Apple unveiled the iPhone 8, the company’s latest and greatest smartphone, at the Apple Event held at the Steve Jobs Theater on Apple’s new campus today.
Like its predecessors, the iPhone 8 will feature a 4.7-inch screen, while a bigger variant, the iPhone 8 Plus, will feature a 5.5-inch screen. Bezel thickness is similar in thickness to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, with a physical home button mounted at the bottom.
It is the first iPhone to features a glass front and back, which is necessary to support wireless inductive charging.
Apple is pushing Augmented Reality (AR) with this release. Both phones are equipped with a new gyroscope and accelerometer, as well as full software support via iOS 11.
Apple’s A11 Bionic Chip utilizes the CPU for world tracking and gestures, GPU for rendering realistic graphics, and an ISP (image signalling processor) to create real-time lighting effects.
The Cupertino-based tech giant also designed its own GPU for the iPhone 8’s A11 Bionic, which it claims to be 30 percent faster than A10 while consuming only half the power.
CPU core count has gone up to six, with two performance cores and four high-efficiency cores.
iPhone 8 comes with a single 12-Megapixel camera, while the iPhone 8 Plus is fitted with dual 12-Megapixel cameras at the back. The dual rear cameras come with two different aperture sizes, f/1.8 and f/2.8 and built-in optical image stabilization (OIS). It features improved color saturation and increased the dynamic range compared to its predecessor.
Different lighting modes such as “contour light” and “stage light” allow users to control lighting in order add drama and creativity to portrait photography, via a new photography mode “Portrait Lighting”.
Like the iPhone 7 Plus, both cameras are utilized in the iPhone 8 Plus to create depth-of-field or “bokeh” effects through the camera’s “Portrait Mode”.
4K video recording is supported at up to 60 FPS, while slow motion videos are made possible by recording in 1080p resolution at 240 FPS.
Storage-wise, both the Phone 8 Plus will come in 64GB and 256GB variants. Both variants are also water and dust resistant, rated at IP67.
There will be three color variants – Silver, Space Grey, and Gold. There is no mention of a black iPhone 8 or 8 Plus.
Standard retail price for the iPhone 8 is $699, while the iPhone 8 Plus is pegged at $799. Pre-orders will be accepted starting September 15, while the units will start shipping on September 22.
