Review

iPhone 8 and 8 Plus review: A worthy upgrade - but should you wait for the iPhone X?

The iPhone 8 Plus, left, and the iPhone 8
The iPhone 8 Plus, left, and the iPhone 8 Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley/Daily Telegraph

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 8 last week, it was the most advanced phone the company had ever made - for about 15 minutes.

Shortly afterwards, it revealed the iPhone X, the radically-redesigned, pricier and bigger-screened new iPhone. Inevitably, it distracted a little from the new features in the iPhone 8.

This is something of a shame, because the iPhone 8, and the bigger-screened 8 Plus are very fine phones indeed. While they carry less of an instant wow factor than the X, over time the 8’s qualities, their improvements upon previous iPhones come to the fore.

It is telling that for the first time in years, Apple has not followed a numbered iPhone - last year’s iPhone 7 - with an “s” variant. The message is that this phone is something brand new, not a mere iteration.

At the same time, the 8 and 8 Plus are familiar. They have the same basic design that iPhones have now had for four consecutive years. Apple is still selling the iPhone 7, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE, whose prices have been cut. And in a few weeks, the X will go on sale.

There have never been so many different iPhones, so who, exactly, is the 8 for?

8 or 8 Plus?

For the fourth year in a row, the 8 comes in two versions with two different screen sizes - the 4.7-inch screen of the iPhone 8 and the 5.5-inches of the iPhone 8 Plus.

I'm reviewing them together because the phones are, for the most part, the same, but as with previous years there are some differences. The 8 Plus has a dual camera which allows for an optical zoom effect and Portrait Mode - an in-focus subject with a blurred background.

Its larger housing also allows for a better battery life, which is a big advantage, and the Plus is £100 more expensive, at £799 and up. For me, the extra battery and camera make the Plus worth it; for a lot of people its about what feels most comfortable in their hands.

Design and display

At a first glance, from the front, the iPhone 8 is indistinguishable from the 6, 6s or 7. Turn it over, however, and it’s a different story. The metal back of previous iPhones has been replaced by a pane of glass, although the sides of the phone are still aluminium. The obvious reason for the glass back is that it allows for wireless charging, but it also gives a pleasant symmetry to the new iPhones that they haven’t had since the 4s.

The 8 comes in three colours - space grey, silver and gold. I played with the space grey in the hands on area and have reviewed the silver and gold, and found the second two much nicer. The gold is the most interesting, giving off a sort-of pinkish hue through the glass. It is bound to be the most popular - and has featured most in Apple’s marketing material - but I preferred the simplicity of the silver.

The iPhone 8 Plus, in gold, and the iPhone 8, in silver
The iPhone 8 Plus, in gold, and the iPhone 8, in silver, feature glass backs Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley/Daily Telegraph

Rarely for a glass backed phone, they don’t seem to noticeably pick up fingerprints, although this is usually an issue with darker colours - so space grey may be a different matter. And if you're worried that the glass back is simply another surface that will crack when dropped, Apple says it has strengthened its glass to make it 50 per cent more durable, although for obvious reasons I haven’t drop tested this on concrete.

While they’re not a radical departure from previous years, I do think that they are the best-looking iPhones Apple has made in years. On the other hand, if you put them in a case - as you should - it’s all rather academic.

The main differences to the LCD display are a wider “colour gamut” - the range of colours the screen can show - and True Tone, which uses a light sensor to soften the screen’s white balance depending on whether you’re sitting in the dark, in bright daylight or in artificial light, to make it easier to read. It’s not the sort of thing that jumps out at you, but you notice it when you turn it off, and if it stops my eyes going square I’m all for it.

iphone 8 and 8 plus
The iPhone 8's True Tone display improves the screen Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley/Daily Telegraph

While the display is more crisp and detailed than on previous iPhones, I don’t think it’s the best screen I’ve ever seen on a phone. Perhaps that’s unsurprising: the enormous OLED screen of the iPhone X is one of its key selling points.

