iphone 7
THE GOOD Improved front and rear cameras -- now with optical image stabilization --
deliver much improved photos, especially in low light. Water resistant. A
faster processor, plus better battery life. More onboard storage than last
year's models for the same price.
THE BAD No headphone jack
(but there's a dongle and compatible wired headphones in the box). Click-free
home button takes getting used to. Only the larger 7 Plus has the cool dual
camera. Shiny jet-black version scratches easily.
THE BOTTOM LINE The iPhone 7's
notable camera, battery and water resistance improvements are worthwhile
upgrades to a familiar phone design. But ask yourself if you really need an
upgrade... and if the Plus might be a better choice.
· DESIGN9.0
· FEATURES8.0
· PERFORMANCE9.0
· CAMERA9.0
8.7OVERALL
OUR VERDICT If you're going to buy a new iPhone, this is the one
to get there's slightly longer battery life, a better camera, fast innards and
protection against water. However, many of the changes are slight, and the
iPhone 6S, for the lower price, suddenly becomes a very attractive option
WHAT IS THE IPHONE 7?
The iPhone 7 certainly hasn't slipped into the world
with a whimper thanks to a familiar design, headphone controversy and a price
hike seemingly in the wake of Brexit.
When you look at it you’ll wonder what’s changed – it
looks pretty much the same as an iPhone 6. Granted that design was good, but
would any other company get away with a two-year-old look for a brand-new
phone?
Get past this and the iPhone 7 delivers a unique
experience among iPhones. The new features – water resistance, an incredible
quad-core processor and, crucially, a 32GB starting storage capacity – are all
very welcome. So is the excellent camera that’s had upgrades to actually make
photos look better, rather than just a needless bump in megapixels.
But like the eponymous Batman villain, the iPhone 7
has two faces. The removal of the headphone jack feels unnecessary and
restrictive, the handset costs more than the 6S did when it was released last
year (in the UK at least), and the iPhone 7's battery
life is a real problem.
If you want a small Apple phone you'd be better off
opting for the iPhone SE. Alternatively, if size isn’t an issue, last
year’s iPhone 6S Plus remains a great phone, has strong battery life
and costs exactly the same as the iPhone 7.
IPHONE 7 – DESIGN
There’s not much to talk about when it
comes to the aesthetics of the iPhone 7. If you’ve used an iPhone 6 or 6S
you’ll feel immediately at home.
For standing out from the iPhone crowd,
the new Jet Black finish is really your only option. A Jet Black iPhone 7 looks
like no other handset. It’s not like the plastic iPhone 5C – this is a phone
made out of metal, but which is smooth to touch without being slippery. Yes, it
attracts fingerprints, but who cares when it looks this good?
The second new colour on offer is simply called Black.
This replaces the Space Grey of previous models and makes the iPhone 7 looks
like a mean machine. The other colours available are Silver, Gold and Rose
Gold.
The iPhone 7’s size and shape is almost identical to
the previous models, however the antenna bands that formerly ran across the
back now tastefully curve around the ends, and the camera nub is more rounded.
These changes are small, but welcome. It does feel like competitors have
overtaken Apple in some respects, though.
The iPhone 7 retains those chunky top and bottom areas
of its bezel and this means it offers less screen space for its size than the HTC 10, LG G5 or Samsung Galaxy S7. The latter has very similar dimensions but comes
with a 5.1-inch screen, compared to the 4.7-incher on the iPhone 7.
That’s all there is to discuss about the aesthetics.
However, there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to design. Apple's made
some fundamental changes to the iPhone 7 that will affect the way you use your
phone for better and worse.
Let’s start with the missing headphone socket. For
some people this is going to be a big issue, but it hasn’t been a problem for
me.
There are a number of potential reasons why Apple's
decided to remove the 3.5mm socket from the iPhone 7, but the company won’t
outright tell us why.
Space seems to be the primary factor when you look at
the internal design. The new Haptic engine is a lot chunkier and takes up some
of the space, as does the louder speaker that's been crammed into the bottom.
