The best iPhone 8 deals for Christmas 2017

Sales season is upon us and brilliant iPhone 8 deals have been plentiful. Even in the few weeks after the iPhone X hit the shelves, prices continued to linger at quite a high level. But Black Friday and Cyber Monday were very kind to iPhone 8 shoppers looking for a nice price, and then the January Sales. It's the most wonderful time if the year...for bargain hunters.

Not all iPhone 8 deals were born equal of course and if you're careful you can save yourself lots of money by using TechRadar's price comparison tool on this very page! Watch out for certain deals with low data costing more than those with lots of data.

To make it even easier, we've picked out specific recommendations further down so you can easily locate the most attractive deals at different data points, networks and budgets.

iPhone 8 deals: how much does the s7 edge screen replacement cost?

The SIM-free price of the new iPhone 8 is £699. That's £100 more than the iPhone 7 cost when it launched in the UK 12 months ago, so while this is not the iPhone X, nor is it what you'd call a cheap alternative. To get the phone on a 24 month contract you'll obviously have to pay a fair whack more than that, so depending on which tariff suits you best you may or may not be better off buying SIM free with a SIM only deal.

iPhone 8 review in brief

Screen size: 4.7-inches | Resolution: 750 x 1334 | Rear camera: 12MP | Weight: 148g | OS: iOS 11 | RAM: 2GB | Storage: 64GB/256GB | External storage: No | Battery: 1821mAh

Don't expect a revolution with the iPhone 8. It's essentially a tweaked iPhone 7 with a few enhancements and one or two upgrades. For that reason we wouldn't particularly recommend this phone to anyone with an iPhone 7 - but for those with older galaxy s7 edge screen replacement this could make a timely upgrade if the price of the iPhone X makes you want to weep.

The best Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge deals for Christmas 2017

We'll tell it to you straight, we like the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge A LOT. Until the Galaxy S8 came along in fact, it held the title of our very favourite wholesale iPhone 6 Plus LCD screen in the world. More than a year since its release, the S7 Edge remains an exceptional mobile.

And now is a brilliant time to buy one. With the release of the Galaxy Note 8 and iPhone 8, we're seeing some top tariffs emerge on the Edge. As you'll see from our editorially-chosen deals and customisable widget below, Three has the stranglehold on our favourite deals.

It's a bigger iPhone 6 Plus display , and while it doesn't have the same nearly-bezel-less design of the S8 and S8 Plus, it's still got a beautiful screen, the same decent battery life and excellent camera..

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review and specs

Weight: 157g | Dimensions: 150.9 x 72.6 x 7.7mm | OS: Android 7 Nougat | Screen size: 5.5-inch | Resolution: 1440 x 2560 resolution | CPU: Snapdragon 820 / Exynos 8890 | RAM: 4GB | Storage: 32GB (64GB with micro SD) | Battery: 3600mAh | Rear camera: 12MP | Front camera: 5MP

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge went straight to the top of the class when it was released in 2016 - we gave it 5 stars out of 5! It somehow managed to better the accomplished Galaxy S6 Edge, by adding a brilliant camera and gorgeous design tweaks.

Flipkart New Pinch Days Sale on Mobile Phones

Flipkart has announced a new sale - named New Pinch Days - just a day after the Big Shopping Days sale concluded. The upcoming Flipkart sale will run between December 15 and December 17 and will host offers on a list of mobile iPhone SE repair parts , including Xiaomi Mi A1 and Vivo V7, as well as various LED TVs, laptops, digital cameras, headphones, mobile accessories, power banks, among others. Flipkart has also teased an "offer of the year" on Samsung On Nxt 64GB. Apart from the specific deals, there will be customers no-cost EMI options and exchange offers. Customers using HDFC Bank debit and credit cards will additionally receive an instant 10 percent discount on their purchases.

Flipkart sale will have deals on mobile phones and other electronics

Flipkart has provided a sneak peek of all the major offers that are set to be listed under the New Pinch Days sale. Amongst other deals, electronics and accessories such as mobile accessories, laptops, and headphones will receive up to 80 percent of discount. TVs and home appliances will also get 80 percent discount in addition to exchange offers and no-cost EMIs. Flipkart hasn't detailed any deals on mobile devices. However, there are renders of the Xiaomi Mi A1 and Vivo V7 alongside a teaser that reads, "massive discounts to celebrate the New Year!"

While the number of offers, deals, and discounts is expected to be revealed in the coming days, the Flipkart sale would bring an attractive price of the Samsung On Nxt 64GB that was launched at Rs. 16,900 back in April. The iPhone SE LCD screen replacement features a 5.5-inch full-HD display with a 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass protection. It is powered by an octa-core Exynos 7870 processor, paired with 3GB RAM. The Android Marshmallow-running handset has a 13-megapixel rear camera sensor, an 8-megapixel front camera sensor, and a 3300mAh battery.

