house just now.
The gadget also supports technology called "fast charging", which can fill up the battery in just half an hour using the power cable from recent Apple laptop computers.
Battery life is also quite impressive and the phone goes for noticeably longer without needing to be charged.
If you buy an iPhone 8, you really are getting a state of the art gizmo and wireless charging is definitely one of its coolest features.
The iPhone 8 features an amazing camera
This is one of the key features of any smartphone - and the iPhone 8 doesn't disappoint.
The dual camera on the iPhone 8 Plus is the winner here, allowing you to snap great images using Portrait mode, which artfully blurs the background.
You can also edit images using a process called "stage light", which employs machine learning to cast realistic light on the subject.
The camera also features a "larger, faster sensor" and "deeper pixels", as well as the ability to shoot video in 4K.
It's the best smartphone camera around and comes with all the neat new picture editing options introduced in iOS 11.
6
It's very powerful and pleasing to use
The iPhone 8 was memorably described as "".
Apple announced the iPhone X immediately after the 8 and the more expensive model stole the show, with Apple boss Tim Cook describing it as "the biggest leap forward" since the original iPhone.
It's hard not to feel a wee bit sorry for the 8th iPhone, which was slightly overshadowed by its pricer, more advanced sibling.
Yet even though it's bigger brother is definitely a bruiser of a phone, the power of the iPhone 8 should still be noted.
It uses a new A11 Bionic processor to absolutely chew through apps and does pretty much everything more quickly than its predecessors.
It opens up faster after you scan your fingerprint, for instance, and will run the most demanding apps with ease.
This means it's also perfect for "augmented reality", the technology which lets you look through the smartphone camera and see 3d animated images transposed on the real world.
6
One reason why you might not want to buy the iPhone 8
Sadly, there's one obvious reason why people might skip the latest iPhone.
In November you'll be able to get your hands on the iPhone X, which is a proper next-generation Apple smartphone.
For many Apple fans, nothing else but the priciest, most advanced model will do.
It's also hard to shake the feeling that the iPhone 8 is more of the same: an excellent device, sure, but not that different from the iPhone 7.
It remains to be seen whether the 8 will be a hit, but if you're in the market for a new mobile we think you will be extremely pleased with it - if you can resist holding out for the iPhone X.
MORE APPLE STORIES FROM THE SUN'S TECH TEAM
Topics