Do you currently own an iPhone 8 and you find yourself wanting to get a newer Android phone? If that's the case I think you have a bit of reconsidering to do, because personally I think you should hold on to your iPhone 8 and maybe wait a few more months until a compelling alternative is released onto the market.
TL;DR - The Short Version
1. The iPhone 8 is already a great phone, I'd say if you have one already, keep it!
2. Only an Android phone with 4 or 6GB RAM, or more, can compete with iPhone 8 in terms of RAM.
3. Plenty of phones have insecure versions of face unlock.
4. It's hard to beat the iPhone 8 camera unless you are shopping for other flagship phones.
5. Expandable storage is a pretty neat option to have.
6. Anything bigger than 5.5-inches, or 6-inches if it's 18:9 or 21:9, will be a good large screen.
7. 4000 MAH lasts at least 2 days with extremely heavy usage.
My recommendation is that you hold on to the iPhone 8, otherwise if you really need to upgrade I can say the only devices that would be good for you are the Samsung Galaxy A71 (420 Euros) or the Huawei Mate 20 (345 Euros) if you don't mind heavily skinned versions of Android. If you prefer stock Android experience, I would then recommend the Asus ZenFone 6 (480 Euros).
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Browsing Reddit I recently came across an interesting question. One Redditor wrote:
I'm really noticing the low amount of RAM on my iPhone 8, and I'm starting to dislike iOS more and more. That's why I want to replace it with an Android phone.
I'm from the Netherlands, and I'm looking for a phone with:
Good, fast facial recognition
Good camera, primarily to take pictures with. Good video is a nice bonus but less important.
Either expandable storage or 128GB storage.
Big screen, I had the iPhone 8 plus until it was stolen. I liked the size of that one more than of my iPhone 8. How big it is exactly doesn't matter too much, I just like a big screen.
Big battery, I'm a student so I sometimes have days where I get up at 08:00 and go to bed at 03:00. To reach that I have to charge my iPhone in between. It's a requirement that my next phone is able to last that long.
Budget: less than €500.
If at all possible, (close to) stock Android. I dislike the shit UI's that other brands often put on their phones. I really like the look of Android on the Pixel phones. This is not really a requirement though, just a nice bonus.
Not sure if carrier matters a lot in the Netherlands, but I'm with Tele2.
I've been looking at the Xiaomi phones, the pixel phones, and some others, but I'm not sure if I should get those now, or if I should wait for e.g. the Xiaomi Mi 10 or the Pixel 4a XL and get those when they release?
Here's my long form explanation, for the recommendations I wrote above. I own an iPhone 8. I owned this phone since February 2018, I bought the phone new, just a few month or a whole quarter after its release in September/October 2017. I'd like to think I have plenty of first hand experiences with this phone and its qualities so I should be equipped with the knowledge to make a recommendation based on some of Redditor's list of needs.
1. Price? First, off I want to talk about the iPhone 8 Price. At minimum, the very lowest you might be able to find the iPhone 8 for is 200 Euros. At the maximum you may find them selling for 400 Euros, and sometimes even more. However, overall the average price is something like 300 Euros. Which means the iPhone 8 is clearly one of the best phones you can buy for under 500 Euros. So let's think about this, in just 2 years after release the iPhone 8, the phone can be bought for about 1/3 of it's initial price. At a good price, we also have on board the A11 Chip. The SoC that powers the phone gets CPU benchmark scores of 238,000 on Antutu Benchmark (version 7), so that makes iPhone 8 an extremely powerful phone at the price range where it is available. Good luck finding a more high-performance phone. 300 Euros for a device that performs like the iPhone 8 is great value-for-money.
2. RAM? iOS traditionally requires less RAM than Android. I think the 2GB of RAM found on the iPhone 8 is totally perfect for running iOS. For example, the 2 GB RAM on my iPhone 6s Plus hardly ever struggles. If it does struggle it's minor, and just a little bit of closing backgrounded apps earlier and more frequently than the iPhone 8, but honestly it's never in problematic. Multitasking, like switching between a banking app and a note-taking app never becomes impossible. I have seen basic multitasking like this become impossible on other Android phones, but never on an iOS phones. From my own estimates, the iPhone 8 works better than any Android phone with 4GB or 3GB RAM that I have ever held in my hand. My general understanding is that Android OS is heavy on RAM, so if you want an Android phone with similar RAM capabilities to it's iOS counterpart you'd need to multiply by 2. So if an iPhone 8 has 2GB RAM, only an Android phone with 4 or 6GB RAM would sufficiently compete.
