In other ways, the display is where the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus fall furthest short of their rivals. The 8s use a technology called LCD, while Apple’s rivals in the high-end phone market, including Samsung, use a newer screen technology called OLED. I won’t get into the differences here except to say OLEDs are noticeably superior — they produce more vibrant colors and deeper contrast ratios. Even Apple seems to agree, given that OLED is the basis for the display in the iPhone X.

• The cameras in the 8s are very good, which is always true of cameras in the iPhone. My kid had a birthday party this weekend, and just before leaving for the venue, I decided to take a risk — I left my fancy interchangeable-lens “mirrorless” camera at home, and instead took just the 8 Plus.

It would be too much to say that the phone produced images comparable to those I could get on my dedicated camera. In some indoor, low-light shots, Apple’s noise-reduction algorithm left an annoying watercolorlike ripple on my shots (a problem that has plagued previous iPhones, too).

But that was the exception. Most images were astounding, and given the iPhone 8’s advantages in size, convenience and usability, I predict that my camera will be spending a lot more time in the drawer. In particular, I fell hard for the 8 Plus’s “Portrait Lighting” feature, which uses data from a depth sensor to mimic the blurred-background “bokeh” effect you get when taking portraits with expensive cameras. That feature made its debut last year on the iPhone 7 Plus, but in the 8 Plus, it’s been further refined to let you adjust the lighting of each shot, making for breathtaking portraits that you’ll be surprised came from a mere phone.

• But the best thing about the 8 and 8 Plus is what’s most hidden: It’s the processor that powers everything else. The first thing I usually do when I get a new iPhone is run a benchmark app to get a sense of the kind of power I’m dealing with. (Yeah, I’m real fun.)

For the last few years, Apple’s phones have been producing benchmark scores so high you wonder if they’re powered by some kind of black magic. For instance, on Geekbench 4, one of the more popular benchmark apps, the iPhone 8 gets a single-core processor score of around 4,200. That makes it about 25 percent faster than the iPhone 7 and about 80 percent faster than the iPhone 6S.