Apple has clearly decided improved features on the iPhone 7 are better than
keeping a 50-year-old connection, particularly since wireless headphones have
become increasingly popular over the past few years. In fact, Apple has
launched its own wireless headphones, called AirPods. Shame you're going to need
'courage' to wear AirPods outside...
That’s all well and good, but for many who own a great
pair of wired headphones this will prove a problem. Apple has resolved it to a
great extent by providing a pair of Lightning Earpods and a small adapter in
the box with the iPhone 7. The adapter lets you plug wired headphones into the
charging port. It works well, but you won’t be able to charge your phone and
listen at the same time, plus it’s small and easy to misplace.
There are some neat third-party Bluetooth aptX
headphone adapters available, such as the £69 Noble Audio BTS, but be prepared
for an inevitable drop in audio quality when used with high-end headphones.
I haven’t been too affected by the lack of jack.
Having bought into the convenience of wireless headphones a few years ago, I
now favour them over my better-sounding wired pairs. It’s a transition I expect
many of us will make over the coming years.
The other design change I got to grips with quickly is
the new Home button – if you can still call it that.
Gone is the iconic click; it now has capacitive touch
sensitivity. That means it works using the tiny bits of electricity in your
fingers, just like the screen does, so if you’re wearing normal gloves it won’t
function.
Incredibly, I could've sworn that the button had some
give to it until I turned the phone off and realised that I’d been duped.
That’s how good the new Haptic engine is. The feedback it offers tricks your
brain into thinking the button can actually be pressed. This isn’t just smoke
and mirrors; it feels real. I thought I’d miss the old iconic iPhone Home button,
but I don’t.
That Haptic engine is used for more than just the Home
button, though – the iPhone 7 now feels like it talks to you by vibrating at
key moments. Whether you're scrolling through the timer or getting a call, the
refined buzzes tell you a lot more than the iPhone 6S ever did.
IPHONE 7 – WATER RESISTANT
One of the reasons the Home button has been changed is
because of the iPhone 7’s headline feature: water resistance.
Apple may not be the first to create a water-resistant
phone, but it’s a brilliant feature to have nonetheless. That’s because one of
the main reasons people ruin their phone is through water damage. I’ve broken a
phone or two by dropping it in the wet stuff in the past.
The iPhone 7 is hardy enough now to withstand a
moderate dunk in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. The iPhone 7 manages
an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance, which is a little less than the
certification achieved by the Galaxy S7 and Sony Xperia Z5. Don’t let that bother you, though. The difference is
small and I’ve used the iPhone 7 in the shower and left it in water for 30
minutes and it still works just fine.
Water resistance is an added level of insurance for
flagships that cost a lot to replace. It certainly came to my rescue when I
dropped the iPhone 7 in a puddle while camping on a wet weekend.
IPHONE
7 – SCREEN
The iPhone 7’s screen is the same 4.7 inches in size
as the one on the iPhone 6S, and
doesn’t pack any more pixels. So it has a resolution of 1334 x 750 and a pixel
density of 326ppi – what Apple calls "Retina".
Essentially what this means is that the iPhone 7 is
plenty sharp – you can’t spot any blocky pixels unless you plonk it in a VR
headset, just a couple of inches from your face.
I’m fine with the current resolution, especially since
everything else Apple has done to the screen makes it a real winner.
The iPhone 7’s display is richer than ever before,
without looking at all fake. Apple now uses the wider DCI-P3 colour gamut that
the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, iMac and Hollywood filmmakers use, and that’s a very
good thing. It means more colours, so everything looks more realistic and
nuanced.
It’s perfect for a Netflix
binge. Skin tones still look natural, but more lifelike than before, and dark
scenes look very good for an IPS LCD screen. Colours are punchier without
losing the refinement I’ve always liked about iPhone screens.
It’s brighter and less reflective, too. That makes it
a lot easier to look at in bright sunlight. This is the best IPS screen you can
get on a phone, but it still lags behind Samsung’s AMOLED screens when it comes
to deep blacks.
I can’t quite decide which I prefer – both are
excellent.
