TheINQUIRER publishes daily news, reviews on the latest gadgets and devices, and INQdepth articles for tech buffs and hobbyists. InformationWeek.com: News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. In case you haven’t noticed, we here at Lifehacker have spent the day gleefully reveling in full-blown Eclipse Madness. But now that the blessed event is behind us. FOR MOST PEOPLE Buy the 256GB space grey 4.7-inch iPhone 8 on Verizon. Why the little one? It’s the best size. Okay, for most people, it’s the best size.This Is the i. Phone 8 You Should Buy. It’s that time of year again, folks, but this time shit’s a little more complicated. Apple turned heads at the annual i. Phone lovefest by introducing not just one, not two, but three new i. Phones—one of which is a pricey monster we’ve addressed in another post. If you’re thinking about placing an order for an i. Phone 8 on September 1. PT/3am ET), however, we’ve got some tips. Should you get the beefy new i. Phone 8 Plus? Should you spring for 2. GB of storage? Should you finally switch to T- Mobile and its litany of appealing offers? You should do a lot of things in your life, including reading this blog post in full. It might just save you a few bucks. FOR MOST PEOPLE…Buy the 2. GB space grey 4. 7- inch i. Phone 8 on Verizon. Why the little one? It’s the best size. Okay, for most people, it’s the best size. The i. Phone 8 Plus, like the i. Phone 7 Plus, will be fun for a select group of people who like holding pancakes in their hands and taking extra special photos with the dual camera system and paying a hundred bucks more for those privileges. But the 4. 7- inch screen on the i. Phone 8 is enough real estate for the average user. It fits better in your hand, your pocket, and your bag. It’s a better deal. The camera proposition is an interesting one, however. When Apple introduced the i. Phone 7 Plus, the major difference between the big phone’s camera and the camera on the i. Phone 7 was the extra lens and the bokeh effect. This year, both cameras get bigger 1. Phone 8 Plus that you can’t get on the i. Phone 8 is something called Portrait Lighting. This lets you adjust the lighting while the dual- lens camera is in Portrait Mode. It looks cool, but it’s also a parlor trick that you can only use in specific circumstances. In conclusion, the i. Phone 8 camera is fantastic enough for most people. Why 2. 56. GB? The question here is really, “Why not 2. GB?” Apple doubled the maximum amount of storage for the new model, from 1. GB in the i. Phone 7 to 2. GB in the i. Phone 8. Dollar- for- dollar, storage has never been cheaper in an i. Phone, so you can rest easy knowing that. Meanwhile, the only other option for an i. Phone 8 is 6. 4GB. That’s a lot of storage, but the improved camera means you’ll be taking more photos and videos that take up more space. You might fill up your 6. GB and regret not getting more storage. You likely won’t regret spending an extra hundred dollars for the 2. GB and never thinking about storage again. Why Verizon? In years past, the choice of carrier has been an easy one. Verizon has always had the best, biggest, and most most dependable cellular network. Its LTE offerings have always been supreme. Customer service, less so.) But in the past year or so, T- Mobile has made impressive progress in challenging Verizon’s place at the top of the totem pole. The crowdsourced data from Open. Signal actually has T- Mobile beating Verizon in many categories for the first time ever. But we’re talking about what’s best for most people. According to the folks at Wirecutter and several other independent ranking services, Verizon is still the better choice for the majority of the country. The difference in performance is most impactful when looking at urban versus rural areas. While T- Mobile continues to improve in cities, it still lags behind Verizon in the sticks. Obviously, you can see for yourself which carrier works best for you, but think about it this way: if you buy the Verizon i. Phone (GSM and CDMA), you can easily switch to T- Mobile at a later date. If you buy the T- Mobile i. Phone (GSM- only), you can’t. Why black? Better resale value, full stop. FOR THOSE WHO ARGUE WITH OUR SINGLE RECOMMENDATION…You should wait for the i. Phone X. This one cuts deep. Who knows why Apple decided to release one new i. Phone in September and another in November, but it happened. Some super fans will undoubtedly buy an i. Phone 8, only to upgrade to an i. Phone X when it starts shipping on November 3. If you want to be that person, God bless you. If you’re willing to wait, you might consider skipping the i. Phone 8 altogether and spending a cool grand on the i. Phone X. Aside from the hip factor of the anniversary phone, the i. Phone X offers the biggest screen of all the new i. Phones, new facial recognition features, and an even better camera. It’s more expensive, and you’ll have to wait longer. However, if you’re looking for the biggest upgrade from your current i. Phone, the i. Phone X is it. You should buy an i. Phone 8 Plus, if you love a big screen. Don’t buy an i. Phone 8 Plus for the camera alone. The bokeh effect in Portrait Mode is cool and the new Portrait Lighting seems neat. You can do accomplish these results in free photo- editing apps and desktop software, however. Here’s an app for $1 that will simulate the bokeh effect. Here are a buttload of apps that let you tinker with lighting and colors. The new and improved i. Phone 8 camera will take great photos, and you can improve them for much less than the extra $1. Phone 8 Plus. You can’t make the i. Phone 8 screen bigger once you buy it, however. So