Apple launches new and improved iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple revealed the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus smartphones which brings back a glass back as well as an updated Apple A11 Bionic processor, wireless charging, new Retina HD displays now featuring the True Tone displays first seen in the iPad Pro.

The A11 Bionic, is what Apple is calling "the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone," it features a six-core CPU design with two performance cores that are 25 percent faster and four efficiency cores that are 70 percent faster than the A10 Fusion, offering industry-leading performance and energy efficiency. iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are designed for AR (Augmented Reality).

The iPhone has been about photography and the iPhone 8 takes this to the next level. An improved 12-megapixel camera with a larger and faster sensor, a new colour filter and deeper pixels. A new Apple-designed image signal processor delivers advanced pixel processing, wide colour capture, faster autofocus in low light and better HDR photos, while a new quad LED True Tone Flash with Slow Sync results in more uniformly lit backgrounds and foregrounds. All this adds up to outstanding photos with vibrant, realistic colours and more detail.

The new camera also delivers the highest quality video capture ever in a smartphone with better video stabilization, 4K video up to 60fps and 1080p slo-mo up to 240fps. The Apple-designed video encoder provides real-time image and motion analysis for optimal quality video. With iOS 11, both iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus support HEIF and HEVC for up to two times compression and storage for twice the photos and videos.  

iPhone 8 Plus features dual 12-megapixel cameras and introduces Portrait mode with Portrait Lighting, bringing dramatic studio lighting effects to iPhone, allowing customers to capture stunning portraits with a shallow depth-of-field effect in five different lighting styles.

A step up from last year's Portrait Mode, Portrait Lighting uses the camera and computational photography to alter the lighting in a portrait to replicate more complex studio shots.

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus will be available in space grey, silver and an all-new gold finish in increased 64GB and 256GB capacity models starting at $929 (CAD) from Apple.com/ca and Apple Stores and is also available through Apple Authorized Resellers and select carriers (prices may vary)
Canadian customers will be able to order iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus beginning Friday, September 15, with availability beginning Friday, September 22.