There’s one area of the display that I’m not quite as
impressed with, and that’s with white areas. Whites have a pink tinge, and I
actually prefer the old screen on the iPhone 6S when reading an eBook or
websites that have a white background.
IPHONE 7 – SPEAKERS
Sound is one area that Samsung hasn’t really cracked
with its Galaxy S range. HTC does a much better job thanks to the stereo
Boomsound speakers on the HTC 10, and the iPhone 7 emulates
these to some degree. It’s not quite as successful, though.
Let’s start with the good bits. The iPhone 7 is loud –
very loud. In fact, it has double the top volume of the iPhone 6S, and that’s a
good thing if you’ve left your Bluetooth speaker at home. You can happily use
the iPhone 7 to listen to a few tunes around the campsite without it being
drowned out by the lightest breeze or a crackling fire.
There are two speakers now: one at the bottom and one
pumping straight out of the earphone slot. This means you get a little stereo
separation, but they’re still too close to make it that noticeable. More
importantly, the fact that there's more than one speaker means it sounds a lot
fuller.
Apple has done a great job
cramming decent speakers into the iPhone 7, but it’s not performed miracles.
Speaker drivers need space around them and the iPhone 7 is just too small and
slim to sound amazing. There’s still a distinct lack of low-end thrills. If you
like your bassy music on the go then you’ll want to invest in some good
headphones or a top-quality portable speaker.
At its highest volume, the
iPhone 7 sounds a bit harsh and tizzy too, while movie dialogue has a whiny
edge to it. Notching the volume down a few levels helps cure this.
I am being overly picky here,
though. The iPhone 7’s speakers are some of the best on any phone. There’s a
whole lot more depth and detail than you got from its predecessors, and the
move away from dull mono sound is a welcome one.
IPHONE
7 – PERFORMANCE
This is the most powerful phone I’ve
ever used – a statement borne out by some incredible benchmark results.
The iPhone 7 may have kept the same 2GB
of RAM as the 6S, but this seems more than adequate. You can have plenty of
apps open at the same time and switching between them is fast and slick. That’s
where RAM helps.
However,
it also packs the new A10 Fusion core and it is a blinder. There’s a reason for
the "Fusion" moniker. Apple is using a quad-core CPU for the first
time, but it doesn’t use all four of them at once.
Two of the cores are powerful and used
for the heavy lifting – 3D gaming, multitasking and the like. The other two are
low-powered and much more efficient – perfect for light tasks such as sending
texts or using the email app.
If that all sounds familiar, that’s
because it’s not new. It’s based on ARM’s big.LITTLE design, and plenty of
phones have been using this method to help preserve battery life. I’ve
generally been impressed by phones that use it – and the iPhone 7 is no
different.
Trusted's
moved to the latest version of Geekbench 4 for its benchmarking, as it has a
wider range of tests and better iPhone 7 compatibility compared to its
predecessor.
The
iPhone 7 is 30% faster than the iPhone 6S. It’s also 12% more powerful than the Galaxy S7.
It’s in the graphics department that the
A10 really shines, though. The new six-core GPU scores a massive 37,349 on our
standard Ice Storm Unlimited test – 30% better than the iPhone 6S and Galaxy
S7. This really is incredible performance.
The
question it begs is: does it really matter? I always like having a powerful
phone, but flagship devices are so powerful now that there aren’t hugely
noticeable differences in use. Sure, some games can jack up the polygons and
look slicker, but other than that there’s not a huge amount to do on an iPhone
that the A9 couldn’t handle. The iPhone 7 only feels a little faster than an iPhone 6S with both running iOS 10. The 6S opens apps –
including the camera app – just about as quickly, although it's slower to
minimise them when you press the Home button.
Of course, the A10 does future-proof the
iPhone 7 somewhat if you intend to own it for more than two years.
I'm looking forward to seeing the A10
processor in the next generation of iPad Pro,
which is where the benefits should be even more noticeable.
IPHONE 7 – IOS 10 AND APPS
The iPhone 7 comes bundled with the
latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 10.
