iPhone 7 review: Does Apple’s 2016 flagship still stand up against newer models?

Before we even start, it’s worth saying straight away that the iPhone 7 isn’t the best or most impressive iPhone update we’ve ever seen. From the outside at least, the iPhone 7 looks a lot like the iPhone 6s before it, and a quick look through the features list isn’t that exciting either. However, the iPhone 7 is a quite a lot more than the sum of its parts, and if you’re looking to get a new smartphone, it’s still one you really should consider. But first, the lack of headphone jack.

iPhone 7 review: Does the missing headphone jack matter? 

First of all if you have existing wired headphones you want to use, you can: Apple includes a Lightning to 3.5mm adaptor in the box. Just stick it on the end of your headphones, and you’re good. And if you’ve already invested in a decent pair of wireless headphones, nothing changes for you. The iPhone 7 still has Bluetooth, although it uses the standard SBC Bluetooth codec as opposed to the more exotic, less lossless aptX codec.

And there are advantages to connecting your headphones to the Lightning socket, which are evident in products such as the JBL Reflect Aware: active noise-cancelling headphones that don’t need a cumbersome power source, because all the processing takes place aboard the phone.

iPhone 7 review: What’s up with that new Home button?

The next big change, however, is all good: the replacement of the physical home button with a Force Touch one.

Apple has had a bit of an obsession over the years with removing mechanical parts from its products – think back to the iPod, where it moved from a physical scroll wheel to one that didn’t move at all. As phones move closer towards full edge-to-edge displays, the physical home button became a headache for Apple. Removing it should make it easier, at some indeterminate point in the future, to shrink it or build it into the display in some way.

There’s another, bigger benefit, though, one that helps both users and Apple alike. Any moving part, no matter how well-engineered, will always be a point of failure. Mechanical things tend to break down more often than parts that don’t move, for reasons that should be obvious.

Over time, they attract dust, grease from your fingers, fluff from the inside of your pocket, and all kinds of unpleasant dirty stuff. Removing mechanical parts improves the reliability of iPhones, which means fewer breakdowns for users, and fewer warranty replacements for Apple.

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So what is this new home “button” like to use? In short, it’s excellent. Thanks in large part to Apple’s “taptic engine” haptic feedback technology, which the company uses in both the Apple Watch and the latest MacBook touchpads, it’s responsive and feels uncannily like a real button when you push down on it. It’s far more effective than the OnePlus 3’s touch-sensitive home-button-cum-fingerprint reader, which doesn’t have localised haptics like the iPhone 7.

There are a couple of caveats here, though. First, when the phone is sitting on a flat surface, the buzz is reduced in effectiveness. It still works, but with a slightly less intense haptic nudge.

Second, it doesn’t work with gloves, which is an interesting glitch with winter fast approaching. Given the screen isn’t glove-friendly anyway, you might wonder what the problem is. However, it is possible to use conductive gloves with the screen, and those gloves don’t work with the home button either. I tested this out with a pair of mine and, sure enough, the home button failed to work.

This is a problem – at least until I can secure a pair of gloves that do work with the home button (apparently, some do) – because there’s no way of getting to the PIN pad otherwise. You can activate the screen, look at the widgets and access the camera, but you can’t get to the PIN pad without pressing the home button. I’m sure Apple will come up with a solution for this issue given time, but for now, it looks as if I’m going to have to put up with cold fingers, and I’m not happy.

iPhone 7 review: Waterproof and slicker than ever

Perhaps an even bigger change, at least in terms of toughness and reliability, is water resistance: the iPhone 7 is now officially dust- and water-resistant to the IP67 standard.

That isn’t as good as the latest Sony Xperia XZ or the latest series of Samsung Galaxy S7 phones, which both achieve IP68 (six is the dust-resistance score and eight is the water-resistance rating). However, when you look at the fine print there isn’t a huge difference between IP68 and IP67 phones. The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, for instance, is “more waterproof” than the iPhone 7, but only to the extent that you can submerge it an additional half-metre than the iPhone. Both phones can be submerged for up to half an hour.

It’s an academic difference, then, a phrase that accurately describes the changes to the rest of the iPhone 7’s overall look and feel. Changes to the iPhone in a non-“S” year used to mean a radical redesign of the iPhone’s chassis. The move from iPhone 4s to 5 and 5s to 6 heralded big changes to the look and feel of the phone. However, this time around, you have to look pretty hard to see the differences. The old “rail track” antenna lines have been shunted out of the way to the edge of the handset, which results in a cleaner rear panel. That’s nice, but not groundbreaking.

