Since the launch of the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X, we here in the office have one each. We have played with them both and then discussed what our biggest complaints were and which phone we liked better. So, here goes…
After playing with the new iPhones for a while we had more complaints with the newest generation of iPhone, the iPhone X. When it was all said and done, we decided that at least for now, we prefer the iPhone 8 Plus.
Our number one issue with this iPhone X was the biometrics. The iPhone 8 Plus still has Touch ID, whereas the X only has the Face ID. When it came down to the quickness of opening the phone, it was much faster with Touch D than Face ID. For us, it worked better and more seamless for our needs. It would be nice if Apple could incorporate the Touch ID maybe near the back logo on the iPhone X going forward and you could have the best of both worlds.
Facial recognition
Apple supposedly has the best facial recognition on the market that uses 3D imaging, your irises and a whole host of tech to make sense of it all. Still, some people are going to be worried that someone could open your phone while sleeping. In our tests, we clearly needed out eyes open to open the phone. In fact, when you first wake up it was kind of difficult to get it to respond well to your face. However, that being said, Face ID is only in its first generation. And there should be expected bugs to work out as time continues to march on.
Camera
Our second issue was the camera. Both of these dual-camera systems offer incredible picture quality and video performance; however, on the iPhone X you have portrait mode on the front whereas on the 8 Plus you only have it on the back.
Quad-LED flash
Next, our third biggest disappointment on the iPhone X is the quad-LED flash. This is most likely a hardware problem as the LED flash is just way too close to the lenses. It causes red-eyes on photo mode and white-eyes on video mode. So, when going back to the 8 Plus there were none of those issues. Also, if you look closely to the X’s camera systems you’ll see a lot of dust particles in these lenses. It seems like the quality control with the X just wasn’t paying much attention to these types of details.
New OLED panel
Number four is PWN. The new OLED panel on this iPhone X uses pulse width modulation to dim the brightness. If you have sensitive eyes like we seem to have, you’re going to potentially get some eye-train and headaches. If you Google around a bit you will see that this seems to be fairly common and supposedly Apple has made a statement about it saying that it, in fact, could hurt your eyes. The PWM panel does flicker pretty low at 240 Hertz, so some users will have problems. The only way to avoid this flicker is to keep your brightness at 100%. But that will burn you out as well. If you want to see how it works, simply use another phone on slow-motion mode and fils the iPhone X’s flicker rate as you lower the brightness. Since the iPhone 8 line up uses an LCD display, you won’t experience any of this problem.
16:9 aspect ratio
Our fifth reason that we seemed to prefer the iPhone 8 Plus is the 16:9 aspect ratio. The 8 Plus looks much better in landscape video mode. On the X you have “the notch” and the video cuts out when you stretch it.
Another feature gone on the iPhone X is having landscape mode on with the home screen and some applications like Notes and Gmail. The experience of kind of having a mini iPad when in landscape mode is no longer.
Size
The iPhone X is very comfortable to use one-handed. Yet for some people, they may find it too tall and skinny for them. Some people prefer the bigger keyboard layout as found with the 8 Plus. It just gives you more room for fat fingers and bigger hands.
Battery performance
Moving on we found that battery performance became an issue. The iPhone 8 Plus has a little bit smaller battery than the iPhone X; however, it is kind of like a high-endurance champ. You can hit it hard all day and it will still keep going, it’s really difficult to kill the iPhone 8 Plus’s battery. You can almost use it for a day and a half with no problems. In terms of screen time, you’re looking at 8 hours or more and the X maybe about 7 hours.
Control Center.
Our eighth reason we prefer the iPhone Plus is the Control Center. On the iPhone X it is a complete joke, you have to swipe up and away towards the top right to gain access. it seems they could have kept it like it was before with just an easy single swipe up from the bottom.
Screen capture
The ninth reason why we favor the 8 Plus is due to the screen capture feature. With the iPhone X, you are inevitably going to get a whole bunch of random screen captures, especially when retrieving it from your pockets. Who needs a whole bunch of screenshots or the lock screen?
These are our main reason as to why we collectively prefer the iPhone 8 Plus to the iPhone X. The 8 Plus just seems to still fit our needs better. Don’t get it twisted, the iPhone X is a super sexy phone with a whole lot of new tech in it that we still aren’t using as well as we could be, at least not yet. However, for the time being, we are going to stick to our 8 Plus over the X at least until a newer generation works out the kinks.
