Got the iPhone 8 yesterday. I love Apple products, and we're all in at my house with the Apple ecosystem. That said, I do like the X, but I just can't bring myself to drop $1000 for a phone. The technology is neat, but it doesn't warrant that price tag.

For me, the 8 upgrades my 6. It's a nice improvement - the battery was mostly shot in my 6, the processor is clearly snappier, and the camera is much improved (which is a big deal for me). The wireless charging will also be nice, although not really necessary. My 6 could have gone for another year or two with a new battery, but it won't be too long until the 6 is no longer supported with the latest iOS releases, so I bit the bullet.

Frankly, I thought long and hard about switching to the iPhone SE. The iPhone 5 was my favorite form factor out of all of them. I liked a smaller cell phone. But rumor persists that the SE might be refreshed before too long, so I went with the "latest greatest" instead.

Watch is arriving next week. Will be my first Apple Watch. I've been holding out for one with it's own LTE, so I'm excited to try that out.

If you do find some improvement in the iPhone 8 or "X" cameras and don't mind posting an image or two, there is a thread in the Gallery section that I'd love to see some posted images. I'm thinking in the possible near future of a possible iPhone 8 or X from my 6S and would love to see some images. Like many, I have a 6S and the battery life isn't great. I did purchase the additional Apple battery case to extend battery life but will be thinking of a replacement in the future and hear good things about these iPhones, thanks.

Since we were discussing about 600 MHz band 71 in this thread, here's an update from T-Mobile. Since spending over $8B on 600 MHz band 71 spectrums, T-Mobile has now deployed band 71 in 586 cities across America. Look for a host of phones coming in 2018 to support this wide coverage band. So far in 2017, we have only the LG V30 with band 71.

TMO News

I just bought an iPhone X; my wife drowned her 6S in the toilet, she insisted she take my 7 and I get an X, mostly because you get a superior camera and 4K video, a large screen but without a giant phone.
So far I'm loving it.
I'm planning to go back to Africa this summer and want a phone I can take lots of high-quality video on without having to upload to the cloud since that's not practical where we will be going.

Here's a link to some 4K video taken on the iPhone X in Kauai. Very impressive.

Cinema-quality video from iPhone X in Kauai.

I loaded the Halide app on my iPhone X for shooting with RAW. I installed Affinity app on my macbook for editing the RAW files. Apple worked for several years with Affinity to come up with this app for using with a Mac and I'm excited in exploring the results. I'm just scratching the surface but very encouraged with some of the results so far. I've never shot RAW with a smartphone but used Canon's DPP for processing RAW and Elements to tweak the files before converting to JPEG for web uses when I used my Canon 5DkIII dslr way back when I could shoot with a dslr. As soon as I nail down the editing with this new app I should be posting the results in a thread in the Gallery. Amazing what these smartphones can do these days besides just for use as a phone. That 4K video is great and something to consider whenever I start with video down the road. Good luck in Africa and let us know how the video's turn out.