With the release of its latest flagship, iOCEAN has planned to raise the quality bar quite a bit, while keeping the same core as we have found on the X7S (MTK 6592 octa-core SoC at 1.7Ghz). The packaging is similar as with the X7S, since the product is shipped in a medium-sized white cardboard box, which holds the product name inscription on top:

Improvements are to be found on the bottom side of the enclosure, which lists now in plain English the product specifications along with the IMEI:

After removing the top cover, we will be able to find the X8 smartphone, which is fully covered in a semi-transparent plastic bag:

The X8 does not come alone, so on the bottom layer we will get to find the manual, which finally contains a version in English language, a single protective screen but also a smaller leaflet in Chinese language; we would like to mention that the installation of the protective screen is quite difficult since it was built at the exact same dimensions as the Gorilla Glass frontal screen and if we mount it a bit shifted to the left or to the right, the portion which will remain out of the screen will likely catch dust quickly:

For people who are not familiar with Android smartphones, the manual is quite handy:

The bundle also comprises of a small pin which serves to the SIM card removal, one USB charging/data cable, and the usual power adapter:

The power adapter is rated as having on the output 5V at 1A:

The X8 is quite large by sporting a 5.7’’ LTPS screen, the width of the smartphone being 79.08mm, a height of 159.02mm and the weight of 172g. The frontal screen is made of Gorilla Glass III which is also used by established brand names for their products and here iOCEAN has also placed a 5MP camera with autofocus for taking selfies or conferencing everywhere, but also a more discrete notification LED which is not as bright as the one we have found on the X7S. We have found the X7S notification LED to be in some cases too shiny, especially at night, in a room with no available light:

With the initial ROM release, we were able to work with the bottom capacitive buttons, but they were quite difficult to spot because the backlight was not enabled via software. With the latest software build, the light is now operating and when pressing on one of the buttons all of them will light up with low intensity:

One of the major improvements of the current design is the usage of Magnalium alloy allows for a lighter and better thermal control. The metallic machined frame gives the product a professional look and on the bottom side of the X8 we will get to see the USB connector, the speaker opening but also the microphone port: