Apple’s playing catch-up, and that’s good!

This year is the 10th anniversary of the iPhone and Apple made some not-so-surprising moves by introducing two new iPhones.

The iPhone 8 is as expected, but if it followed Apple’s iteration, this version should have been named iPhone 7s. My theory behind this move is that Apple is ending this nomenclature starting this year, which means no more iPhone 8s next year.

Anyway, the iPhone 8 is basically a refresh of the iPhone 7 in terms of design but with a few cosmetic changes and the usual hardware improvements.

At the exterior, the biggest noticeable difference would be the glass back panel on the iPhone 8 compared to an all-aluminum body of the iPhone 7. This design move was necessary for Apple to give the iPhone 8 wireless charging capability, which is a first for the iPhone. Aside from that, changes in the placement of the antenna bands are also noticeable. And no, there still won’t be a 3.5mm audio jack.

The display size is still the same – 4.7 inches for the iPhone 8 and 5.5 inches for the iPhone 8 Plus.  However, Apple introduced some improvements on the display, like True Tone technology that adapts the brightness to the environment.

The camera modules are also the same between the two but the improvement is under the hood with the iPhone 8 getting 4K video recording at 60fps and a whopping 240fps slow motion video at full HD 1080p.

In terms of internal hardware, there’s a lot to talk about here. First is the new Apple A11 Bionic chipset, iOS 11 out of the box with double the storage options of 64GB and 256GB.

There’s also the new Bluetooth 5.0, access to Galileo on top of Glonass and BDS for a more accurate GPS and fast charging.

Surprisingly, the non-removable battery of the iPhone 8 has a smaller capacity compared to the older iPhone 7 (1821mAh vs. 1960mAh) but Apple promised it will still last longer by two hours.

Overall, there’s not much but we’re already used to that from Apple.

Then, about two minutes later, Apple announced a new phone – the iPhone X (iPhone 10). It essentially made the iPhone 8 somewhat obsolete.

Apple is labeling the iPhone X as its 10th anniversary phone. It’s got a bigger 5.8-inch display and a completely new almost bezel-less design by removing the home button and fingerprint scanner. This also means that Apple had to find a new way to provide biometric security, which they call Face ID, a facial recognition feature.

The Super Retina Display now uses OLED technology with support for HDR 10 and Dolby Vision.

The internal hardware is similar to that of the iPhone 8 Plus – A11 Bionic chip, 3GB RAM, 64GB or 256GB storage, dual rear camera with 2x optical zoom and battery life.

This move isn’t just  a symbolic anniversary model. It’s catching up with the times. Almost every other smartphone vendor is pushing really hard to innovate, both in hardware and design.

The bigger display, bezel-less design, wireless charging and facial recognition are just some of the more prominent features everyone else has introduced in the market. In many aspects, the Xiaomi Mi Mix and Mix 2, LG G6 and V30, and the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ as well as the Note8 have all gone ahead of Apple.

Normally, Apple would not have bothered and just continued with its own roadmap. If that were still the case, we would have only seen just one iPhone this year – and that’s the iPhone 8.

So yes, it looks like Apple is playing catch up with the iPhone X. But that’s good, right? If not, would Apple fans still settle for the iPhone 8?