Hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and the iphone 8 plus has been out for quite a few years
now and is the last large phone to have touch id on it and so i wanted to help you decide if you
should pick one up in 2021 now the first thing is the design this design has been around for years
it's no longer the new design with the iphone 12 series making the edges flat again like the iphone
5 but it does have those nice curved edges that a lot of people really like and it's made out of
aluminum and the aluminum actually holds up pretty well it depends on if you have it in the case or
not but as you can see as we go around the outside edge i do have a little bit of a nick there
in the upper left and that's just due from normal wear maybe bumping it into something and if you go
around the outside it seems to have held up really well and it's got the same familiar layout with
your power button sleep wake button on the right your sim card tray and then your speakers on the
bottom and they're symmetrical on the iphone 8 plus which is really nice with your speaker and
your microphone your lightning port and then your volume buttons and silent switch on the left of
course then you have a speaker at the top so you do get that stereo sound i'll talk more about that
in a moment now as far as the front and back they are glass so you do have a substantial feel to the
phone it's heavy it's a nice size and the glass on the back seems to hold up weld but it does get a
lot of fingerprints on it so you do have that and then of course your dual cameras and now
as far as touch id it's nice and fast it works well and a lot of people still prefer touch id
so that's great about this phone and if you don't like face id of course if you're wearing a mask
this makes it very easy just take it out of your pocket pick it up put your finger down it unlocks
right away it's really nice and fast also this display seems to hold up really well to scratches
and you can see it does have some fingerprints on it it does get fingerprints fairly easily
but it doesn't seem to have scratches over the years now i have not used a screen protector on it
and i did use this phone full time for quite some time and i really like it when it's not in use
or when it is in use i use a leather case it's an apple leather case that's held up well and helped
to prevent scratches although it's never been dropped but you can see the case is held up really
well and the phone in general is just a really solid phone i think it's very durable works well
and of course has a large display the display is 5.5 inches and it's 1080p it's higher resolution
as far as the overall resolution and pixel density of that of the iphone 11 or 10r for example so you
have a 1080p display with 401 pixels per inch and you also get of course dark mode with ios 14 but
you get things like true tone if you enjoy using that if you want to have whites to be more paper
like for example i generally turn this off as i want the whites to be as accurate and the colors
to be as accurate as possible but it does have that and it is p3 compatible which is really nice
now with this display you do have 1080p like i said so that means you can watch 1080p youtube
videos here's one of my videos i'll rotate it here now one thing you don't get is hdr so you'll
see it's playing fine we'll jump ahead and if we take a look at the options here you can see that
you can go up to 1080p i don't get the 4k option although that would only give me a higher bitrate
we're getting 1080p which is the resolution of the display and it looks great you can't
see the pixels because it's over 400 pixels per inch for example so that parts nice however you
don't get hdr as an option either this is an hdr video that i recorded about the iphone 12 or 12
pro rather and you just don't have the hdr option where you would have it on say the newer iphones
or an iphone 11 for example you get hdr where you don't with this so that's one of the disadvantages
of this display compared to the newer displays however there's a big reason to choose this
display over say the 12 pro max for example where it's an oled display the oled display while it's
more vibrant and looks nice one of the things is it has pwm and i've talked about this at length in
the past but what you have is the display on the 12 pro or any oled display iphone or many other
oled displays flicker their display to control brightness it's just the way the display works
the iphone 8 plus is an lcd display and doesn't need to do that to control brightness
so as you bring the brightness up and down it's actually making the screen flash faster and slower
on an oled where you have a constant backlight on the iphone 8 plus for example and that helps
reduce eye strain one in ten people including myself are susceptible to say feeling nauseated or
getting headaches just from the display blinking when we can see things like faster frame rates or
or the frame refresh rate being faster it's just something that seems to bother about one
in ten people and it's definitely nice to use an iphone 8 plus with less eye strain it's just
