Sections
- Page 1 iPhone 8 Review
- Page 2 Performance and Software Review
- Page 3 Camera Review
- Page 4 Battery Life and Verdict Review
iPhone 8 Performance – Powered by the A11 Bionic
Both the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus run the same A11 Bionic chip, and so does the iPhone X. The difference is in the RAM offering: the iPhone 8 has only 2GB of RAM and the 8 Plus and the X have 3GB of RAM.
Is the lack of a gigabyte evident? Not that I’ve noticed. The iPhone 8 is just as competent at holding apps in memory as the 8 Plus, and it feels as though the extra memory is mainly present for the intensive camera modes.
The A11 Bionic is a six-core processor, with two high-power and four low-power cores that churn through absolutely anything with ease. In benchmarks, it picked up a score of 9037 in the multi-core Geekbench 4 test, which comfortably beats off any of the 2017 Android competition.
Related: Best iPhone Deals
I do wish that with all this power at their disposal, app developers would do more to make the most of it all. A big push with iPhone 8 and, specifically, iOS 11 is augmented reality (AR), which layers graphical elements over the real world. There are already a few apps that use this feature – the IKEA app lets you place furniture around the home, for example – but they all appear to run just as well on an iPhone 6S as they do on the iPhone 8.
The same is true of games; I can’t find anything that performs notably better on the iPhone 8 than the iPhone 7. This isn’t really Apple’s fault, but it does mean that the performance boost is quite hard to utilise.
More noticeable are the improved front-facing stereo speakers. Apple says these are ‘25% louder than the iPhone 7’, and whether or not these numbers are accurate, they do sound very good indeed. Call quality, too, is excellent, as is cellular and Wi-Fi reception.
Today's Best iPhone 8 Deals
Apple iPhone 8 on Three – 100GB of Data, Unlimited Minutes and Texts
Apple iPhone 8 on Three – 100GB of Data, Unlimited Minutes and Texts
Finally, picking up an iPhone 8 with a high data allowance no longer costs an arm and a leg, evident by this stellar offering from Fonehouse, with 100GB of data coming courtesy of Three.
iPhone 8 on EE – 16GB Data, Unlimited Minutes and Texts
iPhone 8 on EE – 16GB Data, Unlimited Minutes and Texts
While it might not give anywhere near as much data as the tariff above, this is still a great offer when you consider all the freebies you get, alongside wider network coverage with EE.
iPhone 8 Software – You can now install iOS 13
If you buy the iPhone 8 it’ll come with iOS 13 installed or you’ll be able to easily upgrade the software on the phone to the latest version. It also seems safe to say Apple will allow you to install iOS 14 next year, though of course, this is far from being confirmed yet.
iOS 13 is a nice upgrade, bringing with it some handy features like audio sharing through multiple pairs of AirPods, UI tweaks to make it less distracting when you’re altering the volume and a much more powerful version of Apple Maps.
Related: How to update apps in iOS 13
The biggest update though is the addition of Dark Mode. Enable this and the whole UI will turn from white to grey, making it much easier on the eyes.
