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Jamie asked: “I have an iPhone 7 which I know Dave hates, but I’m curious about the difference in the processing power between the 7, 8 and X, especially versus the cost. I know Dave will say to go with an Android phone. If so, what would he find comparable to the iPhone 7, which I believe is perfectly capable of doing anything the 8 or X can do.”
Jamie, the processing power of the iPhones 8 and X is actually very impressive, on single core operations it’s 25% faster than the A10 on the iPhone 7, on multicore tests it runs 80% faster, it’s been benchmarked as between 17% and 31% faster than the Samsung Note 8 in different tests, and it actually tests comparably, and in some cases, slightly faster than a MacBook Pro running a Kaby Lake Intel Core i5.
Now, that doesn’t mean that it could compete with a computer in the real world, they’re different devices capable of powering different screens and doing different things, but for a phone’s processor to benchmark the same as a computer processor is impressive.
The processing power of the iPhones 8 and X is actually very impressive
The A11 is extremely powerful, but you’re right, for now the iPhone 7 can still do pretty much the same things that the new phones can, that just won’t be the case by this time next year.
Realistically, most of the flashy things new phones do are fairly pointless anyway, you adopt them when you get a new phone, but they’re not useful enough to justify an update, so if you’re asking whether any new features or the power justifies an upgrade, well… no. Wanting the upgrade justifies it, but really unless your phone is having issues, an upgrade is rarely objectively justified. Few if any new features are ever that important for day to day use.