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The rear camera bulge is slightly larger and more curvy, and there’s a pair of new colours. There’s the new glossy Jet Black finish you can see in these pictures,
which Apple says is produced through a special nine-step anodization and polishing process, and a matte black finish as well. Both of these look predictably spiffing, but my preference is for the smart, no-nonsense matte-black model. The Jet Black looks and feels weirdly plastic, and it collects fingerprints like a stamp collector picks up small squares of sticky paper at a philately convention.

On the plus side, it does at least clean up quickly with a quick wipe on your shirt. More worrying, however, is the fact that it scuffs up easily and picks up fine scratches at the slightest provocation. If you’re the type who thinks nothing of chucking your phone in your pocket with your keys (we all know someone who does this, don’t we?) your expensive Jet Black iPhone won’t look great for very long.

I tend to be very careful with the phones that are sent to me for review, but this one had picked up fine scratches around the bottom edge and its corners after a day or so of use. Buyer beware.

iPhone 7 review: Camera is a step up for photos

As for the camera, that’s a little more difficult to peg. On the surface, it ought to be a belter, and despite the fact that it doesn’t get the sexy dual-camera of its bigger brother, or a resolution bump (it still captures 12-megapixel stills and 4K video), a handful of specification improvements suggests better all-round image quality from the iPhone 7’s camera.

There’s now optical image stabilisation (OIS), where previously this had been restricted to the Plus version. There’s also a beefed-up ISP (image signal processor), which should ensure things such as better noise reduction and speedier HDR processing. A brighter f/1.8 aperture, which lets 50% more light onto the sensor, six-element lens and quad-LED flash round things off nicely. The iPhone 7 ought to be better at capturing images in low light, and at capturing action shots, and my initial tests reveal that the OIS works as you’d expect it to.

In bright light, the iPhone 7 captures images at both lower ISO sensitivity and higher shutter speed than on the iPhone 6s, which means it’s able to freeze action much more successfully and there’s slightly less grain.

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In low light, meanwhile, photographs are typically captured at lower ISO sensitivity and lower shutter speeds, which should deliver cleaner, brighter, more colourful images. In practice, that’s largely what happens when you use the camera day-to-day.

Check out the two images below, shot in dimly lit conditions under fluorescent office strip lights. The iPhone 6s image on the left is far less colourful than the iPhone 7’s shot on the right. The iPhone 7’s image is crisper and sharper, too.

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And yet, there are problems with the iPhone 7’s image. Examining the shadows in the background reveals an unpleasantly mottled, lumpy texture that’s obvious even without zooming right in (if you want to take a closer look click any of the images to get to the gallery, then click the View full-screen button). There is less grain than on the iPhone 6s image, but the graduation between light and dark areas is far less smooth and natural.

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In fairness, in most situations it’s abundantly clear that the iPhone 7’s rear camera is an upgrade over the iPhone 6s. The advantages of the brighter aperture and OIS outweigh the processing problems causing the blotchiness, and mean the iPhone 7’s camera is more reliable than ever before. There’s far less risk of getting a bum shot with this phone than the previous generation. The blotch shadow problem is also an issue I imagine Apple will be able to iron out in a future software update. All things told, it’s an excellent camera.

And yet, it’s equally obvious that Apple hasn’t made enough of an improvement here to overhaul its big rival in the smartphone camera stakes: the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, which have the edge on all-round quality for me.

In fact, the biggest upgrade to the iPhone 7’s imaging capability is arguably to the front camera, an area Apple hasn’t been particularly strong in historically. It gets a boost this time around from 5 megapixels to 7 megapixels, and delivers photographs with significantly more detail and superior contrast to the iPhone 6s. I also found the fake flash (where the screen flashes momentarily to illuminate your face) seems to activate more readily on the iPhone 7 resulting in more flattering selfies.

iPhone 7 review: One of the best screen’s we’ve used

The quality of the screen is another subtle improvement, brought about not by a change in technology, but a different approach from Apple. After years of calibrating its screens to target the comparatively narrow, but most universally used, sRGB colour space, Apple is now also calibrating the iPhone 7 against the wider DCI-P3 colour space, traditionally used in the movie industry to ensure colour consistency from studio through to cinema.

Apple, as it typically does, has renamed this standard. It’s calling it “Wide Color”, and if you set the iPhone 7 down next to its predecessor the iPhone 6s, both with screen brightness set to maximum, the difference in colour profile between the two is palpable.

