How good is the 6-year-old iPhone 8 in 2024? The build of the iPhone 8 still looks nice, but it does have big bezels, so because of that, it doesn't look very modern. However, for some people, that might not be an issue because it still has a home button with Touch ID, which is the fingerprint sensor, so you can unlock the phone very fast.
It has glass on the front but also on the back, and that means that this is the first iPhone that supports wireless charging, so that's a nice feature. Even though it has glass on the back, it still feels like a durable phone. It has a minimalistic look with the Apple logo on the back and a single camera in the top left corner. It also has the aluminum side to it, and the phone really looks like the older iPhone 7 and 6.
The speed and the performance of the iPhone 8 are still decent. Of course, it's a 6-year-old phone, so don't expect the best performance, but it's definitely not bad. In my opinion, it can still run most apps completely fine, and everything still works. However, sometimes the phone might feel a bit slow, for example, in the animations, or that after taking a photo, you need to wait a bit. But I think for normal stuff like using social media, checking your email, and watching YouTube videos, it's still a good phone.
It originally shipped with iOS 11, but now it got an upgrade to iOS 16. However, keep in mind that the latest iOS 17 isn't available anymore on the iPhone 8, so that means that the software support has stopped. This also means that after a while, you might not be able to install some apps because of the minimum iOS requirements. But right now, you can still install almost any apps on here, so that is really nice.
In my opinion, the iPhone 8 had 64, 128, or 256 GB of storage, and 64 GB is probably enough for most people if you don't take a lot of photos and install a lot of apps. But if you do install a lot of apps or like to take a lot of photos, then you probably want to get the 128 GB version or more.
The iPhone 8 has a lightning port, which I'm not a big fan of, and it also doesn't have a headphone jack, so that's disappointing in my opinion. Another thing that isn't so great about the iPhone 8 is the battery life. This really depends on which model you are buying used, as some degrade more over time than others, but for my model, you can barely get through the day unless you don't use it a lot, then a day might be possible. But that means that if you are someone who likes to use your phone a lot, then you definitely need to charge it throughout the day.
However, what is nice about the phone is the screen. Yes, the screen might look very outdated from the front because of its big bezels and it's only 60 Hz, but the colors do look really nice, and the brightness is bright enough for outdoors, except when there is a lot of sun. The brightness can also go really low. It has a speaker on the bottom.
Sounds okay, but it's nothing special in my opinion. It works, but there isn't a lot of bass, and it also can't go extremely loud. There's a fingerprint sensor on the front of the device, and I like how fast it works. It has a 12-megapixel camera on the back, and in my opinion, it's decent but nothing amazing. You can still take some nice images with it, with pretty good dynamic range, good sharpness, and the photos can look really nice. However, it's definitely nothing special. The low light performance of the camera is really bad, but the video recording of the iPhone 8 is pretty good, and it can shoot up to 4K at 60 FPS.
So, can you still use the iPhone 8 in 2024, or should you even buy one? Well, in my opinion, you probably shouldn't buy one because the software support has stopped, and also, the battery life of the device isn't so good. But that doesn't mean that the phone is unusable. You can still use it, and you can still install most apps on here. If you don't mind the poor battery life, a camera that isn't amazing, and speakers that aren't fantastic, then this is still a completely usable phone because everything still works fine on here. For most basic things, the performance is also pretty good, especially for a phone that's 6 years old.