According to Redington Gulf, the exclusive Distributor of Apple Products, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are available at Telefonica and iShop – Authorised Resellers of Apple products.

Dubbed as “the new generation iPhone”, iPhone 8 comes in an all new glass design with an embedded wireless charging system. The glass on the front and back is the most durable glass ever in a smartphone, with 50 percent deeper strengthening layer.

The innovative Portrait Lighting feature on the iPhone 8 Plus makes it possible to take incredible studio-style portraits without complex lighting equipment, because you can control how light interacts with your face.

The cameras on the iPhone 8 Plus are custom tuned for the ultimate AR experience.

iPhone 8 is powered by the new A11 Bionic chip, the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphone. With iOS 11 – world’s most advanced mobile operating system pre-installed, whether you’re surfing the web, reading and writing email, taking photos, shopping online, or playing games – the experience is even more amazing with hardware and software made for each other.

iPhone 8 is now available at select Authorised Reseller stores with the official Apple warranty.

Redington Gulf reduces iPhone 6 prices for Christmas

In a related development, Redington Gulf in collaboration with their Authorized Resellers Telefonika and iSHOP, is offering attractive prices for iPhone 6 to coincide with the onset of the Christmas season.

The new iPhone 6 is now available and retails at GHS 1,690, with a free iSim Dual adapter which enables users to use two SIM cards for the iPhone.

The iPhone 6 features a stunning 4.7-inch Retina High Definition display and now the new variant comes with 32GB of memory, upgraded from the initial 16GB when was launched initially.

Explaining the reason for this pricing of the iPhone 6, Mr. Sivadoss Vijayakumar, Head – West Africa, Redington Gulf stated that, the move is aimed at making the iPhone 6 more affordable for the market.

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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The iPhone X – which is referred to as “ten” – uses a facial recognition system to recognise its owner rather than a fingerprint-based one.

Apple said FaceID can work in the dark by using 30,000 infra-red dots to check an identity, and was harder to fool than its old TouchID system.

It is Apple’s most expensive phone yet.

A 64 gigabyte capacity model will cost $999 (£999 in the UK) when it goes on sale on 3 November. A 256GB version will be priced at $1,149 (£1,149 in the UK).

By contrast, Samsung is charging $930 (£869 in the UK) for its new Note 8 phone, which has 64GB of storage.

“The iPhone X is a long-term investment by Apple that sets a template for the next generation of iPhone hardware,” commented Geoff Blaber from the CCS Insight consultancy.

“An OLED [organic light-emitting diode] display and the new design is likely to be standard on future iPhone models, but Apple must first tackle the challenge of obtaining sufficient supplies.”

Apple said the switch to an OLED display would help the phone produce “true blacks” and more accurate colours than before. LG and Samsung already use similar tech on their handsets.

Prior to the launch, Apple’s most expensive phone was an iPhone 7 Plus that cost $969 (£919 in the UK).

One expert commented that Apple’s ability to get consumers to spend more on its smartphones than rivals’ was “legendary”.

“There may be an element of high pricing to constrain demand and make things match up with how many they can produce,” said Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics.

“But I suspect Apple always had a $1,000 iPhone in mind – we had seen the price creep up year after year, and there’s a lot of pressure from shareholders for the company to hit a $1tn valuation.

“Bumping up the prices on their number one product is one way of doing that.

Facial recognition

Apple acknowledged that users might have concerns about using facial recognition to verify purchases via Apple Pay or to access their device.

But it claimed that while there was a one-in-50,000 chance that TouchID could be unlocked by a random stranger, the odds rose to one-in-one-million with FaceID.

Nevertheless, one expert said users might still be concerned the handset had no fingerprint sensor as an alternative.

“This is the steepest hurdle that they have,” commented Carolina Milanesi from market research firm Creative Strategies.

“A lot of consumers will be a little bit reluctant to use facial recognition as an ID system until Apple has proven that it is safe and works all the time.

“In the eyes of consumers TouchID wasn’t broken – so they may ask why Apple is trying to fix it.”