The colours on the iPhone 7’s display have more impact and more “glow” to them, while black looks deeper as a result. In fact, the screen on the new phone is almost AMOLED-like in appearance, but it stops short of that lurid quality that we typically associate with other phones using that sort of technology.

However, it’s clear that Apple is aware that in supporting a wide colour gamut like DCI-P3 the danger is that “normal” content will end up looking over-saturated. So, in order to step around this potential problem, certain apps the screen seems to revert back to sRGB to ensure backwards compatibility, and this is where our screen benchmarks throw up some odd results.

Because our tests are run through a browser, and in the browser, the iPhone 7 seems to be calibrated to sRGB instead of Wide Color, colour accuracy in this colour space is great. The screen covers 95.8% of the sRGB colour space, which is also impressive. However, it would also seem to explain why our tests report back that DCI-P3 coverage is less impressive, at only 73.5% coverage.

The long and short of it is that the iPhone 7 is as good as ever at representing sRGB colour sources where it needs to be, while appearing more vibrant in other places – the homescreen, video playback and so on. Overall, in terms of its colour performance, it’s superb and a match for any other smartphone around right now.

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Oddly, the iPhone 7’s screen comes out as not quite as bright as the iPhone 6s (I measured it at 540cd/m2 with the brightness slider at maximum and the screen filled with white), and it lags slightly behind on contrast ratio as well, hitting 1,458:1.

Those are still good numbers, though, and to the eye, the iPhone 7 display represents a notable step forward: it’s more colourful, more vibrant, and more immediately engaging.

iPhone 7 review: Slightly better speakers

Audio has received a boost in performance as well in the iPhone 7, and for the first time, the iPhone has stereo speaker output. It’s an odd arrangement, though, with one speaker at the top of the phone behind the earpiece, and the other in its standard position behind the right-hand grille at the bottom of the phone.

That’s right, the right-hand grille. Although Apple has removed the headphone socket from the left-hand side and balanced the design by replacing it with what looks like another speaker, the holes drilled into the chassis are purely aesthetic. No sound comes out of them at all. And don’t be fooled by that cheeky YouTube video suggesting there’s still a headphone socket behind that second grille. It’s well and truly gone, as iFixit’s teardown has proved.

Still, the iPhone 7’s speakers do sound better than the iPhone 6s’s mono effort, with a little more volume, body and presence. There isn’t a huge amount in it – the laws of physics dictate that there’s no bass and that it still sounds tinny – but the new phone does sound distinctly better.

There’s also no discernible stereo separation going on here – there’s a little more spaciousness to the sound, perhaps, but no sense of imaging or positioning to speak of – however, there are some practical advantages to having two speakers and a side benefit or two.

First, having a second speaker means the sound doesn’t disappear altogether when your hand grips the edge of the phone, which is great if you want to give your ears a rest from your headphones from time to time and catch up on a bit of Netflix or play your favourite game. And because Apple has replaced the earpiece with a new speaker module in the new phone, in order to get a bigger sound out of it, call quality gets a boost, too.

In short, the iPhone 7 is improved from an audio output perspective all-round. It’s just a shame that Apple felt it necessary need to remove the headphones socket.

iPhone 7 review: Speed, performance battery life

It’s clear from using the iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 side by side that the newer phone is the more rapid device. But, again, it’s not a huge difference. In day-to-day operations, apps launch at roughly the same speed, but there’s a clear speed advantage when returning to the homescreen.

This much is also clear from the benchmarks. Both in Geekbench and GFXBench GL, the iPhone 7 outstrips its forebear – and pretty much every other phone on the planet right now. That’s thanks to the iPhone 7’s new processor: the A10 Fusion, which is clearly a beast.

^ You can see from the graph above that the iPhone 7, despite the fact that it employs only two cores at once compared with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge’s four, is still slightly faster in the multi-core test. That’s due to its ridiculously good single-core performance. Apple’s iPhones have always been good in this area, and seem to have improved even more than usual this year. The Geekbench 4 single-core result is a huge 86% better than the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge’s score in 2016. That’s quite some advantage.

^ Last year’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus were super quick in the graphics benchmarks, and this year the performance improves even further. There’s a limit, however, to how good the results can get in the Manhattan benchmark as detailed above, though, because the frame rate is effectively limited by the refresh rate (60Hz) of the iPhone’s display. Ths indicates that the phone is capable of more, but for the most part – at least today – that extra power won’t be used. 

