iPhone 7

[Commodus]

I know we have a thread in the mobile phone subforum that's discussing the iPhone 7, but it's really more of an iPhone 7 alternatives thread, so... here's the thread for everything else!

As a recap, the big changes for the iPhone 7/7 Plus:

- Much-improved cameras (including a dual camera with zoom/bokeh on the Plus)
- Water resistance
- Longer battery life
- Faster A10 Fusion processor
- Brighter, higher color display
- Stereo speakers
- Increased storage across the board (32GB/128GB/256GB)
- Better industrial design (stealthier antennas, especially on the black/jet black/silver models)
- Force Touch-style home button
- No headphone jack (adapter in the box, thank goodness)
- Probably 3GB of RAM on the Plus (this will have to wait until someone benches it)

My quick take: the absence of a native headphone jack for some people will suck, but this is still a nicer leap than I was expecting. You probably wouldn't want to upgrade from an iPhone 6s, but anyone with an earlier iPhone will like it. My biggest beef: the screens are still the same resolution. We'd already established that the 2017 model would be the big shift in design, though, so it's less of a shock than it might have been a few months ago.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Good summary. I'm with you in terms of them bringing much more to the table than expected in terms of upgrade. The lack of headphone jack just absolutely kills it for me (even with the adapter). But I've already made that point in the other thread so won't harp on it any further here.

I like every other aspect. I'm actually a big fan of the stereo speakers as I assume that will make speak phone calls much easier to hear on this. The camera improvements are fantastic and I'll never complain about better battery life. Will have to wait and see on the home button change but have to assume it will be implemented well.

Granted I won't get to enjoy any of these new features.

 

[dawheat]

Feels more like the 6SS as expected than a 7. I don't think iPhone 6 users will be itching to upgrade as if there was a new design OR a truly new feature. The improved cameras come closest to that type of improvement as the hardware has caught up to the competition which combined with Apple's superior software should make for a class leading camera - though I do think the deltas between flagship cameras aren't very significant and won't be ever again.

Everything else is just the slow march forward - iterative design, faster SOC where the last SOC was already overpowered for any app, a bit better battery life, bit better screen, etc.

I'm debating whether to upgrade my wife's iPhone 6S to the 7 but I'm on the fence - we upgraded from the 6 mostly b/c she liked the rose gold. Besides the camera improvements, she doesn't care about anything else in the list.

 

[stlc8tr]

Why do they still have two different models of each size (A1660/A1778 & A1661/A1784)?

From looking at the specs, it seems the A1778/A1784 model isn't actually needed since the A1660/A1661 models does everything already.

http://www.apple.com/iphone-7/specs/

 

[dawheat]

Why do they still have two different models of each size (A1660/A1778 & A1661/A1784)?

From looking at the specs, it seems the A1778/A1784 model isn't actually needed since the A1660/A1661 models does everything already.

http://www.apple.com/iphone-7/specs/

Cost? I assume supporting CDMA means paying royalties/patents indirectly and would be wasted money for pretty much the rest of the world. Why leave any money on the table when probably over 90% of the phones you'll sell won't need it.

 

[dawheat]

Oh I will say the Air Pods look terrible, especially for the price. Sound quality is reported to be at the level of the in-box headphones (i.e. bleh) and they look like fancier bluetooth headsets that doucebags used to wear everywhere. Those...pipes just look terrible.

This could have been something else if they were truly entry-level audiophile sets.

 

[boomhower]

I'm down for a new one. I have a regular 6 now and while still doing alright is feeling a bit long in the tooth. I will be going for the 7+ for the camera. I am disappointed by no increase in resolution of the screen but was really expecting one with the likely move to OLED next year. I am looking forward to the increase in RAM as well, 1GB is not enough no matter how efficient the software.

The headphone jack is a stupid move but doesn't personally bother me as I rarely, at best, use headphones. In the car I either use USB or BT. That's really the only place I listen to audio from my phone. In the grand scheme this will certainly cost them sales. What will be interesting is the final numbers, will the hopeful increase in sales of headphones offset the loss in phone sales, I am betting not.

 

[Eug]

I was all ready to order a 128 GB Plus, but the very negative reviews of the new home button have given me a bit of a pause.

I think I may pre-order anyway but if I don't like the home button I could end up returning it. The only thing though is I really want that camera, and the (hopefully) 3 GB RAM would be nice.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I just saw this on Engadget. Not sure what to think though until someone actually has a chance to test it in a better environment.

• Apple's press pit was a madhouse, and as a result it was damned near impossible to get a sense of the iPhone 7's new stereo speakers. Still, I figured out a few things -- while Apple's on-stage imagery sort of made it look like there's a another discrete speaker on top of the phone, the audio just comes out of the main earpiece speaker.

I also found this odd...

Apple can chalk it up to "courage" as much as they want -- getting rid of the headphone jack makes things much trickier. I asked multiple Apple spokespeople whether or not you could somehow charge the iPhone 7 while the included EarPods were plugged in, which seemed like a straightforward, yes or no sort of question. I still haven't gotten a straight answer, though I'll update this post when I do.

