Why the iPhone 8 is so boring
Should you get the iPhone 8? Depends: Are you easily bored? Because the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are definitely the ho-hum iPhones this year.
Although Apple would never say it, the iPhone 8's improvements over the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are mostly incremental, with wireless charging and some new camera tricks (including Portrait Lighting) being the highlights. The real star is the iPhone X, which isn't coming for another month.
That's the consensus from most reviewers, too. It's not that the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are bad phones — far from it, they're some of the best-performing smartphones you can buy — it's just that Apple spoiled its own launch party by also announcing the iPhone X, which has demonstrably major upgrades, like an edge-to-edge screen and an advanced front-facing camera module.
On this week's MashTalk, Time's Lisa Eadicicco joins us to compare notes with Mashable Chief Correspondent Lance Ulanoff and Senior Tech Correspondent Ray Wong, all of whom have tried out the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus before they went on sale. Not only does the panel dive deep into the (few) new features of the two iPhones making their debut, it also answers the question: If the iPhone X is the true upgrade, why do these phones even exist?
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Topics iPhone
Pete Pachal was Mashable’s Tech Editor and had been at the company from 2011 to 2019. He covered the technology industry, from self-driving cars to self-destructing smartphones.Pete has covered consumer technology in print and online for more than a decade. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Pete first uploaded himself into technology journalism at Sound & Vision magazine in 1999. Pete also served as Technology Editor at Syfy, creating the channel's technology site, DVICE (now Blastr), out of some rusty HTML code and a decompiled coat hanger. He then moved on to PCMag, where he served as the site's News Director.Pete has been featured on Fox News, the Today Show, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC and CBC.Pete holds degrees in journalism from the University of King's College in Halifax and engineering from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. His favorite Doctor Who monsters are the Cybermen.