It’s so powerful, it seems, that some people have reported that their iPhones “hiss” when put under continuous load. This might sound funny, but it’s no joke. Although I didn’t experience any hissing with the iPhone 7 I tested for this review, the iPhone 7 Plus I looked at did emit a very quiet noise after a few minutes of rendering exporting a movie project in iMovie. When I say quiet, though, I mean it: you have to lift the phone right up to your ear to hear the noise in most environments. This probably isn’t anything to worry about.

Although Apple has yet to officially comment on the issue, the noise is probably some kind of coil noise, which according to Arstechnica is “produced when electrical components hit a specific resonant frequency that causes the circuit to physically vibrate”. It’s something that happens with all electronic circuits to a greater or lesser degree, and shouldn’t affect the reliability of the phone. However, if you’re worried or just plain annoyed, a visit to your nearest Apple Store may well be in order. Stephen Hackett, from the website 512 Pixels, who was among the first to report the noise, has had his iPhone 7 replaced due to hissing. 

As I’ve said, though, it’s probably nothing to be worried about. What should be of more interest to you are the A10 Fusion processor’s two new low-power cores. The iPhone 7’s chip has twice the number of cores the iPhone 6s does (that’s four compared with two), and those extra two are aimed at greater efficiency with everyday tasks.

Now, all those little jobs that run in the background, such as music playback, message updates and file synchronisation, can run on a less power-hungry CPU – the theory being to save battery life without compromising peak performance.

In our battery life test, things were looking very good initially. After just over five hours or so of video playback, battery capacity had fallen by around 33%, indicating a final result of around 15 hours. Yet by the time it had run through the full cycle, the iPhone 7 had lasted a distinctly less impressive 13hrs 2mins. That’s two hours longer than the iPhone 6S lasted, which is good news, but still a long way short of the Samsung Galaxy S7, which lasted 17hrs 48mins.

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iPhone 7 review: Software

As with every new iPhone launch, the iPhone 7 comes with the latest version of iOS preinstalled. That’s iOS 10, and it works here just as well as it does on the iPhone 6s I’ve had it installed on since WWDC.

There’s a new lockscreen, which now gives each notification its own bubble and more rapid access to the camera (with a quick swipe of the finger to the left). There’s extended support for 3D Touch, too.

At long last, you can delete Apple apps, and Siri has now been opened up to developers, so you should see more Siri support across third-party apps. Mail and Messages have also received small design tweaks, and the iOS Photos app has facial recognition, making it easier to create dynamic libraries for different people.

Click here to go to Three’s site and snap up a great iPhone 7 deal

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iPhone 7 review: Price and verdict

As usual with a new iPhone, there’s not much to talk about when it comes to price. Despite upping the base storage allocation from 16GB to 32GB (and about time too), the iPhone 7 costs the same as the iPhone 6s did when it launched in 2015. Well, it does in the US; in the UK, where the pound has recently crashed in value against the dollar, the new iPhone is actually more expensive.

The 32GB model is £599, then, up from £539 last year, with the 128GB version coming in at £699 while the 256GB costs £799. The Jet Black version is only available in 128GB and 256GB sizes, so starts at £699, SIM-free.

So it’s expensive, but ’twas ever thus. It hasn’t prevented people from purchasing iPhones yet and is unlikely to with the iPhone 7.

The question is, is the iPhone 7 good enough to retake its place at the top of the smartphone tree once more, ousting Samsung at last? Well, not quite: the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge still has its nose slightly out in front, with a superior camera, curved AMOLED display and storage expansion. We’re talking marginal gains here, but it’s still the best phone around.

The iPhone 7 does, however, take its place as the best iPhone yet, and for many people that will be enough. It has a better camera than the iPhone 6s, more colour options, and that luscious Jet Black finish for those who like a bit of smartphone bling. It’s faster and water-resistant, the screen is improved and the new haptic home button is a dream to use.

The jury’s still out on battery life, but it’s looking good right now, and with the long-standing storage issue remedied by the introduction of a 32GB base model, I’m happy recommending the iPhone 7. It’s an outstanding smartphone.

Click here to go to Three’s site and snap up a great iPhone 7 deal

iPhone 7 specifications
Processor	Quad-core A10 Fusion
RAM	2GB
Screen size	4.7in
Screen resolution	1,334 x 750
Screen type	IPS
Front camera	7 megapixels
Rear camera	12 megapixels
Flash	Quad-LED
GPS	Yes
Compass	Yes
Storage (free)	32GB, 128GB, 256GB
Memory card slot (supplied)	None
Wi-Fi	802.11ac
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2
NFC	Yes
Wireless data	3G, 4G
Dimensions	138 x 67 x 7.1mm
Weight	138g
Operating system	iOS 10.0
Battery size	1,960mAh