Apple today unveiled the new iPhone family at the newly-open Steve Jobs Theater. The new iPhone is the biggest leap since the original iPhone, introduced a decade ago. The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus feature new glass front and back designs, the powerful A11 Bionic chip, all new cameras and wireless charging. The tenth anniversary device: iPhone X (pronounced “ten”) which Apple calls “the future of the smartphone” also made a worth debut as the traditional “one more thing…”
Since the original iPhone, Apple has introduced numerous ground-breaking innovations that has spurred the industry. There’s multi-touch, Retina Display, Facetime, iMessage, Touch ID, and more.
iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus
For the first time, Apple has skipped an “s” version in its iPhone product line, and has settled for the iPhone 8 from the previous gen iPhone 7.
The iPhone 8 as well as its bigger “Plus” version feature a new glass design reinforced by aerospace grade aluminium alloy. Apple says the glass is the most durable glass ever, featuring a 7-layer process. The new finish comes in Space Grey, Silver and a new Gold.
On the front, the iPhone 8 retains its 4.7-inch sized display from its predecessor, while the iPhone 8 Plus gets a 5.5-inch. Both are Retina HD Display units with 3D touch, True Tone and cinema wide colour gamut.
The devices packs new stereo speakers which Apple claims to deliver 25% louder audio and deeper bass.
Under the hood is where it gets interesting. Apple has a reputation of producing the most powerful smartphone chips, and this time it’s no different. The new Apple A11 Bionic chip is not only the most powerful chip Apple has ever designed, but also the most intelligent. The chip couples with Apple’s first ever own GPU, a 3-core unit that performs 30% faster than the A10, at 50% the power consumption.
The 6-core chip has two performance cores and four high-efficiency cores that are 20% faster and 70% faster than the A10 respectively. The 2nd-gen Apple-designed performance controller also delivers 70% faster multithreading.
In the camera department, the iPhone 8 rocks an all-new 12MP sensor with deeper pixels, colour filter and wider dynamic range. It’s coupled with a f/1.8 aperture lens with OIS.
The iPhone 8 Plus has the added advantage of a dual-camera setup, as seen on the previous gen iPhone 7 Plus. The twin cameras are 12MP sensors with a f/1.8 wide-angle lens and f/2.8 telephoto lens. The awesome thing is both boast OIS.
Aside from an improved Portrait Mode (introduced in the iPhone 7 Plus), Apple introduced a new Portrait Lighting mode. Think of it as stage lighting, using the dual-camera, depth map and machine learning (thanks to the A11 Bionic chip). You can swipe for different lighting effects and you’ll see them in real-time.
Apple says the new cameras shoot the highest quality video on any smartphone. With a new Apple-designed video encoder, it processes and analyses images in real-time, crunching over 2 million tiles a second.
The cameras are capable of shooting 4K 60fps, and if you’re a fan of slow-mo, you can now shoot 1080p 240fps video, two times slower than previous gen.
The new cameras are also calibrated for AR. With superior low-light and 60fps shooting, it works in tandem with the new iPhone gyro and accelerometer to give accurate motion tracking. AR games look incredible on this thing.
As rumoured, Apple is finally in the wireless charging game. The glass back enables the new iPhone to have wireless charging capabilities. It’s great news that Apple has embraced the Qi open standard, which opens it up to a whole plethora of wireless charging solutions out there.
The iPhone 8 also supports LTE-Advance, Bluetooth 5.0 and fast-charging.
The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus will be offered in 64GB or 256GB storage options, and both run iOS 11 out-of-the-box.
Pricing and availability
The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are available for pre-order starting 15 September and will hit stores starting 22 September. iOS 11 will be available for download starting 19 September 2017.
Prices start from USD699/MYR2,941.
- Customers will be able to order iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plusbeginning Friday, September 15, with availability beginning Friday, September 22, in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UAE, the UK, the US and US Virgin Islands.
- iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus will be available in Andorra, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Greenland, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, India, Isle of Man, Israel, Jersey, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia andSloveniabeginning Friday, September 29.