Camera

When Apple announced the iPhone 8, the camera improvements it detailed all seemed a little, well, minor. The company says it has improved the sensors, image processor and flash, but there isn't actually much new in the way of specs or big features.

So I was surprised at how impressed I was with both the camera on the 8 and 8 Plus. Photos, especially in low light, appear brighter and far more colourful, and images appear sharper, with less noise.

If you’re familiar with the previous iPhone cameras, you’ll know about HDR mode, which takes two pictures - a normal one, and a second HDR photo that blends the best of three different photos to produce a balanced one. On the iPhone 8, there’s no HDR mode because the phone’s image processor is now good enough that the HDR photo is the best one, every time.

Like the 7 Plus before it, the 8 Plus has a dual camera, which allows an optical zoom as well as Portrait Mode - an in-focus image in the foreground with a blurred background. This time Portrait Mode has an upgrade that mimics different types of lighting coming from different directions, creatively called Portrait Lighting Mode.

It's a decent upgrade, especially the stage light feature that puts a spotlight on a subject, but I feel like Portrait Mode will come into its own on the iPhone X, when it works with the selfie camera.

Wireless charging

If there’s one brand new feature to write home about in the iPhone 8, it’s wireless charging. It’s far from the first phone to do it - wireless charging goes back as far as the Palm Pre in 2009 - but for better or worse, Apple adopting a technology is an endorsement that often brings it mainstream. It does have an added bonus with the iPhone 8, where there is of course no headphone jack, so if you’re listening to music through the lightning port, you can charge wirelessly at the same time.

Wireless charging involves a magnetic coil in the phone, attached to the battery, that receives power when the phone is placed on an inductive charging pad (the pad is connected to the mains). You keep the pad on your bedside table or desk, and just plonk your phone down on it to charge. It works even if your phone is in a case.

Apple doesn’t include a wireless charger with the iPhone, but it’s easy enough to buy your own online - the iPhone adopts the “Qi” (pronounced “chi”) standard, of which there are many online, and Apple is bringing out its own charging pad in the coming months. Ikea and others also sell a range of wireless charging furniture, a number of cars also have charging pads built in, and there have been limited trials in public places like hotels and coffee shops.

The iPhone 8 sits on a wireless pad to charge
The iPhone 8 sits on a wireless pad to charge, but you can still plug it in Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley/Daily Telegraph

I’ve been using Belkin’s £55 BoostUp charging pad for the purposes of this review, and while results with other pads may differ, I actually found that wireless charging was a little slower than plugging in a cable. Charging the 8 Plus for 30 minutes from a flat battery yielded 15 per cent on the charging pad, and 19 per cent when plugged in, so the difference isn’t massive, but definitely exists. Apple says a software update is coming sometime this year that will improve wireless charging speeds, so this may be a temporary phenomenon.

Speaking of charging speeds, for the first time the iPhone 8 supports fast charging, which Apple says can charge the battery up to 50 per cent in 30 minutes. However, once again this costs extra - a £25 Lightning to USB-C cable and a £69 USB-C power adapter - so taking advantage of the new iPhones’ extra charging options adds up.

Wireless charging is a nice feature: it’s more convenient, as well as simply being cool, to be able to put your phone down on a surface and have it start charging. At the same time, it’s not that difficult to just plug it in, and keeping it on the surface means you can’t hold your iPhone in your hand and use it as it charges, as you can when it’s plugged in.

The real benefit of wireless charging will be when airports, coffee shops and hotels just have wireless charging pads dotted around the place, so you can sit down and have your phone start charging, in the same way that Wi-Fi is now ubiquitous. This hasn’t happened yet despite other phones having supported wireless charging for some time, but maybe Apple’s clout will get things moving.

