It’s a long way out yet, but we’re already expecting the iPhone 8 Plus to be one of the very best phones of 2018, likely topping even the standard iPhone 8.
It’s sure to have a bigger, sharper screen, and will probably have a superior camera, among possibly other exclusive features.
And that aside it’s likely to have all the best bits of the iPhone 8, with both handsets expected to get a complete overhaul, making them dramatically different to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
Apple announced the iPhone 7 Plus on September 7th, while the iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6S Plus were both announced on September 9th, so one or other of those dates, and certainly around then, seems likely for the launch of the iPhone 8 Plus.
Generally Apple then makes the phones available in stores either one or two weeks later, so you should be able to buy the iPhone 7 Plus sometime in mid-September.
That’ll give you plenty of time to save, which is good, because based on past form this will be one of the most expensive phones available. If Apple sticks to its current pricing you’ll be looking at £719 for a 32GB model, £819 for a 128GB one and £919 for a 256GB handset. On contract it’s likely to start at around £44 per month.
Those are high prices, but the iPhone 8 Plus is likely to justify them if the rumoured specs and features below turn out to be true.
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The screen on the iPhone 8 Plus could undergo a huge change, with 9to5Mac reporting that according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo it will have a 5.8-inch display, up from just 5.5 inches on the iPhone 7 Plus.
That jump in size would make it even more of a phablet, and that’s not all that might be changing, with Kuo also claiming that the screen might be curved and use AMOLED (the same tech as Samsung uses, which allows for vibrant colours).
Assuming the screen does get bigger there’s a high chance the resolution will increase too, though there’s no word on how much by. The iPhone 7 Plus has a 1080 x 1920 display, so it would be nice to see a QHD one on the iPhone 8 Plus.
Radical changes could be coming to the design of the iPhone 8 Plus too. For one thing Ming-Chi Kuo reckons it will have a curved glass back, rather than the flat metal rear of the iPhone 7 Plus.
And Kuo isn’t the only one to make that claim, with an Apple component supplier saying the same thing to Nikkei, so it may well be correct. Apparently the phone would still have a metal frame though, for a metal and glass sandwich.
Another change could be coming to the front of the handset, as according to DigiTimes Apple is working on a way to build the Touch ID fingerprint scanner into the screen, which would mean it could remove the home button. Though that sounds rather ambitious, so we’re not totally convinced it will happen.
Whatever happens we’re sure there’ll be big changes, as the phone is overdue a redesign. But some things will likely stay the same, like the dust and waterproofing for example, and the absence of a 3.5mm headphone port.
The iPhone 7 Plus uses the A10 Fusion processor, so we’d guess that the iPhone 8 Plus will use an A11 Fusion chip, though exactly how powerful it will be is unknown.
But we suspect it will be quad-core, as Apple only just jumped to quad-core chips with the current model.
Similarly, we’re expecting 3GB of RAM, as Apple doesn’t up the RAM every year and the iPhone 7 Plus was the first iPhone with 3GB. The iPhone 8 Plus is also sure to run iOS 11, but very little is known about that either, aside from it probably including a ‘Dark Mode’, making it more comfortable to look at your screen at night.
The iPhone 7 Plus already has the best camera yet found on an iPhone – better even than the snapper on the iPhone 7, but it’s sure to be improved for the iPhone 8 Plus.
The exact nature of the improvements are largely unknown, but according to a research note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, obtained by MacRumors, the telephoto lens in likely to have optical image stabilisation.
In the iPhone 7 Plus only the wide-angle lens does, so this would mean both lenses would benefit from it.
We wouldn’t count on there being a change in megapixels though, which means you may well get a dual 12MP snapper on the back, and a 7MP camera on the front.
There are three main features currently rumored for the iPhone 8 Plus. First up we’ve heard from DigiTimes that it might have an iris scanner.
It’s also thought that the phone might support wireless charging, and there’s a fair chance it will have a Smart Connector, as this was rumoured for inclusion on the unreleased iPhone 7 Pro.
Dimensions (mm): 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3 TBC
Weight (g): 188 TBC
Battery capacity (mAh): 2900 TBC
Colours: Jet Black, Black, Silver, Gold, Rose Gold TBC
Screen size (inches): 5.5 TBC
Resolution: 1080 x 1920 TBC
Pixels per inch (PPI): 401 TBC
Processor: Quad-core TBC
Processor make: Apple A11 Fusion TBC
RAM: 3GB TBC
Internal storage: 32/128/256GB TBC
Expandable storage up to (GB): N/A
Camera: Dual 12-megapixel (7-megapixel front-facing) TBC
Operating System: iOS 11 TBC
