Apple unveiled the iPhone 7 on 7 September, alongside the bigger iPhone 7 Plus. The new iPhone boasts a better camera, a new, super-speedy processor, two new colour options and waterproofing. It was released on 16 September after a successful week of pre-orders.
iPhone 7 review: Price & availability
The iPhone 7 is available in three models with three different price tags. The first is 32GB, which costs £599. That's more than the £539 the iPhone 6s was when it launched, which is a shame as it hasn't gone up in price elsewhere. It's likely to have something to do with the change in economy since the UK voted to leave the EU.
The second model has 128GB, and costs £699, again significantly higher than the equivalent model of iPhone 6s was prior to the iPhone 7's arrival. In fact, it has increased by £80.
The third model is 256GB, which is the highest capacity for an iPhone. This will set you back £799, which is a whole £100 more than the third model iPhone 6s was at launch.
iPhone 7 review: Design & build quality
The iPhone 7 is, physically, the same size and shape as its predecessors, the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6. The camera and the TrueTone flash are bigger, though, and you'll spot that the antenna lines are gone from the back of the iPhone.
Plus, there are two new colours available: Black and Jet Black. The first is a direct replacement of the Space Grey that came before it, but uses a darker shade of aluminium, which is definite preferable. The second is Jet Black, which has a high gloss finish that Apple is showing off in the majority of its promotional material.
The iPhone 7 is also Apple's first water resistant phone. Apple has waterproofed individual connections within the iPhone rather than adorning it with ugly rubber plugs, and is officially calling it splash-, dust- and water-resistant, at IP67. That means you can dip it in water up to one metre deep, for up to 30 minutes.
iPhone 7 review: Goodbye, headphone jack
One of the big talking points of the iPhone 7 is the lack of a headphone jack. That's right, after months of speculation it has finally been confirmed that the headphone jack is no more for iPhone users. Instead, you can plug your headphones into the Lightning jack using the adapter in the box, use the new Lightning EarPods that come with the iPhone 7, buy yourself a pair of Lightning headphones or Wireless headphones, or wait for Apple's own wireless AirPods to arrive later this year.
It has certainly caused a bit of a stir, but iPhone users will quickly come to terms with the fact that the 3.5mm jack has been ditched, when Apple replaced the 30-pin connector with a Lightning connector.
iPhone 7 review: Home button
Here's where that new Taptic Engine comes in. It's been used to enable a completely flush Home button, that is actually not a button at all, although it still has that familiar Touch ID ring around it. Instead of physically moving up and down, pressing the new Home button triggers that clever Taptic Engine to trick your finger into thinking the button is pressing down.
This will sound familiar to those of you with a 12in MacBook, which uses the same technology for its Force Touch trackpad.
The Home button on the iPhone 7 is odd - not necessarily bad, per se, but unexpected. And in a fundamental user interface tool like this one, a control you'll be using frequently, that can be offputting.
The solid-state trackpad on the MacBook, many readers will know, is an astonishing feat of deception: many users would be willing to swear that the trackpad is clicking downwards, so clever is the haptic effect. It doesn't feel like something clever is happening - it just feels like you're clicking it, when you're not.
The iPhone 7's Home button is not like that. You can tell at once that something is up - there's physical feedback, sure, and that's important to making a control satisfying to use. But it feels different: the designers have essentially given up on the pretence that you're clicking a button physically. It feels like you're pressing on a piece of unmoving glass, and something elsewhere in the object is buzzing promptly in response.
iPhone 7 review: Display
One thing that hasn't changed is the screen size and resolution. Just like the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s before it, the iPhone 7 has a 4.7in display with a 1,334 x 750 resolution. That doesn't necessarily mean there are no improvements at hand, however. The iPhone 7 now has a wide colour gamut display, which allows it to reproduce brighter, more intense shades of colour. And as an extra bonus, its panel is now a claimed 25% brighter than the display on the iPhone 6S.
When compared both phones side by side at maximum brightness, the difference was plain to see. Colours on the iPhone 7 looked much richer and punchier, and blacks were noticeably darker.
iPhone 7 review: Camera
The iPhone 7's new, improved camera isn't as immediately impressive as its specs might suggest. While its 12-megapixel sensor has been improved since the iPhone 6s, introducing optical image stabilisation, a brighter f/1.8 aperture that lets 50% more light into the new, six-element lens, and a quad-LED flash, .
Outdoors, the iPhone 7 produced brighter colours and better-contrast shots than the iPhone 6s, but indoors things didn't quite pan out as expected. While our still-life arrangement was, on the whole, sharper, crisper and richer on the iPhone 7, shadow areas were extremely blotchy, which in turn affected the edges of our still-life objects.
iPhone 7 review: Verdict
There's no denying the iPhone 7 is a great smartphone, but none of its improvements are quite as impressive as it was expected – it feels more like an iterative S update than the next big evolutionary leap.
It's certainly raised the bar for iPhones a little higher, but in many ways it's still catching up with its Android competitors, as neither the camera nor display is quite as good as the very best.
iPhone 7 review: Complete Specification
| Size | Dimensions: 138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm Weight: 138 g SIM: Nano-SIM - IP67 certified - dust and water resistant - Water resistant up to 1 meter and 30 minutes - Apple Pay (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX certified) |
| Display | Type: LED-backlit IPS LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors Size: 4.7 inches (~65.6% screen-to-body ratio) Resolution: 750 x 1334 pixels (~326 ppi pixel density) Multitouch: Yes Protection: Ion-strengthened glass, oleophobic coating - Wide color gamut display - 3D Touch display & home button - Display Zoom |
| Platform | OS: iOS 10 Chipset: Apple A10 Fusion CPU: Quad-core GPU: (six-core graphics) |
| Memory | Card slot: No Internal: 32/128/256 GB, GB, 2 GB RAM |
| Camera |
Primary: 12 MP, f/1.8, phase detection autofocus, OIS, quad-LED (dual tone) flash Features: Geo-tagging, simultaneous 4K video and 8MP image recording, touch focus, face/smile detection, HDR (photo/panorama) Video: 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30/60/120fps, 720p@240fps Secondary: 7 MP, f/2.2, 1080p@30fps, 720p@240fps, face detection, HDR, panorama |
| Sound |
Alert types: Vibration, proprietary ringtones Loudspeaker: Yes, with stereo speakers 3.5mm jack: No - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - 3.5 mm to lightning headphone adapter incl. |
| Comms |
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, hotspot Bluetooth: v4.2, A2DP, LE GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS NFC: Yes (Apple Pay only) Radio: No USB: v2.0, reversible connector |
| Features |
Sensors: Fingerprint, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer Messaging: iMessage, SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email Browser: HTML5 (Safari) Java: No - Siri natural language commands and dictation - iCloud cloud service - MP3/WAV/AAX+/AIFF/Apple Lossless player - MP4/H.264 player - Audio/video/photo editor - Document editor |
| Battery | Non-removable Li-Ion battery Talk time: Up to 14 h (3G) Music play: Up to 40 h |
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