Three years are a long enough time to use a smartphone model. Apple released the iPhone 8 on September 2017 and it is an incremental upgrade to the earlier iPhone 7. Both have the same 4.7-inch display, while the iPhone 8 with more powerful A11 Bionic chipset. Your iPhone 8 definitely already shows its age, with scratches here and there. It’s time to upgrade your iPhone 8 to the latest iPhone 12. Here are a few things to know.
Design
The iPhone 8 looks quite outdated with its thick bezel and prominent physical home button. On the other hand, the iPhone 12 has an unobstructed and expansive display, which is a hallmark of the latest smartphones. With Ceramic Shield protection, the iPhone 12 is four times more survivable against accidental drop. Based on tests, the screen of the new iPhone survived after being dropped a few times on a hard sidewalk surface.
Internal hardware
The iPhone 8 is still responsive for regular tasks like web browsing and checking emails. However, if you want to play latest games, you may need to use lower details settings to get acceptable frame rates. The A14 Bionic processor is among the fastest in the market today, comparable to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865. It can easily handle any modern game at the highest settings possible. The basic trim of iPhone 12 has 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage, which is adequate if you don’t take photos often or play demanding games. With such amount of firepower under the hood, the iPhone 12 is a model that you can use for three more years. The iPhone 12 is also more convenient when you are travelling to another country, because it has dual-SIM feature. Your iPhone 8 only takes one SIM card.
Camera
The photography system of the iPhone 12 is significantly better than the iPhone 8, which is noticeable the moment you take the first photo. On the back, iPhone 8 has only a single camera and it does poorly for capturing sweeping landscapes, due to the absence of the ultra-wide lens. The iPhone 12 has impressive computation algorithm to enhance photography results. The Night Mode makes your night photos looks clearer and much brighter. They shouldn’t look grainy and the colours are convincing. The built-in LIDAR feature makes it much faster for the iPhone 12 to acquire focus.
5G Connectivity
Just like any smartphone in 2017, the iPhone 8 still use the standard 4G LTE data connectivity. The iPhone 12 is Apple’s first smartphone with the ultra-fast 5G connectivity. On average, you should get twice the speed of 4G LTE with 5G, which is adequate if you want to watch high resolution videos and download large-sized games. Although 5G coverage is still patchy in many areas, we could expect better infrastructure in 2021 and beyond. Although we can’t expect a universal experience with 5G connectivity, but the overall speed should be much better than before.
Display
The regular iPhone 12 comes with a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED with 460ppi of pixel density. This ensures much better clarity when playing games and watching videos. It’s simply one of the best displays that we could get today. The iPhone 8 has 4.7-inch LCD display. The black level isn’t as deep and the contrast isn’t as good. If you are uncomfortable with a large display, you can choose the iPhone 12 Mini with 5.4-inch display.
Battery and accessories
The iPhone 12 comes with a proprietary system for wireless charging, called MagSafe. It uses magnet in a pad that makes charging very convenient. There are also other nice features that you can snap on the iPhone 12 and they are available separately. The iPhone 8 uses Lightning cable and it already supports the Qi wireless charging.
