How the iPhone 8 Stacks Up to the iPhone X
Apple broke with tradition this year at its highly anticipated Keynote, unveiling three new models of the iconic iPhone: the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and the iPhone X.
Whenever Apple reveals an updated and improved version of their beloved phones, iPhone devotees are bound to ask themselves if they should upgrade and, if so, which phone should they choose?
While the iPhone X is the more expensive choice—running just under $1,000 USD for the 64GB model—whereas the iPhone 8 comes in at a cool $699 USD. But make note, while both are powered by iOS 11, the higher price tag of the iPhone X does come with some notable differences.
Design
The iPhone X doesn’t look like any other iPhone. It is a dramatic redesign that catapults the device to be more in-line with the Essential Phone and the Samsung Galaxy S8 for screen-to-body ratio–made possible by removing the home button.
The X boasts a nearly bezel-less edge-to-edge 5.8-inch display, where as the iPhone 8 has the signature bars at the top and bottom of its 4.7-inch display. Both displays are Retina HD, with the X jumping ahead with its ‘super’ qualified HDR display and all-screen OLED.
Both phones are splash, water and dust resistant, and mostly made of glass. The accents on the X are stainless steel, while the 8 has the phone’s standard aluminum accents.
Camera
Both phones come with a 12MP camera, while X users will get a more diverse camera with wide-angle and telephoto options.
The iPhone X also has dual optical image stabilization, optical zoom, and digital zoom up to 10 times. By comparison, the iPhone 8 only has five times digital zoom.
Like the Plus, the iPhone X offers a dual camera arrangement to enable portrait mode, churning out images that were once only achievable with DSLR and SLR cameras.
Apple is also rolling out Portrait Lighting software, currently in beta, which uses AI to examine a face’s components and light the image in the most desirable way with different lighting effects like natural, contour and stage.
Animoji is Apple’s answer to Snapchat and Instagram filters, letting users animate a dozen emojis by scanning their own face.
Both phones will take photos quicker than ever with an A11 Bionic chip.
Security
One significant difference to the iPhone X that all Apple users may not be on board with is the Face ID scan to unlock the phone, enabled by the TrueDepth camera for facial recognition. After all, without a home button, the company had to generate another way for users to secure their device.
The iPhone 8 will still use Touch ID, but a second-generation fingerprint sensor is built into the Home button.
Apple stated in its keynote that the chance of a stranger unlocking your phone via Touch ID is one in 50,000, but that chance gets much smaller when using Face ID, which is a one in a million.