Other features announced about the handset included:

• its 5.8in (14.7cm) screen has 458 pixels per inch, making it the firm’s most detailed phone display to date. To mark this it has been branded “super retina”
• the lack of a home button is dealt with by requiring users to swipe up to access its apps, and to press a side button to summon its virtual assistant Siri
• portrait mode – in which the camera blurs a photo’s background – and a relighting tool can be used on pictures taken by both the front and rear cameras
• it has two hours more battery life than the iPhone 7

The iPhone X also adds support for wireless charging.

“Apple chose Qi wireless charging,” noted Ian Fogg, from the IHS Markit consultancy.

“It was the right decision to use a standard because Apple users will benefit from widely available charge pads.”

The feature was also introduced to the new iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus models, which were introduced earlier at the event.

The lower-end 4.7in and 5.5in devices are distinguished from their predecessors by having:

• glass rather than metal backs
• faster processors
• improved camera sensors that help them operate in low light
• stereo speakers that are 25% louder than before

The iPhone 8 ranges from $699 to $849 and the iPhone 8 Plus from $799 to $949.

They will cost the same amounts in Sterling and go on sale on 22 September.

Mixed reality

The new models coincide with the release of iOS 11 – the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system.

It introduces ARKit – software development tools that make it easier for developers to add augmented reality features to their apps, in which graphics are mixed together with real-world views.

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Source: BBC

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Details on the iPhone 8 are scarce at present but some reports, including this one from MacRumours, suggest that it will have an edge-to-edge display that removes the need for the top and bottom bezels where features like the fingerprint sensor and the front-facing camera are located.

Some hardware for the iPhone 8 is being created in Herzliya, Israel, according to a local Apple employee, who said employees in Israel work on all of Apple’s new products.

The employee, whose identity is being concealed by Business Insider, solders components for Apple. This person didn’t give too much away about the new handset other than it will be “different” to the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 7, which have been criticised for being too similar to their predecessors.

Speaking to Business Insider outside Apple’s Herzliya office at Maskit Street 12, the Apple employee said staff in Israel are working on what’s coming “next” in Apple’s product line, giving a specific mention to “iPhone 8.”

The worker used the term “iPhone 8” unprompted in our conversation. That was interesting because the next logical name for the iPhone to be released in 2017 should be “iPhone 7s.” iPhone 8 isn’t due until 2018. Apple has a two-year development cycle for new iPhones. However, some observers have noted that the iPhone 7 was a largely incremental update.

S-series iPhones are also supposed to be incremental updates, but the phone that is coming in the 2017 “iPhone 7s” slot is expected to be a much more dramatic improvement to the line. So some people believe that Apple might break its naming tradition in 2017, skip iPhone 7s, and give the iPhone a new number or name out of step with the current sequence. “iPhone 8” would be one option.

The source added that the iPhone 8 will have a better camera than the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 7 — something that is fairly standard when a new iPhone comes onto the market and therefore not unexpected.

The employee was informed at the start of the conversation that they were talking to a journalist. When asked what Apple uses the Herzliya facility for, the source (who only spoke in broken English), said: “New products.” They added that Apple doesn’t actually assemble products in Israel.

A second Apple employee that Business Insider spoke to in Herzliya said they “couldn’t talk” about what Apple does in Herzliya, while an employee from networking giant Cisco, which also has an office in the area, said: “I have three friends that work there. They work on the hardware side. Verifications. Something like that.”

An Apple security guard told Business Insider that we could not speak to anyone inside Apple’s office without an invitation.

There are about 800 employees at Apple’s Herzliya office, which is around four-years-old and situated approximately 15km north of Tel Aviv city centre. The office was set up after Apple acquired two startups: flash memory designer Anobit in 2012 and 3D sensor developer PrimeSense in 2013. Apple has since acquired Israeli camera firm LinX.

Sources close to Apple said the company uses the R&D facility in Herzliya to develop hardware such as chips, storage, cameras and wireless technologies. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Herzliya office is Apple’s second largest R&D facility in the world while on a trip to Israel in 2015, according to The Times of Israel.

The Cupertino-headquartered firm also has an office in Haifa, which is in the north of Israel and home to approximately 200 employees.

Avi Hasson, the chief scientist of the Ministry of Economy of the State of Israel, told Business Insider on Monday that almost every major Silicon Valley tech firm has an outpost in Israel, adding that the country is a “fountain of innovation.”

An Apple spokesperson said the company does not comment on rumour or speculation.

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Source: Business Insider

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