iPhone 7 review
PROS
- Great screen and speakers
- Incredible performance
- Water resistant
- Excellent camera
- Clever Haptic engine
CONS
- Poor battery life
- Looks the same
- Where's the headphone jack?
- Expensive
KEY FEATURES
- 4.7-inch 326ppi wide-colour-gamut display
- 32, 128 and 256GB storage options
- Water-resistant IP67
- A10 Fusion chip
- 12MP camera with OIS
- 7MP front camera
- Taptic engine with 3D Touch
- Manufacturer: Apple
- Review Price: £599.00/ 6500 MAD.
WHAT IS THE IPHONE 7?
The iPhone 7 entered the world with a bang, thanks to headphone controversy and a price hike seemingly in the wake of Brexit.
But at first glance you’ll wonder what’s changed – it looks pretty much the same as an iPhone 6. I loved that design, but then I loved the design of the iPhone 4 – that doesn't mean I want a phone that looks like that in 2016. Still the 6 design was good, but would any other company get away with a two-year-old look for its flagship phone?
Get past this and the iPhone 7 delivers a unique experience among iPhones, which is both a good and bad thing. 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 the right upgrades to make photos look better.
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 like you've returned home after a long holiday and the window curtains have been changed.
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? One not of caution, though. It does mark up a little easily so you'll need to treat it with care if you want it to keep looking good.
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.
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.
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.
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.
IPHONE 7 – CAMERA
The new iPhone 7 feature I’ve been most anticipating is the upgraded camera.
Like many things Apple, the results of the photos taken by the iPhone 6S and its predecessors belied the specs of the camera. A whole lot of software cleverness goes into the pics, yet they remain natural-looking. It’s something I’ve always appreciated, even though top-end Samsung and LG smartphones have performed better in some scenarios.
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.
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.
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.
OVERALL SCORE
SCORES IN DETAIL
- Battery Life5
- Camera9
- Design7
- Performance10
- Screen Quality9
- Software9
- Value7
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