iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus with A11 Bionic chip, wireless charging announced

Apple has finally taken the wraps of its next generation of iPhones, the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. They get a new glass and aluminum design, powerful processor, improved screens, better camera and new functions.

The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus's front design remain unchanged and houses the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. However, at the back, the new iPhones gets a layer of strong glass with aluminum frame around the sides. They are also Apple's first iPhone to support wireless charging thanks to the glass panel at the back. They are water & dust resistant and also feature stereo speaker, which is claimed to be 25 percent more louder than iPhone 7, to deliver louder audio and deeper base.

The new iPhones are powered by Apple's latest A11 Bionic chip, a hexa-core processor, with 2 x high performance cores that are faster than iPhone 7's A10 chip, and 4 x high-efficiency cores that offer a 70 percent improvement. The processor offers improved support for AR, and delivers improved performance and battery life than the A10 Fusion chip. The new processor is supported by a newly design three-core GPU, that's 25 percent faster. All this power enables improved machine learning, AR apps and immersive 3D games.

As for the other specs, just like previous iPhone models, the iPhone 8 comes with 4.7-inch True Tone display and single camera, while the iPhone 8 Plus has 5.5-inch True Tone display and dual-cameras. Both feature 7MP face time camera and will be available in two storage versions: 64GB and 256GB.

The iPhone 8's camera department include a 12MP rear sensor with optical image stabilization, PDAF, quad-LED true-tone flash, 4K recording at 60fps and 1080p slo-mo up to 240fps. As for the iPhone 8 Plus, the dual-camera system consists of two 12 MP sensors, one with f/1.8 aperture and OIS, and the second sensor with f/2.8 aperture. The camera feature PDAF, quad-LED true-tone flash, 2x optical zoom, and 2160p recording at 30fps. The rear cameras also get a new Portrait Lighting for Portrait mode, that bring dramatic studio lighting effects, allowing users to capture stunning portraits with shallow depth-of-field effect in five different lightning styles.

In terms of connectivity, the new iPhone 8 line supports NFC, Bluetooth 5.0 and LTE Advanced. As usual the battery capacity was not revealed but Apple says, iPhone 8 promises up to 12 hours of web browsing, and up to 14 hours of talk time, while iPhone 8 Plus will offer up to 13 hours of internet use and up to 21 hours of talk time. Color options include Gold, Silver and Space Gray.

Coming to the pricing, the iPhone 8 is priced at $699 for the 64GB version, and $849 for the 256GB storage version. The 64GB iPhone 8 Plus is priced at $799, and the 256 storage version will cost $949. In India the price starts at Rs. 64,000. The new iPhones will be available from pre-order starting September 15 in several countries, and go on sale from September 22.

Kaiser Bey

Kaiser is a tech enthusiast who likes to write, read and talk about tech. He dreams of going to Mars and never come back. We hope that you find his posts on AndroGuider helpful and informative