Just a few days to go for 12 September – the day of Apple’s big ‘unveil’. From leaked images and countless ‘insider’ stories, we know it’s going to be a series of announcements at Tim Cook’s keynote address, including a look at the new Apple campus in Cupertino. But what’s everyone interested in is the iPhone 8 – and what can it do?
Trying to steal some of Apple’s thunder is Samsung, launching the Note 8 at 12.30 pm in India (Apple’s event takes place at 10.30 pm IST), beating the big old fruit by nearly half a day. Still, the Apple fanboys will sit up and wait, waving the Korean flagship aside, just to grab a glimpse of the iPhone 8 (or whatever Apple chooses to call it).
Check out this leaked video of the new Apple iPhone from OnLeaks:
There are two more phones that will be launched by Apple on the same day – quite possibly the Apple iPhone 7S and 7S Plus. While these will likely be incremental advancements over the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus (just like the 6S was over the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus), all eyes are on the ‘new’ features Apple is rolling out in the iPhone 8.
Let’s look at some of the innovations to be offered in the latest iPhone – and are these really innovations or just an attempt to catch up?
Much ado is being made about extremely slim bezels, or a bezel-less design. According to Bloomberg, the Koreans – LG and Samsung have already beaten Apple to this innovation, but iPhone fanboys will still claim it’s the next best thing to sliced bread!
Then there’s the wireless charging feature (inductive charging), which is likely to debut on the new iPhone, but has in fact been in use since 2009, with Palm, and made popular with Google’s Nexus phone in 2013. Samsung got a hold of this tech in 2015.
To its credit, the ‘super sharp’ Retina display was Apple’s debut, which will become even better in the new iPhone (according to leaked code available online), but till now, it was only working with LCD screens, and for the first time, it is going OLED in 2017. This tech has been with Samsung since 2010.
Facial recognition (not Facetime) has been around with companies like Microsoft on the Lumia 950, and Samsung on the Note 7 and S8. The new iPhone will now get this tech, although it will likely be even better – as it will probably use infrared sensors for 3D facial recognition, even in the dark.
The clunky home button being removed allows for more screen area. But then again, this innovation has been around for nearly a year, with Samsung S8 and the Google Pixel.
So, while the iPhone 8 may boast of many firsts for Apple, it is in reality, just incremental add-ons in technology – it’s just catching up. And quite fast too.
Expect the phone to be launched in India in another month or so, with prices starting upwards of Rs 80,000.
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