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iPhone 8 Exclusive: Apple's Biggest Changes Revealed

This article is more than 6 years old.

One week ago I was able to exclusively confirm the iPhone 8 design, but there wasn’t a lot of detail. That changes today… 

Expanding upon that report I have again worked with luxury case maker Nodus to delve deeper into Apple ’s supply chain. Now I am able to go into greater detail about the all new chassis of this radically redesigned 10th anniversary iPhone. And yes, the dreaded ‘Plan B’ is definitely dead.

Nodus and Gordon Kelly

What you see above is a finalized hardware design. An enlarged, elongated 5.8-inch display is surrounded by dramatically reduced bezels of approximately 4mm on all sides, the theory being the iPhone 8 won’t be as prone to accidental input like the Infinity and Edge displays on Samsung’s premium Galaxy smartphones.

You will also see a new bottom edge render confirming Apple will not bring back the headphone jack after its controversial removal from the iPhone 7. Despite rumors to the contrary, the Lightning port also remains (though USB Type-C may feature on the wall plug as part of a wider move to finally adopt fast charging).

Nodus and Gordon Kelly

Another carry over from the iPhone 7 will be stereo speakers via a combination of the bottom speaker and an amplified earpiece.

Falling in line with my exclusive renders last week, Apple will definitely enlarge the power button. Exactly why remains unclear, but it is thought this is to give Apple a (patented) fallback option for Touch ID should it not manage to integrate this into the display. As it stands there is no firm word on which way this will go. The technology for screen integration exists, but scaling it to 10s of millions of units is the challenge.

Nodus and Gordon Kelly

What also remains uncertain is how Apple will redesign iOS 11 to accommodate the ‘cutout’ at the top of the display which exists to accommodate the front facing camera and sensors.

What Nodus and I believe is the remaining corners will simply be used for connectivity and battery status with notifications switched to the bottom in a new easier-to-reach and more detailed ‘Function Area’. 

Nodus and Gordon Kelly

In addition, while our renders confirm the iPhone 8 has a dual rear camera with new vertical alignment, the exact configuration and resolution of the lenses are unknown. I’d expect Apple to stick with 12MP wide-angle and telephoto modules but make technical improvements - particularly aperture in the latter.

Nodus and Gordon Kelly

Finally - and not shown in the renders - I understand battery life will improve significantly. This will be due to a new L-shaped battery configuration that should deliver iPhone 7 Plus-beating stamina but in a significantly smaller chassis.

The downside to all these improvements will be the price.

Nodus and Gordon Kelly

The iPhone 8 will be Apple’s most expensive iPhone ever and I’m hearing pricing will start from $1,100 to $1,200. Some sources claim Apple will only offer the top two storage tiers (128GB, 256GB) but I don’t have enough information to corroborate this.

That said Nodus and myself are now highly confident on all other details, so much so Nodus is now fine tuning its line of iPhone 8 retail cases with this information. A sneak preview of which can be seen below:

Nodus

Nodus

Yes, despite its mammoth asking price and despite the fact, there will three new iPhone models launching in September, it is fast becoming clear the dreams of Apple fans will only center around one of them…

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