if you’re going for the i. Phone 8 Plus, do it for the screen—not the camera. You should buy Apple. Care+. Are you clumsy? Then spring for Apple. Care+. For an i. Phone 8, it will cost you $1. That doubles your one- year warranty for manufacturer defects and gets you lower prices on repairs. If you completely destroy your device, a replacement will cost an additional $1. If you crack the screen, that repair will cost just $3. So if you’re one of those people who tends to walk around with a screen that looks like abstract art, pay for Apple. Care+ when you buy the phone. A third party screen replacement alone could cost the $1. Apple’s insurance program. You should use the Apple Upgrade Program. Do you need financing for your new i. Phone? And do you also want Apple. Care+? If yes, the Apple Upgrade Program is a no- brainer. For an i. Phone 8, it will cost you $3. APR. The program also covers the cost of activation on AT& T, Verizon, or Sprint. And the Apple Upgrade Program lets you trade in your phone for the new model after a year. This is not a trick. The Apple Upgrade Program just splits up the cost of the phone over the course of two years and gives you that upgrade benefit. If you can pay cash, by all means burn that paper. But you might as well use the Apple Upgrade Program if you, well, if you want an upgrade in a year. You should switch to T- Mobile. T- Mobile is the carrier that could. It’s the little guy that’s been screaming and screaming for the public to pay attention to it for years, and now, against all odds, T- Mobile is actually a pretty good alternative to Verizon or AT& T. T- Mobile’s coverage has never been better, and its speeds have never been faster. As mentioned above, Open. Signal now recommends T- Mobile over Verizon, the longtime favorite. Plus, if you sign up for T- Mobile, you’ll get all those “uncarrier benefits” like unlimited data and free wi- fi hotspots. If all that sounds awesome, go for T- Mobile. Be aware, however, that T- Mobile still suffers in rural areas and that many of those uncarrier benefits are things are things you’d never use. Some of those benefits, like the new “Netflix on Us” perk, are also misleading. City dwellers and penny pinchers will probably love T- Mobile, though. You might too. You should buy the 6. GB i. Phone 8. Are you a cloud fanatic, someone who uses apps like Dropbox or Google Photos to avoid storing data on your devices? Then the 6. 4GB i. Phone 8 might be enough for your. Here’s a quick little test. Do you currently own a phone with 3. GB or less? Do you have more than 1. GB of space remaining? Do you always have more than 1. GB of free space on your phone? If you answered yes to all of these questions, the 6. GB i. Phone is probably enough storage space for you. Save the hundred bucks and have fun trusting the cloud. You should buy the new gold gold i. Phone 8. Express yourself, my friend. Bigger, Badder, But I Still Want More. Forgive me for passing up the chance to beat the exploding battery joke into the ground. Let’s get straight to the point: Samsung’s once dominant flagship phablet is back after a two year hiatus. Sporting a stunning extra- widescreen 1. Galaxy Note 8 is bigger and more engaging than ever before, and it packs a larger power pack than any Note besides the ill- fated Galaxy Note 7 too. But a lot has changed since 2. Note 8 is now more expensive than ever. That means there are two questions it needs to answer: Does the Galaxy Note 8 still make sense in 2. What is it? A giant phone with a built- in stylus. Like. It's about time Samsung joined the dual camera game. At first glance, the answer might be no. The Note 8’s 6. 3- inch 2. AMOLED display is insignificantly larger than the 6. S8 Plus (though that bezel- less design remains strikingly pretty), and its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8. GB of storage and built- in micro. SD card reader aren’t any different either. Aside from slightly boxier corners, the Note 8’s luscious glass and aluminum body is pretty much the same too. You even get the same annoying Bixby Button below the volume rocker, which still can’t be remapped to something useful. The one small improvement is that Samsung has upped the Note 8's RAM from 4. GB to 6. GB, which is nice nod to the Galaxy Note’s traditional fan base of power users. However, on a day- to- day basis, it’s an improvement that isn’t always that noticeable (despite benchmarks that put the Note 8 a tiny bit ahead of its smaller siblings).That means the decision really hedges on Samsung’s signature S Pen stylus and the company’s first- ever dual camera module.Now I’ll be the first person to say that after years of improvements to mobile operating systems, we’ve gotten to a point where UIs are properly designed for touch- based navigation. . Across both i. OS and Android, there’s never a time when you’re screaming out for a mouse or something more precise.Which, for me, softens the allure of a stylus. But after over a week using the Note 8, the S Pen is starting to win me over. There’s just so much you can do, whether it’s jotting down notes without even unlocking the phone, or using the new full sentence translation feature to make up for my shoddy Mandarin reading comprehension. But strangely, the best part about the S Pen is the multiple methods it has for goofing off by making your own homegrown gifs. Option one is to whip out the S Pen, hit Smart Select and put a rectangle over any video you can see on the screen. Boom. gif made. Option two, the Live Messages feature, is new for 2. Live Messages lets you make animated drawings on a background color of your choosing or even on