Why iPhone 8 Plus is STILL Relevant in 2021.. By Brandon Butch

What's up guys, my name is brand and in 2017 it was an interesting year for the iPhone because it was the first time ever where we saw three new iPhones introduced at the same event, so we saw the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 plus, and then we also saw the iPhone 10, which was the first iPhone without a home button. But now we're in 2021 and aside from the budget iPhone SE here from 2020, every iPhone sold by Apple has that full screen display with no home button. But the thing is some people still want a bigger phone with a home button and that's where the iPhone 8 plus comes into play. But is it even worth buying in 2021? And if you have one right now, should you upgrade asap, or will it last a couple more years? So we're going to answer all those questions and more in this video? So, let's start with the design, because this is one of the defining factors for whether you will want to buy an iPhone, 8 plus and 2021. So the 8 plus was the first iPhone to have a glass back and allow for wireless charging, but it still maintained the same big bezels that we saw the previous year with the iPhone 7 plus. So you can see on the front side here.

We have, of course the bezels all around. We have our home button down here, which does have touch ID which we'll talk about in a moment. Furthermore, we also have the aluminum frame here. So we have not stainless steel but aluminum. It still feels nice and premium.

It has a good weight to it. Furthermore, it is on the heavier side, it weighs 202 grams, which is heavier than the 7 plus and every iPhone to come after the 8 plus, as well aside from the pro max models, but all around you can see really nice design. Of course, we have the glass back, and we have the dual camera setup right there as well, and we also have an ip67 rating for water and dust resistance, and you can kind of see one thing that isn't resistant are fingerprints, you'll notice all over this thing. There are fingerprints, and that of course comes with a glass back which is kind of a con, but then again, most people at least should be rocking a case with this phone. So you probably won't have too many fingerprints unless you just don't wipe it down very often now we cannot discuss the design without talking about that home button and the superfast and reliable touch ID now.

Some people did prefer touch ID over face ID even before Ovid started, but now that we're always wearing masks when we go out that adds even more to it and just kind of makes unlocking your phone in a public place a lot easier, and you know the fact that you can kind of be pulling it out of your pocket, and it's already going to be unlocked by the time you pull it up to your face. Obviously face ID is fast as well, but touch ID is definitely faster to get in the phone and with the masks and everything right now. You can definitely make a case, for you know more practicality with touch ID versus face ID now. As for the durability of this phone, the eight plus has held up actually pretty well, I never used the screen protector with this phone, which is not recommended. You should use a screen protector with all your phones, in my opinion, but you can see here that I didn't get too many scratches on the screen.

I mean I really don't have any deep scratches. There are some like hair, scratches there, just some minor scratches all around, but you know nothing major, not no deep cuts or anything like that. Now I did also drop the phone, as you can see over here. On the bottom right hand, side, that's the only time that I actually have anything to show for it. I dropped this phone a few times, but that's all I have to show for it.

So it's a very durable phone. You can see some other scuffs right here as well. I think it's from the same drop but overall, a very, very durable phone in terms of the screen and also just the know, the frame and everything as well and speaking of that display. We do have a 5.5 inch display with a 1080p display, it's exactly 1920 by 1080, so 1080p videos on YouTube will look great, and they also fit to size, which is awesome. We also get true tone on the 8 plus, and this was actually the first iPhone to get true tone.

So that's pretty cool now the display itself is not anything. That's going to blow you away like the iPhone 10 did at the time with that OLED panel, it's solid, but it's an lcd, so you're going to get lcd results so watching videos playing games web browsing all that's going to be sufficient, and again you're not going to see super contrast colors, quite like you do on an OLED panel or even like you see on the 10r with that liquid retina display. But the quality is perfectly fine. I mean nobody's going to complain about this display unless you're just used to a much better display, and even then it shouldn't be a dealbreaker for most people like 98 of people. The 8 plus also has a pressure sensitive screen, which means that we have 3d touch and 3d touch is the feature that apple replaced with haptic touch in 2019 with iOS 13, and it is much, much worse in my opinion, but the 8 plus will always have a pressure sensitive screen.

