As a tech reviewer bias is something we're always trying to fight against we
have preconceived notions going into any sort of testing but our job is to push
those to the side and review a product objectively I'm gonna pull back the
curtain a little bit when the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus were announced I
was not excited about it I didn't think it was anything revolutionary or giantly
new and I expected to be overwhelmingly disappointed with the
iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 plus but in my five days of testing I've actually been
pleasantly surprised with what Apple has done here so I'm going to talk about the
iPhone 8 in the iPhone 8 plus its review for both devices and I'm gonna try to
not talk about the iPhone X and focus on these devices as they exist on their
own let's get started for me one of the most appealing things about Apple
products in the past has always been the design and a look and feel and this is a
very familiar design for an iPhone it's the fourth iteration of the same design
that we saw with the iPhone 6 when you flip the devices over though it's an
entirely different story these things look much different than the press
photos or even hands-on videos led you to believe Apple has no uniform color for
Space Gray at all this version around is almost a dark gray and I love the way
these colors look the silver is kind of an eggshell white the gold is now a more
muted gold all three colors tree looked drastically different and I think very
much improved over their namesakes from last generation the glass back to make
the phone feel pretty different as well if you've held a modern Samsung device
if you've held you know an s8 or Note 8 you're gonna know what that glass back
feels like a lot of people like it I'm one of those if you get the darker color
it's gonna be a fingerprint magnet and it can't make it a little bit slippery
so if you want to sort of protect that you can put a Dbrand skin on the back
of it link to them down below at long last wireless charging is here
and maybe you don't care about wireless charging but for me it is a giant
deal and I am so happy that it is here and I give Apple credit for using the Qi
standard not going with some weird proprietary Apple only wireless charging
I've got the Samsung quick charger I use with my note 8 put this on it and it
worked immediately which is really nice to have
I will say though the charging rate was definitely slower than most modern
wireless charging capable Android devices I've tested but for me I put it
on at night turn off the phone wake up in the
morning and it's charged so for that use case why those charging works and works
as advertised so I mentioned the beginning I was surprised by the iPhone
8 and 8 plus I've primarily been using the plus for my testing and battery life
has been way better than I thought I could have not only on a mobile device
but on an iPhone in particular by the end of the day I'm generally at fifty
five to sixty percent battery life left and that is a staggering number for me
and about twenty percent higher than when I'm at with almost any other phone
including when I was with the iPhone 7 plus but if you're traveling got a day
trip you almost don't have to bring your chargers you put on battery saving mode
and you turn off some app so you turn on your screen brightness so might be able
to push it to two and a half three days hats off to Apple making a phone with
pretty damn good battery life which is not something I get a chance to say very
often performance here is . really fast now with performance and might be a little
bit psychosomatic I know we've seen the Geekbench scores and it's crazy fast off
the charts so it seemed fast to me but the things I notice that I can quantify
boot up is stupid fast now on the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 plus apps open and
definitely faster on the iPhone 8 and 8 plus vs. previous gen phones everything
else just felt zippier to me I never felt that iPhones were slow by any stretch of
the imagination but it handles iOS 11 smoothly I can multitask without any
problem or at least how Apple allows you to multitask without any problems games
worked really quickly the phone is just quick and it's probably going to be very
quick continuing into the 12 18 to perhaps 24 months that you might have
this phone screen there are two schools of thought when it comes to Apple's Apple
screen you're like I don't mind 1080p for battery life and why can't I get a
high res screen on the iPhone 8 plus I think that I maybe somewhere in the
middle I don't want to be a hypocrite and say battery life is awesome but it should
have a higher res screen I know there'd be a trade-off there but as far as 1080p
screens go it looks good it doesn't look best in class anymore I think by any
stretch of the imagination it is above average though in direct sunlight which
is odd because it's not the brightest screen in the world but you can definitely see it
when you go out and if that trade-off for battery life is important
you you're gonna be fine with the screen if you've been sort of longingly looking
at Android phones with 2k and a higher resolution screens then you might be
disappointed here but know that going in the screens fine it's serviceable it
works well it's just not the best anymore in the business so true tone is
a new addition to the 8 and 8 plus it mattered like between 0 and next to 0 to
me I guess you only notice that we have another phone next to it that doesn't
have true tone but it really didn't impact my impressions on the screen at
all here cameras are perhaps the biggest reason people choose phones a generation
over generation if you look at just a spec sheet between the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus
versus the last gen and in fact we did a versus video comparing the two you might
think they are identical same megapixel same apertures but that is not the full
story at all especially when it comes to the 8 Plus this is an instance where the
processor makes all the difference these cameras are incredible in direct
sunlight photos look beautiful they're not as saturated to get with the Samsung
phones the color reproduction is more true to real life in low-light they were
great the shutter speed is incredibly fast the video capture looks great I
like still having a 2x optical zoom I very rarely used a 10x digital but
it's there if you need it portrait mode we had with the last gen
with the iPhone 7 plus it's here as well but now it processes that portrait mode
way faster than the 7 Plus so portrait lighting is also here on the 8 Plus and that
was a cool almost like a cool party trick I liked trying it I had
inconsistent results but when it worked it worked really well
we've done some portrait lighting for our headshots here at the office and
they looked pretty close I'll forgive inconsistency though since it is definitely
still in beta but it does come damn close to working exactly as every time I
get a lot of questions I reviews on the speakers on the phones so I'll run
through these really quickly the speakers are actually pretty good about 25
percent louder that we have for the last gen they don't sound this tinny as the
iPhone 7 plus they sound loud they sound fine they're on the higher end of
average when it comes to phone speakers so another instance where I was
surprised was actually when it came to storage so these phones ship either 64
or 256 which are big size discrepancies
and you're probably like me think you need the larger size I set up my iPhone 8
Plus from scratch and I haven't done that probably the past five gens of
phones and I was shocked when I set the phone up from scratch and I had all of
my photos backed up in the cloud I was using less than 18 gigs of storage
Apple's got a new file system with iOS 11 I'm sure that plays a big part of it
You might want to even consider that 64 gigs for the $699 or $799 depending if
you go for the 8 or the 8 plus you might not need as much as you think but
obviously you're used to a very I think I would be completely fine in the 64 I
never thought I would say that so if you can't tell I came away impressed with
the iPhone8 and 8 Plus and I didn't think I was going to there's a lot of little
things that make up a really nice whole when it comes to the phone I like the
way it feels I like to speed the speakers are surprising coming back to
iOS has been a nice experience it was kind of a welcome home I still wish a
lot of things could change but the OS still is what it is it's still the grid
array of icons and if you like that or if you're okay with that
this is the best implementation of it quite obviously now there's a specter of
what's coming next from Apple what the iPhone 10 is going to be but this phone
as it exists in the market it's still a really good choice it brings it up to
close to parity with those features and specs that Android has and that's what a
lot of Apple aficionados and a lot of Apple fans have been asking for you've
got things like wireless charging you've got water resistance here and it just
works out of the box and for a lot of people that is the ideal mobile
experience and it might be one of those folks again so that's my take on the 8 and the 8
plus what matters is what you do and what you do with your wallet are you
spending your hard-earned money towards an 8 or 8 Plus are you waiting for the
iPhone 10 you switching to Android let us know why down below