something that i i personally like better about it unfortunately we don't have the lcd option
on the newer ones but we do have it on the eight plus and that may be a reason to get this phone
along with the touch id now as far as price with this phone well this phone can be had
for about 299 dollars for the 256 gigabyte variant refurbished new you can find it around 549 dollars
but apple does not sell this new anymore so you could pick one up for 299 for example and i think
that's a decent deal for what it is you can find those on different websites from time to time
different third-party websites sometimes used things like that around that price and i think
it makes it a really good value for what it is with that amount of storage now as far as the
speakers go let me go back to that youtube video i'll turn it up so you can hear it briefly let me
move my microphone so here's one of my youtube comparison videos let me go ahead and hit play
the overall speaker quality is quite good as you could hear it goes nice and loud
and you have a nice even stereo sound from the top speaker to the bottom speaker for example
it is nice and clear as well except for at the very highest volumes where you want to back it
off just a little bit to clear things up now as far as the overall speed it's nice and fast
and if you go into apps like music for example you'll see it stutters there just a little bit but
that's because it just loaded but generally using this going between different applications even
though it only has three gigs of ram it doesn't seem to have an issue with ram management most of
the time so if we go into an app like minecraft for example we'll give it a second to load the
a11 bionic that's inside the 8 plus is the same processor that we have with the iphone 10 for
example so i'll load this game and generally games and things like that are going to be nice and fast
you really won't see too much of a difference between this and say a newer phone with loading
games or playing games they should be nice and smooth whether it be minecraft or among us or call
of duty for example call of duty mobile you'll see it's loaded and then frame rates are nice and
smooth you've got up to 60 frames per second and the gameplay will work just fine no issues here
whatsoever so you'll see it's nice and smooth it loaded well you can play this without an issue and
then go back out maybe go into say youtube and it didn't reload for example so it's working really
well as far as that goes and it will get updates for about three years or more at this point i
think based off what we've seen with ios 14 and iphone 6s plus for example so i would expect up to
say ios 17 maybe ios 18 with the iphone 8 plus so we should be getting updates with this for years
now it does feel a little bit slower like i said with certain tasks compared to the iphone
12 pro max so if you're scrolling from time to time you may see some smoothness differences
you may see some speed differences when going into different applications and going out
but mostly the experience is quite fast in general so i wouldn't really have any issue
recommending this to someone as far as the speed when it comes to the cameras this is where they
fall a little bit short compared to the newer phones so if we spin this around and we've got
the forward-facing camera for example and we go to video we have hd 30 and we've got basically hd
and 30 frames per second you don't have 4k on the forward-facing camera if i hit record you
can hear the microphone from the 8 plus and this gives you an idea of what the video is
like it's just not as good as what we get with the hdr video capabilities of the newer phones
and so the camera is decent but it's not amazing as far as the selfie camera the rear facing camera
does do 4k 60 and if we go to the upper right here we can change the options to 4k
60 nice and fast 24 30 and then if i bring in the case and maybe the iphone 12 pro max you'll see
the video is nice and clear so it looks pretty good it's not incredible but it's quite good it
just doesn't have the hdr capability of the newer phones photos are decent i think if you're happy
with having a little bit older phone you'll be happy with the photos and in general the camera
is more than good enough you also have the zoom camera as well so you have the option to go to 2x
although i wouldn't say that's a reason to pick this phone up 2x is decent but it's not amazing
so here's a quick sample of what the iphone 8 plus is capable of with both photo and video
now of course a major concern with a phone that's a little bit older is what the battery life is
like even with the newest ios 14 updates for example and battery life in general is going
to get you about five to six hours of screen on time depending on how you use your phone
this phone is a few years old and it's got 97 of its battery health left after two years of regular
service you can expect this to be down to around eighty percent where you might need to replace the
battery for about fifty to seventy dollars if you have it done at apple however the overall battery