top of pictures you’ve taken. It’s a virtual meme- making machine, and a joyful addition to a phone that’s so often seen in the hands of no- fun allowed corporate execs. But that’s still only answering half the question of why you should get a Note 8 over the cheaper S8. The other part of the equation are Samsung’s new dual rear cams, which pairs the S8 and S8 Plus’ camera with a second 1. It’s a camera set up we’ve already seen in last year’s i. Phone 7 Plus. The little special sauce Samsung adds to the mix is the presence of optical image stabilization on both cameras. This is a welcome improvement, because as things get farther away, camera shake tends to becomes a much bigger nuisance. Unfortunately, even with this new addition, the Note 8’s camera performance isn’t flawless. The first issue is that like on the i. Phone 7 Plus, you don’t actually have full control over which lens you’re using. Sometimes in low- light environments, hitting the 2x button to zoom results in digital enhancement instead of optical. That means you are just cropping in and getting a lower resolution final image, instead of using the lens with double the focal length. At least it’s not a problem unique to the Note 8. Sometimes when the Note 8 opted for digital zoom instead of optical, the i. Phone didn’t. While other times, the situation was reversed. And the really frustrating part is that neither phone offers an override for when you might know better than the silicon nanny holding your hand. Yet even in ideal conditions, the Note 8 didn’t always nail it. Take, for example, photos I got when I tried to snap a picture of New York’s favorite large adult son at a recent Yankee’s game. At first I was absolutely thrilled that the Note 8’s zoom let me get up close and personal like not many phone cameras can. But when looking at pics side- by- side from the Note 8 and the i. Phone 7 Plus, things were close, but the i. Phone’s pic was sharper and less blown out. But when you put a little effort in, the Note 8 can still absolutely dazzle. I was blown away by a shot I took of the nighttime New York skyline with Samsung’s new camera module. I’ve taken this exact shot with a budget DSLR and not gotten something this good. Not only did it let me get everything out of that zoom lens, its photo is sharper, less noisy, and way more colorful than the best I could get from the i. Phone 7 Plus. On top of all that, Samsung has a new live focus mode that lets you adjust depth of field similar to how you might on a big DSLR or mirrorless camera. That lets you choose between backgrounds with the creamy blurriness portrait shooters love, or sharpness all the way from front to back depending on what you’re going for. And you still get the super saturated colors and razor sharp focus that Samsung’s cameras have become known for. Camera and stylus aside, there are a few other little Samsung surprises like the new app pair feature, which lets you create combos that launch two apps in multi- window mode with a single touch—perfect for anyone who’s ever wanted to find an address from an email or text while keeping an eye on the map. And despite a battery that’s actually smaller in capacity than the one in the S8 Plus (3,3. Ah versus 3,5. 00 m. Ah), the Note 8’s time of 1. S8 Plus’s 1. 0: 4. With stuff like this, the Galaxy Note 8 is starting to make a pretty good case, but I’m still not sure. The Galaxy Note 8 is supposed to be a phone of excess. It’s supposed to have all the most outrageous tech while simultaneously pushing boundaries that other companies wouldn’t dream about touching. Yet its screen is only marginally bigger than the S8 Plus’ and it doesn’t look that much different either. And even though I like many of the S Pen’s new features like Live Messages and full sentence translation, they really aren’t much more than a collection of handy software tricks. Samsung’s new dual camera module isn’t even a clear- cut winner against last year’s i. Phone 7 Plus, not to mention whatever new handsets Apple is planning on announcing next week. So despite sporting best- in- class components from its screen to its stylus, Samsung’s phablet still seems a bit tame. The only thing about the Note 8 that’s really excessive these days is its price. Now, I’m not saying people shouldn’t get one, that would be ridiculous! I just mean that you really need to find a deal if you want to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth. Carriers are already hocking buy one get one promos that would make getting two Note 8’s feel like stealing. Samsung is even offering its own pre- order bonuses with your choice of either a Gear 3. GB micro. SD card and a wireless charger. But shelling out a full $9. The Note 8 is a great device (especially that screen) and I think Samsung has rightfully regained its spot back on top of the Android dogpile. But for a phone that this expensive, I still want more. READMESamsung’s dual rear cameras are a great, and necessary addition to its flagship phone. The S Pen still sets the Note 8 apart from other big phones, but its new features are largely just iterative software tricks. The Note 8 isn’t that much bigger or more powerful than an S8 Plus, you’re paying for the stylus and the dual cameras. Its suggested retail price is $9. SPEC DUMPAndroid Nougat 7. Qualcomm Snapdragon 8. GB of RAM •6. 4GB of storage • micro. SD card slot • 6. AMOLED display • headphone jack • USB- C • wireless charging • fingerprint sensor • iris sensor • face scanner • f/1. MP main rear camera with OIS • f/2. MP secondary camera with 2x zoom and OIS • 8- MP front camera • 3,3.
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