Don’t expect a huge change here – Apple's
great at maintaining a consistent user experience through each upgrade and iOS
10 is not different. You’ll get to grips with it right away.
All the improvements are positive, so
let’s start with the headline grabbers.
iMessage comes crammed with more features
than you can shake a stick at. It’s like Snapchat, WhatsApp and Facebook
Messenger all rolled into one. You can draw little pictures to send to your
friends – before you ask, yes, inappropriate drawings were sent – as well as
search for funny GIFs or even send the track you’re listening to on Apple
Music.
Apple Music has also had a nip and tuck. It was perhaps the
weakest of the music streaming services around, but can now hold its own thanks
to a better layout and simpler way to download music to your device.
I’d already given up on iOS Photos in
favour of the excellent Google Photos app you can get from the App Store. That
automatically groups photos by scene, location and time, as well as creating
fun animated GIFs and stylised photos.
It’s no surprise, then, that Apple has
taken a few dozen leaves from Google's book and iOS Photos works in a very
similar way now. It’s all the better for it.
However, it’s the less glamorous
lockscreen, Control Center and Notifications that I’ve been most impressed
with. They’re getting closer to Android in usefulness, so Apple users no longer
have to feel like they’re missing out.
There’s
a whole lot more to iOS 10 than I'll go into here, from Siri updates to finally
being allowed to delete useless apps such as Stocks. If you want to find out
everything about iOS 10, and how to use all the features to the maximum then
read our iOS 10 review and guide.
One area I will mention here is how much
better 3D Touch is. 3D Touch was a feature first demoed on the iPhone
6S that offers more options depending on how hard you press the screen. I loved
it to start with when reviewing last year’s iPhone, but it quickly became
irrelevant in day-to-day use.
Thankfully,
it does a lot more now. You can hard-press the Torch icon, for example, to
offer three levels of brightness. You can also get better quick access to apps
and news. 3D Touch has finally grown up and is a feature that's unique to
iPhones.
IPHONE
7 – CAMERA
The new iPhone 7 feature I’ve been most
anticipating is the upgraded camera.
The
iPhone 7 comes with a new six-optic lens, OIS (optical image stabilisation) and
a wider f/1.8 aperture. All this leads to improved low-light performance. If
you like taking photos in dingy restaurants or bars, or out and about at night,
you’ll really appreciate it.
Getting
OIS on the smaller phone is great. It was a feature reserved for the bigger
Plus models in the past. This reduces the minor shakes and judders your hands
make when holding a phone, which means there's less chance of blurry shots in
poor light – as long as your subject isn't moving around, of course.
It’s
the wider aperture that makes even more of a difference, though. A wider
aperture lets more light into the sensor, leading to more detailed photos with
less noise when it’s dim. It also reduces the depth of field, so you can create
nice soft-focus backgrounds more easily.
There
are no manual controls to tinker with like you’ll find on some Android phones,
however the iPhone seems to take good pictures regardless of the settings.
There are a few inconsistencies, though.
I
found the exposure to vary from picture to picture taken one right after
another. One picture would overexpose and blow out the surrounding sky and
clouds, while the next would be spot-on, providing more equal exposure across
the board.
Apple
has doubled the brightness of the flash too, so if it’s really dark you can
still take some good shots. It still uses the True Tone system which attempts
to adapt the colour of the flash depending on the ambient lighting. This helps
provide more realistic skin tones as opposed to the ghost-like quality some LED
flashes bestow.
Taking video using the iPhone 7 is also
a joy. You can shoot at 4K or 1080p if you want a higher framerate. Slo-mo is
still as delightful as the first time we used it, and it's dead easy to select
which bit of a video goes slow and which moves at a normal pace.
The front-facing camera, or FaceTime
camera, has also had a boost. It now has a 7-megapixel sensor and selfies look
a little better than before.
IPHONE
7 – BATTERY LIFE
I've already mentioned that the iPhone
7’s battery life is a problem, and it really is. I’ve found myself constantly
out of juice before getting ready to hit the pillow, even on days when the
phone’s only been used moderately.
