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iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus pre-orders are now live

18th September 2017

iPhone 8

In the market for a new smartphone? Then you should strongly consider the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 8 Plus. These two handsets come from the smartphone masters at Apple and are so new they’re not even out yet, but they can now be pre-ordered on a range of plans and networks, including EE, Three, O2 and Vodafone.

Being iPhones, these things are sure to sell fast, so put your order in for either of them today to ensure you get them on September 22nd – the day they hit stores.

Both phones are available in 64GB and 256GB capacities, so you’ll have plenty of space, and you can get them in Silver, Space Grey or Gold, but your biggest choice will be which of the two models to get.

Compare iPhone 8 Deals Compare iPhone 8 Plus deals

Screens and cameras

The main difference between them is their screens and cameras. For the former, the iPhone 8 has a 4.7-inch 750 x 1334 display with a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch, so it’s compact, but still sharp. The iPhone 8 Plus meanwhile has a big 5.5-inch 1080 x 1920 screen that’s even sharper at 401 pixels per inch and great for videos and games.

Both phones have extremely high-quality screens though, with accurate colours and True Tone technology, allowing them to adapt the white balance based on your surroundings.

iPhone 8 plus

As for the camera, you get a 12MP one either way, but in the case of the iPhone 8 Plus it’s a dual-lens snapper, allowing you to optically zoom without any loss of quality, and to use a Portrait Mode, which applies a bokeh effect to photos – essentially blurring the background and emphasising the foreground.

Both models also have optical image stabilisation, for steady shots, plus a quad-LED flash for strong low light performance and the ability to shoot 4K video at up to 60fps, which should make them among the best smartphone cameras around. They also have capable 7MP cameras on the front.

Specs and features

That’s most of the differences covered, but there are plenty of other high points to both the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. They both have a stunningly polished design for one, with a slim build, a metal frame and a shiny glass back.

They’re also both dust and water resistant, and use toughened glass on both the screen and rear, so they shouldn’t break on the first fall. And unlike the iPhone X, the two phones retain Apple’s iconic home button and Touch ID fingerprint scanner, so if you’d rather scan your finger than your face, these are the phones for you.

And they’re both very powerful thanks to a six-core A11 Bionic chipset that’s far faster than the iPhone 7’s processor. It includes a 30% faster GPU and either 2GB of RAM if you opt for the iPhone 8 or 3GB if you go for the iPhone 8 Plus. Either way, these should be two of the most powerful phones on the planet.

They also have long-lasting batteries, with the iPhone 8 rated for up to 13 hours of video on a single charge, while the iPhone 8 Plus should be able to last up to 14. The big improvement to the battery is how you charge it though, as for the first time on an iPhone you can charge wirelessly.

Both phones also run iOS 11, which should be the most polished version of iOS yet, and they also come with improved speakers versus their predecessors, making them even better for media

Editorial Manager

James has been writing for us for over 10 years. Currently, he is Editorial Manager for our group of companies ( 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk) and sub-editor at TechRadar. He specialises in smartphones, mobile networks/ technology, tablets, and wearables.

In the past, James has also written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media, Smart TV Radar, and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV. He has a film studies degree from the University of Kent, Canterbury, and has over a decade’s worth of professional writing experience.

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