iphone 7/7 Plus & Airpods
Apple’s flagship phone gets its latest revamp, along with wireless earphones
One particular topic has consumed the tech industry for months: Apple’s elimination of the headphone jack. Yes, they’ve only gone and done it. The Earpods that come with the iphone 7 have a cable that plugs into the digital Lightning port, and in the box is a little dangly adapter that you’ll need to make any other earphones connect.
Does it matter? Well, yes. Whether you use the Earpods or the dongle, you can’t plug your charging cable in at the same time as your earphones. The iphone 7’s battery does last up to two hours longer than the 6s – just over 13 hours of video playback in our tests – but it still won’t keep going for a whole day. So charging while listening is something you’ll wish you could do.
The alternative is wireless earphones, and Apple has introduced its own, the Airpods (see box opposite). But that’s just another battery to worry about. The Lightning Earpods, on the other hand, will fit your iphone 7 but not your Mac, PC, hi-fi system or Android device. Apple hasn’t so much launched a phone as an adapter market.
The case and home button
Apart from that, is it a good phone? Yes – but a very similar one to last year’s. The case, while the exact same shape, does look better, because the rubber bands across the top and bottom of the aluminium back panel are now just edge strips. There’s also a Jet Black option (see image right,ght, which also shows theirheir relative sizes). It has a super-smooth finish,h, only available on thee pricier models with more storage. Apple admits this scratchess very easily. You couldld put the phone in a case, but then you’d be hiding that new design Appleple has worked so hard on. Where’s the logic?
The round Home button beneath the screen, which doublesles as the fingerprint detector for unlockingng andd using Apple Pay, is no longer a mechanical switch but a touch sensor. It activates a small vibration that gives you the feeling of having clicked something. This feels quite convincing, and this ‘taptic’ feedback is also used elsewhere to subtly let you know, for example, that you’ve adjusted an on-screen dial to its default position. It’s clever, but not such a practical benefit as the 3D Touch ‘hard press’ features launched in the 6s.
The Home button only works with touchscreen gloves. The fingerprint sensor never worked with normal gloves anyway, so tthis is reasonable. This has helped Aapple, finally, produce a wate waterproof iphone. However, if you crack the screen, only Apple can replace it, at a cost of £126.44, or £20 extra for the iphone 7 Plus.
Came Camera
It’s the iphone 7 Plus that has the biggest innovation, a dual camera. The standard iphone camera is equivalent to a 28mm lens, giving a wide-angle view. Now there’s a 56mm version beside it. In photography, this is known as a ‘normal’ lens – neither wideangle nor telephoto (although,
No headphone jack, but the best screen so far and a brand new camera option
perversely, Apple calls it telephoto). The 7 Plus shoots with both at once, and thanks to some software magic you can set any degree of zoom between the two (or zoom further in, if you don’t mind the slight fuzziness of digital zoom).
The real standout feature is Portrait mode, which calculates from the two images how far away things are, then fakes the blurry depth-of-field effect you’d get with a full-frame camera. Photo professionals wouldn’t mistake it for a proper ‘bokeh’ effect, but it’s pretty. It’s a shame the 56mm lens doesn’t share the 28mm’s optical image stabilisation; it really needs it more.
Screen and storage
The normal-sized iphone 7 lacks all of this, but shares one excellent feature: a new screen technology that covers a wider range – what Apple calls a ‘gamut’ – of colours. It’s probably the best screen ever on a mobile device. You can see that colours are richer and black pixels darker, at least in apps updated to support it.
At £599 without a contract, the iphone 7 costs £60 more than the 6s did at launch. The recent fall in sterling is partly responsible, but also the iphone 7 costs around £28 more to make – according to analysts. Then there’s the ‘free’ Lightning adapter to factor in. At least you now get an adequate 32GB of built-in storage. If you need more, there’s no microsd slot for expansion, so you’ll need to pay £100 extra for the 128GB model. That’s hard to justify when the current bulk wholesale price for 128GB of NAND (the chips smartphone storage is made of) is around a fiver. And it means the iphone 7 Plus, which starts at £719, costs an eyewatering £819 if you need more than
32GB (or want it in Jet Black).
Apple does have cheaper options. The 6s, along with the 6s Plus, remains on sale from £499 (with 32GB). It’s disappointing that Apple hasn’t done the same with the iphone SE, which still has an impractical 16GB but has gone up £20 to £379. Even so, it’s a superb phone, and ready for several years of software upgrades. A 64GB option is £10 cheaper than before at £429. Whether you pick this or the 6s will really depend on your preference for a smaller or larger phone.
None of the iphone 7’s new features will make 6s owners feel they’re missing out. The Plus’ camera is tempting, but if you have a 6s we’d advise waiting for the more radical redesign expected with next year’s iphone 8.
The iphone 7 Plus has a bigger screen and a much better camera
SPECIFICATIONS
4.7in 1136x640-pixel screen (Plus: 5.5in 1920x1080) 12-megapixel rear camera (Plus: adds dual camera) 7-megapixel front camera 32GB flash storage 802.11ac Wi-fi Bluetooth 4.2 3G/4G IOS 10 138 x 67 x 7.1mm (HXWXD) (Plus: 158 x 78 x 7.3mm) 138g (Plus: 188g) One-year warranty