So if you long press, you know on an icon or in multiple places throughout the OS you're going to notice that it's much faster than haptic touch which got introduced with iOS 13, like I said so, it's faster to bring you know the quick action menu up, and it just feels so much better and less like a simple long press like it does on the phones these days, since they don't have those pressure sensitive screens. So I love that that's one of the biggest pros, in my opinion, about the iPhone 8 plus now also on the front side of this iPhone 8 plus, is the front-facing camera, which is a 7, megapixel, f, 2.2 camera that can only shoot up to 1080p. So nothing that's going to blow you away, obviously, but then again, no front-facing. Camera has really blown me away personally until the iPhone 12 did this year or in 2020, so I would not put too much stock into the front-facing camera. You know unless you just vlog with your iPhone a lot.

In that case, you need to just go ahead and get the iPhone 11 or the iPhone 12. In my opinion, but if you don't blog and constantly post to YouTube, then the 1080p front-facing camera, even with video, will be fine. I mean it's not like you can't make face time, calls or anything like that. It's just not going to be that good of quality, but at the end of the day, most people are not going to care at all. What you look like in terms of quality on FaceTime, but one of the bigger cons about the front-facing camera on the a-plus is that we don't get any of the fun features on this camera like portrait mode or animal or emoji or night mode.

We don't get any of those features on the front-facing camera of the iPhone 8 plus, which obviously those came later down the road, but still it's kind of boring, because you can't do much with that. Front-Facing camera there, but on the rear-facing camera things do get better. So we have the dual 12-megapixel camera set setup, one wide angle and one telephoto lens, and thanks to that telephoto lens, we get portrait mode with portrait lighting, and it actually works pretty well on both people and on objects. So the cutouts and the edges of people are not as precise as the phones that we've seen. You know nowadays that we've seen after the eight plus- but it's suffices- I mean it gets the job done, and it actually makes photos look like they came from a newer phone than the iPhone 8.

Sometimes so it's pretty impressive, with portrait mode and even not in portrait mode, just regular shots. Look fine as long as it's in good light. Now one con is that if you start trying to take photos or videos in either low light or too bright of situations, you will notice that the dynamic range is just not great. So you have blown out skies a lot and obviously this does not thrive in low light either. So in low light, you might see a lot more grain than you would on some newer phones and just the quality overall will not be super impressive and, like I said, sometimes you'll see skies blown out and lights blown out just because of the dynamic range.

But aside from that, we do have other features like we have HDR, auto HDR. We have true tone flash we have is and overall, like I said, the photo quality is fine. I mean it's not something. That's going to take your breath away, like I mentioned the front-facing camera, but it gets the job done just fine and, like I said, as long as you're in good lighting conditions, you're not really going to be able to tell a big difference in the iPhone 8 plus camera versus you know the iPhone 10, even or sometimes maybe even the iPhone 10r. So obviously still a good camera just make sure that you are in good lighting situations, the majority of time, but even then you know most people that are going to see these photos are not really going to care and not really going to be able to tell a huge difference.

Now. As for the video, we can shoot.4K, 60fps and the video actually looks pretty good, but we do not get stereo recording. So when you record a video- and you hear it back you're going to notice that you just get a very flat mono sound, which is a little unfortunate but then again you know most people are not really going to care or hear about that. This is mainly just you know. Nerd talk right now, but the video quality will be fine for most people who are not looking to have the best quality out there and just like with still photos.

The iPhone 8 plus gets the job done, and you won't be able to tell a big difference in quality unless you're, comparing it to something like the iPhone 11 or the iPhone 12. Sometimes the iPhone 10r and even then, like I said, the difference is going to be in the dynamic range and in extreme low light, or you know highlight settings now. The main reason that the iPhone 8 plus does not quite have the camera quality as some newer iPhones. Despite having the same 12 megapixel lens that the newer iPhones have even the iPhone 12 still has a 12 megapixel lens, and the reason for that is because of the chipset inside and how apple and how these phones handle. Computational photography and the chip inside the iPhone 8 plus is going to be the a11 bionic chip.

And while it is a solid chip for performance, it just doesn't have as much of an impact on the photo and video quality like the newer phones do, but when it comes to actually using the phone on a daily basis, this thing performs just fine. Now, yes, it does feel a little sluggish compared to the newer phones, but unless you have an iPhone, 11 or 12 you're not going to be able to have you know any complaints about the plus. I mean it handles games very well. I spent a whole day tweeting and checking my social media accounts. My email web browsing all that with no issue.

