In addition to the Apple Watch Series 3, Apple during the event held at the Steve Jobs Theater unveiled the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Both the smartphones bring significant improvements in hardware from last years iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. What do you get? a new colour, more powerful processor, an upgraded camera that can capture deeper pixels, support for argument reality and more.
Talking about design, Apple iPhones was always the premium standard for smartphones. The Apple iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus get a glass front and back design reinforced by steel. It has 50 percent deeper strengthening layer and it’s made from aerospace-grade custom aluminum alloy. Making it more durable is the IP67 rating for splash, water, and dust resistant. For colour choices, you get to choose from Silver, Space Grey and the new Gold finish.
The Apple iPhone 8 flaunts a 4.7-inch Retina HD display, while the iPhone 8 Plus get much bigger 5.5-inch Retina HD display. With Apple’s True Tone technology, the colour temperature of the display changes based on your surrounding. This beautiful screen also comes deeply integrated with 3D Touch technology and has a wide colour gamut.
Powering both iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus is the new 64-bit A11 Bionic processor. It’s a six-core CPU including two high-performance cores. Compared to older generation Apple A10 processors, the new A11 is 25 percent faster. Also, the four high-efficiency cores of A11 is almost 70 percent faster than the A10. Both mobiles pack Neural Engine and Embedded M11 motion coprocessor. They also pack the first-ever Apple designed GPU that’s heavily optimised for Apple’s Metal 2 graphics framework.
Coming to photography, the Apple iPhone 8 carries a single 12-megapixel back camera. It gets a new image signal processor (ISP) that helps in low-light photography. It comes with f/1.8 aperture, Optical Image Stabilization to reduce those handshakes and Quad-LED true tone flash for brighter natural photos. According to Apple, it can capture “deeper pixels” and can take in 83 percent more light.
For Apple iPhone 8 Plus you get the dual camera setup at the back. It packs two 12-megapixel cameras, one is a wide-angle lens with f/1.8 aperture and other a telephoto lens with f/2.8 aperture. Both cameras also feature dual optical image stabilization and a quad-LED True Tone flash support. It can offer Optical zoom as well as Digital zoom of up to 10x for photos and 6x for videos.
Going through the camera tricks, Apple this time is packing “Portrait Lighting” mode. What it does is, when you take a portrait photo it will separate your portrait from the foreground. It then analyses the lighting and adds dramatic studio lighting effects to your portrait. Cameras are also calibrated for Augmented Reality and designed to handle low-light and 60 fps video. It also got new gyroscope and accelerometer that ensures accurate motion tracking. You can now capture slo-mo (slow motion) videos in 1080p at 120 fps or 240 fps.
For selfies and video calls, the both iPhones come with a 7-megapixel FaceTime camera. It features f/2.2 aperture, Retina Flash, Auto HDR and can record videos at 1080p HD.
For connectivity, the Apple iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus supports 4G LTE which also works with every Indian telcos’ 4G band. You also get VoLTE support for making HD voice and video calls. Other connectivity options include 3G and 2G networks, 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0 wireless technology and NFC. Both devices run on the latest Apple iOS 11 operating system which also comes with a more advanced Siri.
For audiophiles out there, both iPhones packs stereo speakers on both top and booth side. The improved stereo speakers are now 25 percent louder than iPhone 7 with deeper bass. For added security, Touch ID fingerprint sensor built into the front home button. Owing to the glass design, the new iPhones come with wireless charging, powered by Qi open wireless standard.
Finally, to the pricing, the Apple iPhone 8 64GB storage variant gets a price tag of $699 or around Rs 45,000. Whereas, the iPhone 8 Plus 64GB storage variant will retail for $799 or around Rs 52,000. Pre-orders for both iPhones begins 15th September in selected countries and sale starts on 22nd September 2017. Apple has not yet revealed the pricing and availability of the new iPhones in India.