A glut of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus reviews are no doubt hitting
your social media streams right now, and it’s hard to keep track of all those
opinions. While talking about design, experience, and “feel,” are important,
the key question remains: What does this phone let you do that your old phone
didn’t Here’s what you’re missing out on by sticking with your older hardware.
Charge wirelessly
The iPhone 8 series phones have glass backs once again (like
the iPhone4!), and underneath that smooth skin are the guts it takes to charge
wirelessly. Apple uses the Qi platform, which should seem familiar to pretty
much anyone who has ever used wireless charging on anything, including Android
phones. This works great when you’re sleeping and the phone is sitting on your
bedside table, but since the device has to sit on the pad the whole time, you
can’t use your phone in a normal way. It’s useful in the car, but it’s worth
noting that it won’t work with CarPlay right now (unless you have a specific
BMW), which will continue to be the case until more vehicles become compatible.
So, don’t throw away that Lightning cable in your car just yet.
Use Bluetooth 5 gadgets
If you’re using a current generation iPhone, you’re using
Bluetooth 4, which was a considerable step forward thanks to its reduced power
usage. The iPhone 8 series moves up to Bluetooth 5, which promises a more
reliable and efficient connection, especially when it comes to smart home
gadgets. The drawback, however, is that there really aren’t any compatible
Bluetooth 5 gadgets to pair it with just yet. The phone will still work fine
with legacy Bluetooth products of course, but this is a feature that won’t pay
off for a while.
Charge faster
The charger that comes with the iPhone 8 is the same white
5W brick it has always been. But if you have access to a higher-powered charger
like the one from an iPad Pro or even a USB-C MacBook, you can now juice up
your phone more rapidly. It’s unclear if this will affect overall battery life
and durability (rapid charging has historically had a negative effect on
batteries), but it’s great if you need to power up quickly. Reports have found
you can get roughly 50 percent battery charge in about 30 minutes if you use a
29W USB-C charger for a MacBook Pro on the iPhone 8.
Shoot fancier video
The cameras inside the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus have been
upgraded, and Apple has announced some small hardware tweaks, but those changes
are manifested primarily as a spec bump in video capture. You can now grab 240
fps slow-motion video at full HD (1080p), whereas the iPhone 7 could only
manage 720p. The 8 and 8 Plus also shoot 4K video at 60p, which requires it to
move and process a lot of pixels, which is possible thanks to the speed
increase that comes from upgrades like the new A11 Bionic processor. In short:
The camera is faster when shooting video.
Portrait lighting effects
Apple first introduced Portrait Mode last year alongside the
iPhone 7 Plus’ dual-camera system. The added depth effect did a lot to make
iPhone photos look like they could have been taken with a DSLR, or at least a
camera with a bigger imaging sensor. Now, the company has added another feature
called Portrait Lighting Effects, which are supposed to make a human subject
look like they were lit in a controlled situation.
I’m a real photo and lighting snob, and so far I haven't
been impressed by the results I've seen in demos and in photos shared online.
The phone is manipulating existing image data to move highlights around the
face, and it has a tendency to make the brighter areas look harsh. The Theater
lighting mode drops the background to black and cranks up the drama on the
facial lighting, which will surely be popular, but also needs polish. This
effect is still in beta, so it can be forgiven for some early ugliness, but it
has a long way to go.
Get more color out of the screen
While its screen is basically the same as the 7's on paper,
the iPhone 8 does have the TrueTone tech from the iPad Pro built-in. It adjusts
the white balance of the screen to look more accurate and neutral according to
ambient light. The iPhone 8 is also compatible with HDR technology currently
rolling out on platforms like Netflix and Amazon. So, some content will look
better, even though the iPhone 8 didn't get the OLED upgrade treatment like the
flagship iPhone X.
Store more data
The top-end iPhone 8 models come with 256 GB of storage,
compared to 128 GB in the iPhone 7 (if you buy it from Apple). That's twice as
much!
And, well, that's most of it. There are a few other hardware
differences, but most of the tangible changes come as a result of an update to
iOS 11. The processor has gotten a considerable bump, but that likely won’t
affect your overall experience much unless you’re upgrading from a much older
phone, or you do a ton of the cool new augmented reality kit stuff that comes
with ARKit (which will be available on older phones, too).
The iOS 11 update is out now. So if you’re thinking about
upgrading to a new phone, download the software upgrade to your current device
first. You’ll get a glut of new features you didn’t have yesterday—including
ARKit, the new Control Center, the updated Siri voice, and a redesigned App
Store that’s much easier to browse—without comitting to new hardware.