Everything was nice and smooth here on iOS 14.4. I believe I'm on so really no major complaints about the performance on the 8 plus at all here in 2021. Now, when it comes to battery life on the 8 plus, it's just decent here in 2021 now when this phone was first introduced, it got great battery life for the time, but now that we're on our phones more than ever before, especially with the pandemic and everything, the eight plus likely will not make it through an entire day without charging at least one time most likely two times for me personally, but in my battery test video I did find it to get around 5.5 hours of battery life, which isn't the greatest, but then again my 8 plus, is on 93 battery capacity. So you know if you have a less worn battery than mine, you could get slightly better results, but still, I would not expect to make it through an entire day. Unfortunately, now with all of that being said, should you still buy the iPhone 8 plus in 2021? And if you have one now, should you consider upgrading this year? So first off, you cannot buy the iPhone 8 plus new from apple anymore.

Now you might be able to buy it refurbished, but I would not even go that route. I would just go straight to third-party vendors. I would look at places like eBay, Amazon, Facebook marketplace and I would be looking at either refurbished or preferably used, but mint condition models and looking ate bay, which is where I recommend buying used iPhones from I made a whole video on everything to look for when buying a used iPhone. Furthermore, I bought you know probably 35 different iPhones one bay, never been scammed. Anything like that, and I've always gotten exactly what I wanted.

So you can check out that video. It is linked in the description below, but anyway you can see that the iPhone 8 plus one bay is going anywhere from around 250 to 350 in mint condition. Now you can find 128 and 256 gigabyte models for around the same price as the 64 gigabyte model, so I would 100 recommend going with either 128 or 256, even if you don't think you're going to use all the storage you might as well. If they're going for around the same price on the used market out there, so yeah 250 to 350, I think the iPhone 8 plus is a solid buy. Only if you want the old, iPhone style design with a bigger screen and, of course, the home button here and that touch ID.

So this is the last like I mentioned earlier, the last big iPhone with a home button. So if that's exactly what you want, it seems like a good deal to me here in 2021. However, if you can stretch your budget out just a little more to around 350 to 400, then I would recommend getting a used 10r. I think it's a better value than the eight plus. Now you get a better camera, you get faster performance and of course, you have less bezel and of course you have face ID, and you have that full screen display which some people will not like.

But I'm just saying this is a better value out there right now. If you can stretch the budget a little, I did also make a full video on the 10r and 2021, so you can check that out as well. It's up in the cards above and also in the description below now. If you currently have an iPhone 8 plus, should you upgrade in 2021 and my answer to that would be no probably not at least not yet now, unless you just hate your phone, and you complain about it every single day, then I think that you should wait until the new 2021 iPhones get released and then look at maybe buying the iPhone 11 or the iPhone 12, since they will get a discount after the new phones launch. That's always my strategy for finding the best value out there.

The best bang for your buck is getting the previous generation when the new generations get announced because they get a nice discount in both the new and the used markets. Now. Another thing to keep in mind is that there could be an iPhone SE plus coming at some point in 2021, so that's going to keep the older iPhone design with a home button but bring better internals and likely a better camera as well. Now this is just a rumor, but you know if it were to come out this year, it would be in the first half of 2021. So that's another reason you should just hold on to your plus, at least for now, and also, if you're, wondering about how long the iPhone 8 plus is going to last.

I think that we're going to be getting iOS 15 later this year and also, I think the iPhone 8 plus will likely be supported until at least 2022, and maybe even 2023, with iOS 16 and is 17. So I think the 8 plus will still last a few more years. If you just want to hold on to it, and you know, get everything out of it squeeze everything out of it. You definitely can but yeah guys there you have it. That is the iPhone 8 plus here in 2021.

I think it's a good value. However, if you don't necessarily want the home button, if that's not like the biggest thing to you, then the iPhone 10r might be a better buy, but you know nonetheless, I would at least hold on for a few more months to see if that new iPhone, SC plus comes out and of course, wait for the discounts when the new phones get released later this year as well. So there's a lot of variables, but hopefully you know, I answered the questions and hopefully you guys can make up your mind if you want to get rid of your phone upgrade or if you just want to buy one, maybe upgrading from maybe an iPhone 6 success SC, something like that. So if you guys enjoyed this video, I would appreciate, if you give it a thumbs up and, of course make sure you guys subscribe for a lot more videos about the iPhone 8 plus I'll make another video in 2022 about it. I may make another video on this phone later in the year as well.

So anyways guys thanks again for watching, and I'll see you soon do you.

Source : Brandon Butch