Another year, another iPhone. Except this year, the 8 and 8 Plus aren’t the stars of the show - they were overshadowed at their own launch event by their bezel-less brother, the iPhone X.
Compared to the X, with its fairly radical redesign, the 8 and 8 Plus run the risk of looking a little dull, a bit been-there-done-that. But is that a fair assessment of Apple’s lasted iPhone iteration, or is X-envy masking a solid step forward for Cupertino?
Find out in our iPhone 8 Plus review.
IPHONE 8 PLUS: PRICE & AVAILABILITY
Unlike previous iPhones, even just over a week after launch the iPhone 8 Plus is still pretty easy to get hold of - Apple’s own site promises units will dispatch in 3-5 days for UK buyers, though in the US there’s still a 1-2 week wait.
If you buy SIM-free, the 8 Plus will set you back £799/$799 for a 64GB model, or £949/$949 for an arguably gratuitous 256GB storage - that's £100 more than the smaller iPhone 8, for reference.
For example, you can grab an S8 Plus for just £629.99/$734.99 from Amazon - or you could get the regular S8 for even less and get a similar-sized display to the 8 Plus in a smaller body.
Other top-spec Android devices typically cost even less - check out our best phones chart and you’ll find plenty of great phones well below the £600/$600 line.
IPHONE 8 PLUS: DESIGN & BUILD
Design is an area where Apple normally enjoys a solid lead over much of its competition, but in recent years Android rivals have slowly refined their design language, while Apple, well, hasn’t.
That’s because the iPhone 8 Plus looks almost exactly the same as the iPhone 7 Plus. And the 6s Plus. And the 6 Plus. You’ve actually got to go all the way back to the iPhone 5s in 2013 (!) to find the last Apple flagship with a substantially different build.
Still, what does that actually mean? You’ve got the same bezelled front, with the iPhone 7 static home button at the bottom. The only available port is Lightning - the 3.5mm headphone jack isn’t coming back, folks - and the dual rear cameras still noticeably protrude from the body. IP67 water-resistance also makes a return.
The colour selection is slightly different though. The 8 and 8 Plus are only available in Gold, Silver, or Space Grey, though the new Gold finish sits somewhere between the previous Gold and Rose Gold in shade.
The back is where we find the only significant design change: the rear of the body is glass rather than metal, a shift made mostly for technical rather than aesthetic reasons: it allows Apple to introduce wireless charging for the first time in an iPhone. More on that later.
Luckily, the glass is a welcome change - it adds to the already premium feel of the design (even four years in, it still holds up), and is somehow less slick and slippy than some other glass-backed phones.
Processor and memory
This is where the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus have arguably seen the biggest improvement from the 7 range, thanks to the introduction of the latest Apple processor: the A11 Bionic.
Naturally, Apple has made all sorts of claims about how it’s refined and improved its chip design, but there are only really two things that matter here: how it fares in benchmarks, and how it fares in day-to-day usage.
When it comes to the benchmarks, it’s probably fair to say that the 8 Plus absolutely smashes it. Paired with 3GB of RAM (according to a few teardown reports), the A11 Bionic demolished its closest rivals, with single-core scores that doubled the likes of the Galaxy S8.
The Jetstream browser scores were similarly impressive, though the gap narrows dramatically on the graphical tests. There’s also a marked improvement over the scores of last year’s 7 Plus, showing that the A11 offers a genuine performance boost from last year’s
