iPhone 7 Plus review

PROS

• Beautiful screen
• Unique camera
• Solid battery life
• Class-leading performance
• Potent speakers

CONS

• Expensive
• No headphone jack
• Largely unchanged design

KEY FEATURES

• 5.5-inch Full HD screen with wide colour gamut
• A10 Fusion processor with 3GB RAM
• Water-resistant IP67
• 12-megapixel telephoto camera
• 7-megapixel selfie camera
• 32, 128 & 256GB storage options
• 2900mAh battery
• Manufacturer: Apple
• Review Price: £719.00/ 9500 MAD.

WHAT IS THE IPHONE 7 PLUS?

Apple’s latest phablet takes the familiar iPhone formula and tweaks it once again. It’s not going to wow you with a new design or massive innovations, but the iPhone 7 Plus is a great phone. It offers everything the iPhone 7 does – speedy performance, water resistance, loud speakers, great cameras – but adds some clever features that in many are more important than flashy specs.

On the other hand, the 7 Plus costs a small fortune. The weakened pound means this is the most expensive iPhone we’ve ever seen released in the UK. If you’re dead set on an iPhone, though, this is the one I’d recommend, not least because the iPhone 7 Plus’s battery life is excellent.

IPHONE 7 PLUS – DESIGN

The shape and feel of the iPhone 7 Plus is very much like that of the two versions before it. It's big – properly big – especially when you add a case to it.

Yes, it has an expansive screen, but it's the iPhone 7 Plus’s height that makes it a handful.

If you haven't used a phablet before, it's worth testing out first. I found it takes about a week to get accustomed to a larger phone, but I wouldn’t go back. There's just so much more you can do with a screen this size, but some will struggle to use it easily.

In other respects the design has been refined a little. The antenna bands that strapped the back now curve across the top and bottom edges of the phone. On the back there's a far more pronounced camera bump.

There are two brand-new iPhone 7 Plus colours to choose from and both feel very different. The first is Jet Black, which has a slick, almost ceramic, feel to it. It looks fantastic, it's grippy and it's the colour I’d choose. There are a couple of catches, though: you'll need to polish it regularly to get fingerprint marks off it, but more worryingly it marks with fine scratches a little too easily. If you do choose it, you'll need to treat it with kid gloves to keep it looking its best.

The second is a change to the iPhone 7 Plus’s home button. Gone is the iconic click to which we've become so accustomed. It's not a button at all now, but rather it's a capacitive pad. It recognises your fingers in much the same way as the touchscreen does, so that means you don't actually depress it. Instead the clever boffins at Apple have used the rumble provided by an upgraded Haptic engine to make it feel as if it's been pressed.

IPHONE 7 PLUS – SCREEN AND SPEAKERS

Full HD resolution sounds old hat now. Plenty of phones from Samsung, LG and others have packed ultra-sharp quad-HD screens for years. The iPhone 7 Plus doesn’t follow suit and keeps to what Apple designates as a "Retina" display. This just means you can’t really see the pixels, but the pixel density isn't as high as on, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S7.

I don’t care one jot. This is my favourite display on any phone, regardless of resolution.

Full HD is still plenty sharp for everything barring virtual reality, where the screen sits an inch from your eyes and is amplified by lenses.

The iPhone 7 Plus’s screen might not have the highest resolution, but it has the widest colour gamut. It uses something called DCI P3, a range of colours used by movie makers that encompasses a larger spectrum, allowing for more realistic and diverse tones.

It looks superb, with the extra area afforded by the bigger screen making it even better than on the 4.7-inch display of the smaller iPhone 7.

The colours are great, but it’s also bright, so it can be viewed even in strong sunlight. It helps that it’s not very reflective either.

IPHONE 7 PLUS – PERFORMANCE

Much was made of Apple’s new A10 Fusion processor when it was announced. It uses two low-power cores that are for doing everything not particularly taxing, such as texting. Two other, more powerful, cores take care of all the heavy lifting – 3D games and other apps that need a lot of processing chops.

It’s not a new invention. Android phones have been using this system to good effect for years, but it’s nice to see Apple taking it up now, since it tends to lead to improved battery life.

While the iPhone 7 Plus has 3GB of RAM – 1GB more than the iPhone 7 – this doesn’t affect the results. It’s on a par with the standard iPhone 7 and faster than any of the competition. It's currently the most powerful phone you can get.

IPHONE 7 PLUS – CAMERA

The iPhone 7 Plus comes with two cameras on the back, but acting as one. We’ve seen dual cameras before on the LG G5 and Huawei P9, but Apple hasn’t added a wide-angle lens like on the G5, or a black-and-white one like the P9. Instead, the iPhone 7 Plus uses its second camera to provide zoom without sacrificing quality.

You can, of course, digitally zoom while taking a photo on any phone. Digital zoom essentially crops the same image you’d take normally so that it brings an area closer to you. It's like pinching into a photo in your gallery – yes, what you’re trying to look at becomes bigger, but it doesn’t get any clearer. Unless you’re in CSI.

It comes with another neat trick, and that’s the creamy soft-focus background effect you can usually only get with a large-sensor camera and a lens with a wide aperture. Apple calls it Portrait Mode, but it's known as "bokeh" in photography circles. It lends a professional quality to pictures that phones just couldn’t replicate well until now.

IPHONE 7 PLUS – BATTERY LIFE

One of the reasons I’d always recommend a Plus version of the iPhone over the standard one is battery life.

Many people have gotten used to carefully managing their daily phone use to make sure their phone doesn’t run out before the end of the day. I don’t like doing that, which is why I prefer phablets such as the 7 Plus.

While the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 disappointed me even compared to other small phones, the 7 Plus is a beast that keeps going and going. I regularly plug it in to charge late at night with 30% or more battery to spare. That gives me confidence.

SHOULD I BUY THE IPHONE 7 PLUS?

At £719 the iPhone 7 Plus is the most expensive iPhone that’s ever hit the UK. In the US the prices are the same as last year’s 6S Plus, but that still doesn’t make it cheap – far from it. The only bonus is that Apple has finally upped the starting storage capacity from a paltry 16GB to an almost respectable 32GB.

The jump from there is big. For an extra £100 you can get the 128GB model, which should have more than enough storage for the majority. If you really want peace of mind that your 7 Plus will never run out of room for your photos or music, there’s also a 256GB option for an eye-watering £919.

You get a lot for your money compared to the iPhone 7, though. For £120 more the 7 Plus provides a luscious 5.5-inch screen and a clever camera – but, most importantly, battery life you can rely on.

If you can live without a headphone jack, this is a great upgrade from an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus. If you already own a 6S Plus then the differences aren’t so pronounced. I’d wait to see what Apple has planned for the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone in 2017 in that case.

OVERALL SCORE

SCORES IN DETAIL

• Battery Life9
• Camera9
• Design7
• Performance10
• Screen Quality10
• Software9
• Value8