 

[darkswordsman17]

It would be more odd if they'd have added a speaker port on top as well. Of course the most sensible thing would be two forward facing speakers. I expect we'll see that once they move to integrating the fingerprint sensor into the display, or however they go about ditching the home button.

I'm mixed, but then not having OLED makes me completely dismiss it anyway. Will see how the camera fares, likewise on the big/small core, but other than that, all the other "improvements" seem like things that should have been there years ago (the speakers and water resistance for instance) or aren't an improvement (losing the headphone jack).

Really Apple's manner of iterative changes really is starting to show how profit-focused they are.

Oh and the headphone jack removal, if it blocks headphone output, then wow. Either they know it and are trying to push people to wireless headphones (again showing their profit focus) or they f'ed up like they did with the bumper fiasco on the 4.

 

[Eug]

It would be more odd if they'd have added a speaker port on top as well. Of course the most sensible thing would be two forward facing speakers. I expect we'll see that once they move to integrating the fingerprint sensor into the display, or however they go about ditching the home button.

Yes, it makes perfect sense to me that the second speaker is the earpiece. It's logical, and practical.

I'm mixed, but then not having OLED makes me completely dismiss it anyway. Will see how the camera fares, likewise on the big/small core, but other than that, all the other "improvements" seem like things that should have been there years ago (the speakers and water resistance for instance) or aren't an improvement (losing the headphone jack).

I'm fine with the screen, and this will be an improvement apparently. It's not a primary concern for me. My bigger concern has been the brightness in sunlight and the overall default colour balance. This in the past has been a big issue with Android AMOLED phones, although I'm told they've vastly improved since then.

Really Apple's manner of iterative changes really is starting to show how profit-focused they are.

I think more that they are losing focus to a certain extent, and don't have quite the creativeness they once had.

Oh and the headphone jack removal, if it blocks headphone output, then wow. Either they know it and are trying to push people to wireless headphones (again showing their profit focus) or they f'ed up like they did with the bumper fiasco on the 4.

??? There is nothing about blocking headphone output. It comes with an adapter in the box, and if you lose it, they're $9 each.

They've been doing this for like a decade on the Mac..

 

[antihelten]

I think more that they are losing focus to a certain extent, and don't have quite the creativeness they once had.

Honestly I think it's neither an issue of profit-focus nor lack of focus, but rather a simple consequence of the fact that there just aren't any low hanging fruits left in smartphone development. I mean Apple aren't the only ones suffering from this, the big Android manufacturers are just as iterative as them, except when they throw gimmicks in the package that are doomed to fail from the get go, like the add-ons/mods that LG and Lenovo tried.

Also this is hardly anything new. When looking at the new iPhone 7 the only features that are genuinely new and not just an improvement (or sidegrade) of an existing feature would be the water resistance and the dual camera on the plus model. But if we look at previous models they didn't really bring a lot of new features either:

• 6S: 3D touch
• 6: NFC and OIS on the plus (new sizes is an iterative change imho)
• 5S: fingerprint scanner
• 5: nothing
• 4S: Siri

Obviously those aren't the only improvements those phones brought, but they are the only ones that could didn't have any comparable predecessor in a previous model.

 

[bradly1101]

https://www.facebook.com/scrollthrough/videos/1764199133800036/

 

[bradly1101]

Dual cameras? What exactly does that do? My S7 has "dual pixels" in its camera, but I have no idea how that helps, unless the increased light gathering ability allows the claim of an f1.7 lens.

 

[Eug]

Honestly I think it's neither an issue of profit-focus nor lack of focus, but rather a simple consequence of the fact that there just aren't any low hanging fruits left in smartphone development. I mean Apple aren't the only ones suffering from this, the big Android manufacturers are just as iterative as them, except when they throw gimmicks in the package that are doomed to fail from the get go, like the add-ons/mods that LG and Lenovo tried.

Also this is hardly anything new. When looking at the new iPhone 7 the only features that are genuinely new and not just an improvement (or sidegrade) of an existing feature would be the water resistance and the dual camera on the plus model. But if we look at previous models they didn't really bring a lot of new features either:

• 6S: 3D touch
• 6: NFC and OIS on the plus (new sizes is an iterative change imho)
• 5S: fingerprint scanner
• 5: nothing
• 4S: Siri

Obviously those aren't the only improvements those phones brought, but they are the only ones that could didn't have any comparable predecessor in a previous model.

I'm not talking about just smartphones. I'm talking about their products in general. The Apple Watch gets a big meh from me.

Also, when they released the 12" MacBook my response was not really "Cool!" but more "Finally!", since I had been pining for something like that ever since the MacBook Airs were released... but then they screwed up its keyboard and trackpad for the sake of thinness.

Then there's iTunes and Music. They went from being clean and intuitive interfaces to bloated messes.

BTW, looking at your list, despite the fact that people consider the 7 very iterative, it actually looks the most significant update after my 5S' fingerprint scanner (if we're excluding size changes here). The camera upgrade with real optical zoom has been something I'd wished for years. However, I thought that'd be harder to do than a 12" MacBook, so I expected the latter way, way earlier.

Dual cameras? What exactly does that do? My S7 has "dual pixels" in its camera, but I have no idea how that helps, unless the increased light gathering ability allows the claim of an f1.7 lens.

