- [Mr. Mobile] Do you know what this is?
- [Voiceover] I know what this is.
- [Mr. Mobile] Of course you do.
How could you mistake the new iPhone for anything else.
Put the iPhone 8 next to the iPhone 7,
and subtle changes like the new glass back
or the revised aluminum sides
or the trim around the camera lens, they kind of fade away.
It takes using the 8 and 8+ to see where they stand out,
and I've spent two days doing just that.
I'm Mr. Mobile, and this is my initial review
of the iPhone 8 and 8+, brought to you by Tech 21.
(energetic music)
A lot of reviews have already gone up,
so I'm not gonna retread all the stuff
you already know about the iPhone 8.
The new IOS 11 operating system, the true tone display,
the spec sheet, this is stuff you can read about.
And I'll suss out the important bits
in the second half of this review, landing next week.
For now, I want to talk about the three main standouts
that have stuck with me during my time with iMore
and their two iPhone review devices.
To a great many of you,
the first one is gonna be the least important.
But you know what?
I don't care.
I love it.
Since Palm introduced it in 2009,
wireless charging has been one
of the most misunderstood smartphone features.
And I'm not gonna relitigate the case here,
but I suspect Apple fans will already understand what I mean
when I say this should have been on the iPhone years ago.
The zen-like simplicity of ditching fiddly cables and ports
for just placing your phone on a pad,
it seems especially well suited to the iPhone.
To be fair, even mighty Apple
isn't immune to the drop acts of physics.
The charge rate is just as slow
as the included wall adapter.
Slower than the fast wireless charging
on the newest Samsung phones.
I still think it's great
that iPhone users now have the option though,
and Apple's halo effect
means we should see more wireless chargers pop up
in more places now.
Fun fact, you can charge the phone
without taking your case off, which is nice.
The second and by far the most noticeable standout,
the iPhone 8's cameras.
It wasn't immediately apparent
just how much better they are,
because Apple is still using LCDs for displays on these.
Those colors just don't pop as much as the OLED screens
on some Android phones.
But the iMore team and I did an awful lot
of photo and video capture with the new iPhones,
putting them side by side
with shots from Android flag ships,
and I was surprised to see how often the iPhone photos
came out on top in terms of detail
and low light performance.
If you've been following me on Instagram for a while,
you know I almost exclusively shoot with Android phones,
most recently the LG V30 and Samsung Galaxy Note 8.
But in almost all of our side by side shooting this week,
the iPhone has rendered pictures with less noise,
or pulled more light from a scene,
or done a better job stabilizing a bumpy walking video.
Over on the iPhone 8+, I'm kind of not as enthused
about the portrait mode, still.
The new artificial studio lighting effects
are really amazing to see in person,
but you usually have to take four or five bad ones
before you end up with one you'd want to share.
I need to spend more time with this
to decide how I feel about it,
but I don't expect I'll label it a must have feature.
Making up for that are the video upgrades.
Shooting 4k in 60 frames a second
is something even my primary studio camera can't do.
And I filmed for 20 minutes straight with an A+
without it breaking a sweat.
And there's slow mo in full HD at 240 frames a second.
I'm sorry for getting all numbers heavy on you,
but those numbers give you video like this,
which you can't get at the frame rated resolution
with any other phone right now.
There's more slow mo phone dropping candy
at the end of the video, by the way.
Keep in mind, I edited this on Final Cut Pro
before I got the high sierra update, so codec conversion
has probably dropped the quality somewhat.
This is something I hope I won't have to deal with
when I publish part two of this review next week.
Many of those camera features wouldn't be possible
without Apple's new A11 SOC,
which is my third big pillar of the iPhone 8 experience.
I'm not a spec head, so it feels kinda weird
for me to emphasize silicon, but by all accounts,
the A11 is a beast of a chip.
It's apparently so efficient
that the iPhone 8 can run ARKit,
Apple's augmented reality suite,
using something like half the resources
the A10 in the iPhone 7 did.
The neural engine in the A11
also makes a lot of that photo magic possible,
the stuff I talked about a second ago.
And it's a more power efficient processor to boot.
All that boils down to some significant future proofing.
In short, the iPhone 8 should age well.
At least, on the inside.
Of course, despite all those awesome features,
the predictably designed iPhone 8
won't the be phone to lure away
restless would-be Android converts.
That role falls to the better equipped iPhone 10,
which offers a much bolder aesthetic
to go with its stratospheric price tag.
But the iPhone 8 isn't for them, it's for 6 and 6S owners
who want a solid upgrade in a familiar form factor.
Just beware, that familiar form factor is a glass sandwich.
More fragile than it's metal backed predecessors.
To protect it, snap up a custom case
from today's sponsor, Tech 21.
These folks have been building phone cases for ten years,
and their materials are rigorously tested
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From ultra slim, lightweight designs, to wallet cases,
Tech 21 gives you ten foot drop protection,
designed specifically to keep you iPhone 8 covered
drop after drop.
Get yours at the link in the description below.
More on the iPhone 8 from phone calls to portrait mode
in part two of this review, coming next week.
Oh and fun fact, I recorded the voiceover for this
in a hotel room in New York City
with a clip mic digital microphone
plugged into an iPhone 8+.
Please subscribe if you enjoyed this video.
Until next time, thanks for watching,
and stay mobile, my friends.