iPhone 8 Plus review

The iPhone 8 Plus is a cheap feature-filled alternative to newer iPhones

iPhone 8 Plus
iPhone 8 Plus

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

  • Middling battery life
  • No fast charger in the box

The battery life on the iPhone 8 Plus has been pleasing – the day-to-day tasks, those that don't require intense effort on the part of the phone – don't eat away the battery anywhere near as much as they did on previous iPhones.

If we were just playing graphically easy games, using WhatsApp or browsing social networks we were easily able to make it to the end to the day without a problem.

A day of taking photos, moving around a lot (which triggers the motion sensor) and playing (non-intensive) games saw us with over 20% of battery life still left at 8pm. Add in a wireless charging pad for regular top-ups and you'll rarely have a battery emergency.

That said, between 8pm and midnight the battery level slipped rather rapidly – you'll want to switch to Low Power Mode at this point, and it's still irritating that you can't set this as the default.

iPhone 8 Plus review

Battery life is average - just about good enough

It's also frustrating that while the iPhone 8 Plus supports fast charging – 50% in half an hour from dead – you'll need to buy a dedicated cable and charger in order to take advantage of it, which sucks. 

Most rivals offer fast charging right out of the box, and it's a shame that Apple hasn’t joined the revolution.

The speed of wireless charging is impressive though. It's not linear, in that your phone will start charging rapidly but can then slow a little, but the general speed isn't too far off that of a wired connection, which is what you'd hope for if you're going to be picking up and putting down your phone regularly.

iPhone 8 Plus review

In our standard battery run-down test, where we loop a Full HD video for 90 minutes at full brightness, the performance was about average. We expected the iPhone 8 Plus to perform better to be honest… it dropped 23%, which is similar to many other flagship phones - though the likes of the newer iPhone XR have it slightly beat, with that phone dropping 20%.

It's hard to see why it didn’t do better – with a more efficient processor, it’s actually a slightly worse score than on the iPhone 6S Plus. It just shows that Apple hasn't really improved the battery performance much – although, given it's got a lot smaller battery than in previous Plus models (for some reason) that's actually an impressive feat of engineering.

Apple has gone from a large 2,900mAh battery to the smallest its ever shoved into its phablet, presumably to facilitate the wireless charging. It's still a shame that's the case though, as we always want more battery life in the handset.

iPhone 8 Plus review

If you're a regular user of an iPhone, especially one who's not used a Plus model before, you'll be happy with the amount of battery on offer, and the ability of the iPhone 8 Plus to hold onto power when it's not doing much.

However, its battery life is a long way from being the best on the market, with many Android handsets able to last much longer.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.