Apart from electronics, there will be deals and offers on categories such as home appliances, consumer durables, fashion, home & furniture, beauty, sports, books and toys.

Last week, Flipkart hosted the Big Shopping Days sale that brought temporary price cut on devices such as the iPhone X, iPhone 7, Xiaomi Mi A1, and Google Pixel 2. The three-day-long sale also listed discounted laptops including the Acer Predator Helios 300 and the MSI GV62.

All 3 iPhone Models in 2018 to Have Bigger Batteries

Rumours for the 2018 iPhone variants are already afloat and reputed iPhone analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, in his latest investor note, writes that Apple is planning to increase battery capacity for next year's iPhone 5s parts by borrowing the L-shaped battery unit last seen on the iPhone X.

This development comes as a whiff of fresh air for iPhone users. Kuo predicts that the battery capacity on the 5.8-inch iPhone (2018) will range between 2900mAh and 3000mAh, a significant upgrade from the 2716mAh capacity on the iPhone X. Even the 6.5-inch OLED iPhone model will have a large battery.

According to Kuo, there will be three models of the iPhone in 2018 with the third one being a cost-effective 6.1-inch LCD variant. All the three variants are expected to sport a similar form factor as the iPhone X.

Kuo earlier predicted that Apple might not include the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in any of the iPhone models launching next year. Kuo had also hinted that all the iPhone models launched in 2018 will have a full-screen design with minimal bezels. If this indeed turns out to be true then the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus will be the last handsets to carry the company's iconic design.

Kuo has also stated that the next iPhone 5s spare parts will finally incorporate dual-SIM support and that Apple is in talks with Intel for 5G modems that were previewed earlier this year. The next lineup of iPhones is expected to arrive in the second half of 2018, however it is unclear whether the 2018 variants will get a 5G-capable modem or not.

Portrait pics on a single camera lens

The smartphone trend of two rear cameras for artistic portrait shots is so pervasive that even dirt-cheap budget iPhone X LCD screen sport dual lenses on the back. That could change next as early as next year as new chip technology from Qualcomm makes it possible to take a Bokeh portrait photo from a single camera lens.

It's similar to the Google Pixel 2, which bucks the dual-camera standard now adopted by virtually every other high-end phone, though that device certainly gives us a model of what's possible using software alone.

The technology comes down to AI algorithms processed within the Snapdragon 845 chip that Qualcomm announced this week at an annual summit. Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors are used in the majority of high-end smartphones, where their capabilities form the backbone of what phones like the next Samsung Galaxy, LG, Motorola and OnePlus phones can do. Qualcomm faces competition on the high-end from Apple, Huawei and to a certain degree Samsung, which rely on their own house-made chipsets (a portion of Samsung phones run on the Exynos processor, typically for Asian markets).

Being able to take portrait shots on a single camera lens can help phonemakers shed the cost of a second camera array. Alternatively, phones with a second camera lens that's used for adding detail but not portrait blur -- like a monochrome camera -- can offer the feature on the dominant lens.

The bokeh or depth-of-field effect -- which softly blurs the background while keeping the photo's subject in focus -- is a carryover from DSLR cameras that Apple popularized with the iPhone 7 Plus.

"In a smartphone, you need to calculate a depth map," said Tim Leland, Qualcomm's vice president of product management. "That depth map then gets fed into another system, which then applies a manipulation or blurring of those pixels in a different way that mimics the bokeh effect."

Smartphone makers typically achieve bokeh with two lenses, which create a kind of stereo effect to generate a sense of depth. Qualcomm's approach with its feature, which it calls Deep Portrait, is to run the image through a computational neural network that applies artificial intelligence to determine the subject from the background.

"You don't want to blur somebody's face for example or accidentally blur somebody's hair," Leland said.

Qualcomm isn't suggesting that iPhone X LCD screen wholesale should ditch a two-camera system, or that bokeh portraits taken with software rather than camera hardware are higher quality. In fact, Leland noted that the algorithms could improve the blurring accuracy of two camera lenses.

"AI is one of those things where you can't necessarily do something without it," he said. "But it makes it better."

As the Google Pixel and Pixel 2 prove with their Lens Blur feature, you can take bokeh portraits using software alone. Traditional computer vision can already recognize diff types of objects by looking at specific patterns of contrasting pixels. Artificial intelligence recognizes objects in their entirety over time. For example, show an AI program thousands of photos of chairs and over time it will recognize what is and isn't a chair. Artificial intelligence aims to speed up the process.