In fact, I’ve found myself abandoning Pokémon Go entirely – some might say that's a good
thing – since any apps that use the GPS seem to drain the battery even faster.
It’s a little strange that this should
be the case. The iPhone 7 actually has a larger battery than the iPhone 6S and
a processor that should help with efficiency. And in some cases it does last a
while. For example, it hardly drops any charge at all when not in use.
However, in practice, I’ve found the
iPhone 7 has the shortest battery life I’ve experienced on any mainstream phone
over the past couple of years. The larger iPhone 6S Plus or Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge are miles ahead of it, and it doesn’t
even come close to the tiny iPhone SE.
Apple claims the iPhone 7 has a longer
battery life than the iPhone 6S by two hours, but I’m not sure under which circumstances.
I’ve been so surprised by its lack of stamina that we tested a second iPhone 7
just in case there was something wrong with my review sample, but the results
were the same. It lasts a little over 6 hours of constant use.
I have found myself compensating for it.
I rarely need to charge a phone during the day, but I realised I'd been
borrowing a colleague's Lightning cable regularly since I started testing the
iPhone 7. When I've been out and about all day I've been using a battery pack
to stay juiced. It's not ideal by any stretch.
The below battery-drain test was
conducted with the screen at a comfortable 60% brightness and the speakers on
halfway, where appropriate.
·
2
hours of Netflix using speakers: 100% to 72%
·
1
hour of web browsing over Wi-Fi: 72% to 58%
·
30
minutes of gaming (Clash Royale, sound off): 58% to 46%
·
1
hour of Apple Music using Bluetooth headphones (screen mostly off): 46% to 38%
·
15
minutes of video and 50 photos: 38% to 23%
·
20
minutes of call time: 23% to 16%
·
20
minutes of Google Maps (screen mostly on): 16% to 10%
·
38
minutes of web browsing over 4G: 10% to 0%
You do get some more life out of it if
you turn the screen right down. Leaving the iPhone 7 at quarter-brightness
gives you almost 15% more life, but it's too dark for my eyes. That great
screen is there to be enjoyed and whacking the brightness right down makes it
lose its sparkle.
A minor saving grace is that it charges
reasonably quickly. It gets to 81% from empty in an hour and is fully charged
in less than 90 minutes. It’s not quite fast-charging – the Galaxy S7 charges
in 75 minutes and the OnePlus 3 in just an hour – but it’s not too bad
either.
If you don’t use your phone much – just
browse the net, make a few calls and texts, take a few pics, listen to some
music and don’t play games – you’ll be alright. Anyone else might want to wait
for our review of the iPhone 7 Plus as, based on previous Plus experience, it
should last a lot longer.
I only hope that the battery problem is
a software issue and can be remedied in future updates. I'll update this review
if that's the case.
IPHONE
7 – CALL QUALITY
I’ve been happy with the call quality on
recent iPhones. Generally, all phones have this down these days, thanks to
noise-cancelling microphones that cancel out general hubbub.
The iPhone 7 deserves a special mention,
though, since the ear speaker can be very loud if you want it to be. That means
if you’re a little hard of hearing or work in a noisy environment you’ll
appreciate it even more.
SHOULD I BUY THE IPHONE 7?
Barring its battery life the iPhone 7 is
a great phone. Its camera, screen and performance are awesome, and the water
resistance is a real boon.
While the starting capacity of 32GB
(£599/$649) isn’t exactly massive, it’s a lot better than the piddly 16GB we’d
become so used to. The jump is big if you need more – up to 128GB (£699/$749)
and then a ludicrous 256GB (£799/$849) for the top-of-the-range model. I’m not
sure who'd need that much storage on a phone that can’t be used as a hard
drive, but the option's there.
However, the iPhone 7’s battery life is
a real worry and the lack of a headphone jack will be a major annoyance to
some. I suspect the iPhone 7 Plus won’t be as problematic, but at the moment if
you’re hell-bent on a small iPhone I’d recommend the more compact, and far
cheaper, iPhone SE.
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