Performance and battery

One of the under-appreciated things about more recent iPhones is how fast - really fast - they have become. Things like the fingerprint sensor, camera shutter and opening apps now work almost instantly, and it makes us forget that iPhones used to be a little clunky.

Apple has a new chip in the iPhone 8, the same as in the upcoming iPhone X, that has the rather grand name of the “A11 Bionic”, giving 70 per cent better low-power performance and 30 per cent better graphics. There’s a noticeable upgrade to the iPhone 7 in practice, particular in things like how fast you unlock the phone and how quickly the camera autofocuses and takes pictures. It’s an important point to take into account when considering whether to buy the iPhone 8 or one of its ancestors - the new chip means the 8 should work well, for longer, as well as being supported for later versions of iOS.

One thing that hasn’t been improved is battery life. In fact, the battery capacity is a little smaller, but efficiency improvements mean the iPhone 8 lasts about as long as an iPhone 7. This is a bit of a disappointment, especially on the smaller model: after a few months of use my 7 often needed a recharge to get me through the day, and the bigger battery of the Plus models is a big reason for me to own one. Apple’s solution to this seems to be the addition of new tech like wireless and fast charging, and many of us have found coping mechanisms to get our batteries through the day, so perhaps battery life itself is not such a big deal. But the iPhone 8 certainly can’t claim to be the best on the market here.

iOS 11 and augmented reality

The new iPhones run iOS 11, which brings features like a new control centre, a revamped App Store and new Live Photo features, although this will be a free upgrade on September 19th for anyone on the iPhone 5s and up.

The iOS 11 feature where the iPhone 8 should excel is augmented reality, which allows app developers to place virtual objects in the real world through the camera feed that can interact with other objects. For example, Ikea’s app lets you create virtual furniture to see how it might look in your living room, and you can point your phone at the night sky to have it label the constellations. Its like how pokémon appeared in Pokemon Go, but just... much better.

Augmented reality apps will be available on all iPhones running iOS 11, but Apple says it has finely tuned the iPhone 8’s cameras to better support it, and that the new chip will make things smoother.

A lot of people are expecting AR to be the next big tech boom, and if you're one of those people, then the improvements to the iPhone 8 to support it will make a difference.

Other points

  • The stereo speakers are 25 per cent louder, and if you make a lot of handsfree calls or listen to music out loud, you'll notice the difference
  • The iPhone 8 is actually a tiny bit bigger than the 7, and 10g heavier at 148g. It's not the sort of thing you'll really notice, and it fits the same cases as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
  • Storage now starts at 64GB compared to the iPhone 7's 32GB, which accounts for some of the cost difference

Verdict

The iPhone 8 sits in an unfamiliar place. There’s a certain type of person who has to have the top-of-the-line iPhone each year, and unless they are worried about facial recognition or losing the home button, they will want to buy the iPhone X in six weeks time - not the iPhone 8 today.

That said, most people aren’t like that. They simply want the phone that will work, will take photos, and get them through the day - as well as not costing them £999. In that case, the iPhone 8 fits. Unlike the iPhone X, it is no revolution. It represents a continuation of what Apple has been doing for some time - tweaking and improving its phones each year.

So the 8 improves enough on the most important aspects of a phone - the display, the camera, performance and reliability - to make me recommend it over the iPhone 7, even if you can pick up the latter for less.

So how about other devices? Arguably, for the price you can pick up Android phones with better screens and cameras, and with more modern designs. Samsung's Galaxy S8 comes in at the same price at the iPhone 8, and the OnePlus 5 is cheaper. At this stage, however, the differences are less important than if you prefer iOS or Android, which is really a matter of taste.

For most Apple users, the real decision is which iPhone to buy, and if you aren't interested in shelling out for the X, the 8 is your new best option. Should you rush out and buy it? Probably not. If you need a new iPhone, is it a worthy upgrade? Certainly.

Pros: Significantly improved camera, faster, glass design

Cons: More expensive, wireless charging ecosystem needs to improve

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