With Apple launching a slew of iPhones you are probably wondering whether you should buy the iPhone 8 or 8 Plus or hold out for the flagship iPhone X (pronounced ten).
Given that the iconic iPhone X is coming out next month, would anyone even look at iPhone 8 and 8 Plus? But by bringing out all three, Apple has played a trick on us. Apple gave us three price points for the top models from Rs 77,000 for the iPhone 8, Rs 86,000 for the iPhone 8 Plus to over a lakh of rupees for the iPhone X. This is to make the middle model, the iPhone 8 Plus, look a very good buy. And it actually compares pretty well with the iPhone X.
The design of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus is old but the iPhone X has the most radical design. The ‘all screen’ display of the flagship phone with its ‘notch’ helps to give it a 5.8-inch display that sets it apart. The notch at the top replaces the bezel and is necessary for Face ID.
The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus duo is much like the iPhone 4 and 4S with glass front and back reinforced with an aluminium sheet in between. The iPhone X is all glass, which Apple says is ultra-strong. The glass back is necessary for wireless charging. There is also fast wired charging (50 per cent charge in just 30 minutes). All three have the Apple’s new A11 Bionic processor and the first Apple designed GPU. The A11 chip has six cores and is the most powerful chip yet to be used in a smartphone. This works very well with the new iOS 11 operating system and is great for augmented reality (AR) where you can put virtual images on top of real-life images.
The iPhone X has the Super Retina HD OLED display that is much better than the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus’s display. The OLED is better because it doesn’t require a backlight. Individual pixels light up when necessary producing better contrast and colour accuracy. But where the battery is concerned, the iPhone 8 Plus is a clear winner giving us 21 hours of talk time and 13 hours of Internet compared to iPhone X’s 12 hours of Internet usage. The iPhone 8 gives 14 hours of talk time with 12 hours of Internet usage. All three phones have IP67 certification, which means they can survive 30 minutes submerged in water.
iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X both have wide-angle 12-megapixel telephoto cameras and a 7-megapixel front-facing camera. Both have optical image stabilisation, which makes shooting from a moving car a piece of cake. Both support portrait lighting making it easy to switch between contour light, natural light, stage light and studio light. The iPhone 8 too has a 12-megapixel camera but does not support portrait lighting. Neither does it have the telephoto and wide-angle lens. But the front facing camera is the same.
The most innovative inclusion in the iPhone X is the TrueDepth camera, which helps users to unlock the phone with face recognition. The 8 and 8 Plus still make do with Touch ID. The really fun thing that is only available on the iPhone X is Animoji. It uses Face ID to sense facial expressions, records your voice with the microphone, and generates cute 3D animated emoji to share with friends over iMessage. There are 12 different emojis that can be animated from aliens, robots and even a pile of number two!
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