2017 saw the advent of some really good-looking phones in the market- almost all of them sporting the now popular tall, 18:9 aspect ratio for their displays. However, the handsets that can really be credited with making this trend the “in thing” are arguably the twin flagship models from Samsung- the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus. 2017 also saw the announcement of three new iPhone models- the top of the line iPhone x, and the other two models the iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone 8.
iPhone 8 Plus vs Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus: Display, Design
While the iPhone 8 Plus features a 5.5-inch, 1080 x 1920 pixels, 16:9 aspect ratio, IPS LCD display. The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus gets a large 6.2-inch super AMOLED display. It displays 18.5:9 aspect ratio panels with the 1080 x 2160 pixels resolution.
While Apple went all out and completely redesigned the iPhone with the iPhone x model, The iPhone 8 Plus carry forward design cues from the older iPhone 7 models and look nearly identical. These two smartphones feature an aluminum body and feature toughened glass coating at the front and the rear both.
iPhone 8 Plus vs Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus: Hardware, Software
The iPhone 8 Plus model feature the critically acclaimed Apple A11 Bionic chip and come with 3GB of RAM. This iPhone model will also be offered in 64GB and 256GB variants.The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus depending on where you buy these phones from would come in two options. The first version gets the Qualcomm MSM8998 Snapdragon 835 chip and is mostly sold in the U.S, and China markets while the other version powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 8895 Octa-Core chip is mostly sold in the EMEA markets. While the Qualcomm version gets the Adreno 540 GPU for graphics, the Exynos variant gets by with the Mali-G71 MP20 GPU. The Samsung Galxy S8 Plus come in two versions-a 128GB version with 6GB of RAM and a 64GB version with 4GB of RAM. All the versions support memory expansion using microSD cards. The 64GB version of the phone, however, has not been officially launched in India. As far as software goes, both the iPhones use the latest version of Apple’s smartphone operating system iOS 11- while both the Samsung handsets currently run Android 7.0 Nougat with a promised update to Android 8.0 Oreo in the pipeline.
iPhone 8 Plus vs Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus: Camera
Let us now take a look at the camera specs of these high-end smartphones. The iPhone 8 Plus gets a dual camera set-up at the rear that consists of twin 12-megapixel sensors with f/1.8 and f/2.8 aperture. The primary lens is also pretty wide as 28mm while the secondary lens is more of a telephoto lens with a focal length of 50mm. At the front, the iPhone 8 Plus gets a 7-megapixel camera with a f/2.2 lens.
As for the Samsung Galaxy 8 Plus, the handsets feature a 12-megapixel Dual Pixel camera with an aperture of f/1.7. At the front, the smartphone get an 8-megapixel shooter. The handsets can record 4K videos at 30fps.
iPhone 8 Plus vs Samsung Galaxy S8: Price in India, Verdict
Being high-end handsets, all the four smartphones will set you back by a significant amount if you are interested in buying them. The current pricing of these devices are as follows
- iPhone 8 Plus 64GB: Rs.66,877
- iPhone 8 Plus 256GB: Rs.80,374
- Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus 64GB: Rs.58,900
- Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus 128GB: Rs.74,900
As evident from the pricing, the top version of the iPhone 8 Plus makes for a really expensive proposition at over Rs.80k. The most expensive variant of the Galaxy S8 Plus is only slightly cheaper at Rs.74,900. In shot, to buy either of these handsets, you need to have really deep pockets. Among these devices, we feel that the 128GB version of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus makes the most sense due to its usable size and a terrific set of features.