life is going to vary from person to person i asked a few people to send me their battery
life so let's take a look here and if we go to the battery life you'll see here's someone that's been
using the eight plus full time and they're down to 87 percent of their battery health if we go over
to what their battery life is like they're getting about 10 hours and 25 minutes of screen on time
when charging it you'll see they charged it an hour ago based off this photo so maybe charging
it throughout the day they're getting about five hours of screen on time the next person here is
getting about five hours and 57 minutes of screen on time it's going to vary greatly and thanks to
ravi and munoir for sending these in i really appreciate it and so you can see about five to
six hours of screen on time with regular use now with the iphone 8 plus because it has a glass back
this is when apple introduced wireless charging and you can even use the latest magsafe charger
you won't get the magnetic adherence to it although it does stick a little bit because
there are metal coils in there it does charge it will charge at about 7.5 watts and you do get
fast charging if you have the right power brick to do that you'll get about 50 percent of your
battery in about 30 minutes or so so it's a decent battery it charges fairly quickly if you're using
fast charging devices or fast charging plugs but if you're not of course it will charge a little
bit slower and it's not too big of a deal if you put it on a charger at night for example now as
you can see i have full bars here and reception on the iphone 8 plus is actually quite good
with my iphone 12 pro max i don't get full signal in my office where i'm at now
and i do with this device it's also great with wi-fi for example but you don't have 5g so as you
can see it just went down a little bit i switched over to lte and overall speeds are decent with 4g
4g speeds are what you would expect it depends of course greatly where you're located but let's
go ahead and run this quickly we'll just wait for it to connect it'll take just a moment and you'll
get the overall idea of 4g speeds we're hitting over 68 megabits per second we're over 70 megabits
so that's quite good with 4g so it just depends where you're located but the reception overall on
an iphone 8 plus is generally quite good compared to even an iphone 10 for some reason i'm not sure
if it's the stainless steel versus the aluminum frame of the eight plus that makes the difference
but this frame seems to handle reception quite well and i've never had an issue with it you'll
see i'm getting about eight megabits per second up so averaging 52 down eight and a half or so
up that's quite good for lte of course it doesn't have the latest wi-fi standards either but in
general that's not a concern for most people it's plenty fast in most situations where you shouldn't
have to worry about that as far as that goes i never had any issues switching between 4g and
wi-fi with the 8 plus it's a solid phone as far as reception goes now that leads me to should
you still pick up an iphone 8 plus in 2021 and i would say if touch id is something you still
really value and you prefer it over face id and you want a larger display well then absolutely
the display is great it's 401 pixels per inch and of course it doesn't have pwm like i
mentioned earlier so you won't have the flickering display and if that's something that bother your
bothers your eyes you'll have the benefit of that along with touch id so those two things
alone i know a lot of people really appreciate and will pick one of these up just for that reason of
course if you want face id well then you'll have to go to an iphone 11 if you need an lcd display
but this is probably the best touch id phone out there that's large at this point you do have the
iphone se second generation but that's a smaller phone so if you want the latest processor and want
updates for the next five years then of course you could go that route as well the major disadvantage
that you get with this phone other than what i've already mentioned would be that its battery is
just not what you get with say a 12 pro max where you're going to get 10 to 12 hours of screen on
time as opposed to five or six with the eight plus so that's a big difference between both phones
but the price you could buy three or four of these for the price of a 12 pro max so you could buy an
eight plus with a battery pack to extend that battery life if that was the issue if you don't
mind not having the top of the line phone and you want something that will get you by for the next
few years with updates and of course battery isn't a concern then i definitely recommend the 8 plus
to anyone looking for a phone with touch id this is a great value especially now and i think it's
fairly durable and a great way to go but let me know your thoughts about it in the comments below
if you'd like to get your hands on this wallpaper of course i'll link it in the description like
i normally do and if you haven't subscribed already please subscribe and if you enjoyed
the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is Aaron i'll see you next time