3. Facial Recognition? Plenty of phone have this now, and it has become a mainstream feature thanks to budget phones. However, this mainstream version of face unlock that you see on many Android devices is nothing like what premium Apple or high-end Huawei devices feature with their own 3D infrared modules that 3D-scan your face. This high-end version is secure. Every other version is not. The budget implementation merely looks for your face with the selfie camera and some touted AI magic. Point being, for most phones that aren't premium flagship phones, face unlock is really insecure and easy to spoof. I would say you can use them at your own risk. At the same time, I understand that the convenience that even a insecure face unlock brings to the table. Insecure or not, it's a pretty cool and fast way to unlock your phone.
4. Good Camera? If you are already holding onto an iPhone 8, you already have one of the best cameras on the market right now for shooting photos and videos. I do not know how you can expect to purchase another phone and get much better than this. If you want a good camera, and you are already used to the way that the iPhone 8 shoots photos, then your options are very limited to only other premiere flagship phones of the recent past few year. That means, you will be looking at the Huawei Mate-series and P-series 10, 20, and 30, and Samsung Galaxy S-series 9, 10, and 20, and Note series 8, 9, 10, and maybe LG's V30, V30+, V35, V40, and V50. When you high-end phone, you are already at the top of the market in terms of camera quality.
5. Expandable Storage? One area where I can see plenty of room for improvement over the iPhone 8 is in terms of storage. Apple does offer large capacity models, but they never offered expandable storage on any iPhone model. Expandable storage is a pretty neat option.
6. Big Screen? I love Apple's 5.5-inch Plus sized phones with 1080p screens. They are very charming on the 6s Plus, 7 Plus, and 8 Plus. And these days, I think they are the minimum sizes that a screen should be on any phone. I say this because so much of what we do on our phones are content driven. Phones have become mini-tablets, or micro-computers. Anything bigger than 5.5, or 6-inches if it's 18:9 or 21:9, will be a good large screen.
7. Big Battery? In my experience, there are some phones with 3000+ MAH batteries that perform super well in terms of battery life. However, my general understanding is that if you really want to be wowed by battery life then the physical size of the battery must be larger than 4000 MAH. Any phone that I have tested with a battery larger than 4000 MAH lasts at least 2 days with extremely heavy usage, without any problems doing so.
After addressing all of the bullet points, I was able to compile this Kimovil Search Filter based on the aforementioned specifications requirements: ( https://www.kimovil.com/en/compare-smartphones/f_min_d+screenSize.5.5,f_min_d+antutuBenchmark.237000,f_min_dr+value.4096,fe_storage-external-storage,f_min_d+batteryMah.4000 ) And I created a second search filter which applied the constraints to pricing, so the options in this listed are all within the 500 Euros budget. I made a list of some of the top 15 options and the devices that can be easily found for less than 500 Euros will be starred.* (I also think it is very fair to point out that many of the more affordable phones on list most likely cannot compete against the iPhone 8 in terms of raw camera performance, only other the flagships on the list can compete): https://www.kimovil.com/en/compare-smartphones/order.kiBattery,f_max_d+eurPrice.480,f_min_d+screenSize.5.5,f_min_d+antutuBenchmark.237000,f_min_dr+value.4096,fe_storage-external-storage,f_min_d+batteryMah.4000
Top Phones on the list include
1. Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus
2. Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
3. Samsung Galaxy A90 5G
4. Samsung Galaxy A71* 422 Euros
5. Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Lite
6. Huawei Mate 30 Pro
7. Huawei Mate 20X* 465 Euros (be careful, this is a Chinese market phone)
8. Huawei Mate 20 Pro* 465 Euros
9. Huawei Mate 20* 345 Euros
10. Huawei Mate 10 Pro* 315 Euros (be careful, this is a Chinese market phone)
11. Huawei Mate 10* 220 Euros
12. (Huawei) Honor Note 10* 250 Euros (be careful, this is a Chinese market phone)
13. Asus ZenFone 6* 480 Euros
14. Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro* 200 Euros
15. Xiaomi Redmi K30 / K30 5G* 275/400 Euros
After all of these explanations my recommendation is that you hold on to the iPhone 8, otherwise if you really need to upgrade I can say the only devices that would be good for someone who owns an iPhone 8 are the Samsung Galaxy A71 (420 Euros) or the Huawei Mate 20 (345 Euros) if you don't mind heavily skinned versions of Android. If you prefer stock Android experience, then I would recommend the Asus ZenFone 6 (480 Euros).
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