iPhone 8 Exclusive: Specification, New Changes and Price.

What you see above is a finalised hardware design. An enlarged, elongated 5.8-inch display is surrounded by dramatically reduced bezels of approximately 4mm on all sides, the theory being the iPhone 8 won’t be as prone to accidental input like the Infinity and Edge displays on Samsung’s premium Galaxy smartphones.

You will also see a new bottom edge render confirming Apple will not bring back the headphone jack after its controversial removal from the iPhone 7. Despite rumours to the contrary, the Lightning port also remains (though USB Type-C may feature on the wall plug as part of a wider move to finally adopt fast charging).

Another carry over from the iPhone 7 will be stereo speakers via a combination of the bottom speaker and an amplified earpiece.

Falling in line with my exclusive renders last week, Apple will definitely enlarge the power button. Exactly why remains unclear, but it is thought this is to give Apple a ( patented ) fallback option for Touch ID should it not manage to integrate this into the display. As it stands there is no firm word on which way this will go. The technology for screen integration exists, but scaling it to 10s of millions of units is the challenge.

What also remains uncertain is how Apple will redesign iOS 11 to accommodate the ‘cutout’ at the top of the display which exists to accommodate the front facing camera and sensors.

What Nodus and I believe is the remaining corners will simply be used for connectivity and battery status with notifications switched to the bottom in a new easier-to-reach and more detailed ‘ Function Area ’.

In addition, while our renders confirm the iPhone 8 has a dual rear camera with new vertical alignment, the exact configuration and resolution of the lenses is unknown. I’d expect Apple to stick with 12MP wide-angle and telephoto modules but make technical improvements – particularly aperture in the latter.

Finally – and not shown in the renders – I understand battery life will improve significantly. This will be due to a new L-shaped battery configuration that should deliver iPhone 7 Plus-beating stamina, but in a significantly smaller chassis.

The downside to all these improvements will be price.

The iPhone 8 will be Apple’s most expensive iPhone ever and I’m hearing pricing will startfrom $1,100 to $1,200. Some sources claim Apple will only offer the top two storage tiers (128GB, 256GB) but I don’t have enough information to corroborate this.  And yet despite a mammoth asking price and despite the fact there will three new iPhone models launching in September, it is fast becoming clear the dreams of Apple fans will only centre around one of them.