True optical zoom, pleasing bokeh for portrait shots, among other things.

 

[antihelten]

I'm not talking about just smartphones. I'm talking about their products in general. The Apple Watch gets a big meh from me.

Also, when they released the 12" MacBook my response was not really "Cool!" but more "Finally!", since I had been pining for something like that ever since the MacBook Airs were released... but then they screwed up its keyboard and trackpad for the sake of thinness.

Then there's iTunes and Music. They went from being clean and intuitive interfaces to bloated messes.

BTW, looking at your list, despite the fact that people consider the 7 very iterative, it actually looks the most significant update after my 5S' fingerprint scanner (if we're excluding size changes here). The camera upgrade with real optical zoom has been something I'd wished for years. However, I thought that'd be harder to do than a 12" MacBook, so I expected the latter way, way earlier.

I agree that the iterative development nature can be found across Apple's entire range, I'm just not sure that it's due to a lack of focus.

I do agree with you on the iTunes part though, that could quite rightly be said to be due to a lack of focus.

Regarding the list, that was kind of also the point (that the 7 isn't really that bad in comparison). I guess part of the reason why we tend to feel otherwise is also partly due to the fact that iterative changes mattered a lot more in the past. The increase in resolution from the 3GS to the 4 was iterative in nature, but also a huge improvement in user experience, whereas on the other hand if Apple moved up to a 1080P or even a 1440P on the 7 today, it would certainly be nice, but not a revelation in the same manner. The same goes for performance improvements, back in the day you could really notice the boost in performance from a new SoC and the improvement it gave in user experience, nowadays I think most people will be hard pressed to tell the difference between the A9 and the A10, since the A9 is already so fast.

 

[rumpleforeskin]

Dual cameras? What exactly does that do? My S7 has "dual pixels" in its camera, but I have no idea how that helps, unless the increased light gathering ability allows the claim of an f1.7 lens.

The dual pixels of the S7 means that every pixel on the sensor doubles as both a light sensor and focus detector. This allows much faster auto focus on fast moving scenes and generally better focus in low light situations. Most cameras have less than 10% of their pixels devoted to focus.

 

[Commodus]

Dual cameras? What exactly does that do? My S7 has "dual pixels" in its camera, but I have no idea how that helps, unless the increased light gathering ability allows the claim of an f1.7 lens.

The iPhone 7 Plus' cameras do two things.

First: it effectively gives you optical zoom. You can switch cameras and get a closer shot without sacrificing quality. It uses software if you go beyond 2X, but that's still better than if you'd zoomed in with a a conventional phone cam.

The other bit is the bokeh effect (this is coming in an update). It combines the two cameras to create a depth map and soften the focus of the background, like you'd get with some DSLR and mirrorless camera lenses. It's mainly useful for macros and portraits, but it should really make photos pop then it comes into play.

 

[Eug]

I was looking at the Apple website and they have a demo picture of the background blur. Probably not the best example of background blur but I appreciated it because it was a real world-like example similar to what people may encounter. Also, the quality of the bokeh was actually reasonably decent.

One can get better results out of a dSLR but of course I basically never have my dSLR with me, and even when I do, I don't necessarily have the right lenses.

Now, if I were to get the iPhone 7 Plus, I'd have both a zoom lens and a lens that's capable of providing half-decent portrait shots if in the right lighting. This is a huge step forward for iPhones.

To give you an idea of what this background blur does, compare that shot to this one I found on the net, below. The grass near the top of her head is still in relative focus, even though it's probably a similar distance away as the fruit in the picture above.

And to incorporate something like that iPhone 7 invite's image into portraiture, look at this one:

 

[Mopetar]

The real question is what will be the problem for the new iPhone. What will bloggers attach the -gate suffix to this year?

Otherwise it looks like an all-around solid upgrade. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing to sneeze at either. Also, I don't expect the 7+ to have 3 GB or RAM unless the 7 does as well, which is unlikely given past history. My guess is they save a RAM upgrade for the S model next year.

I'm most interested in the CPU as there's always been some speculation that if Apple had good enough performance they might start using their SoCs in their notebooks instead of Intel chips. We'll probably have to wait for the tablet refresh to get a better idea of the limits of the design though.

 

[deathBOB]

Cost? I assume supporting CDMA means paying royalties/patents indirectly and would be wasted money for pretty much the rest of the world. Why leave any money on the table when probably over 90% of the phones you'll sell won't need it.

Did they identify the radio provider? Pure speculation, but it could be someone new (Intel) who doesn't have a combined CDMA/GSM radio.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'm fine with the screen, and this will be an improvement apparently. It's not a primary concern for me. My bigger concern has been the brightness in sunlight and the overall default colour balance. This in the past has been a big issue with Android AMOLED phones, although I'm told they've vastly improved since then.

At this point, AMOLED is brighter and more accurate than LCD with similar to better power draw depending on the content. The only real issue is image retention after a couple years depending on the usage patterns.

 

[Denly]

I was looking at the Apple website and they have a demo picture of the background blur. Probably not the best example of background blur but I appreciated it because it was a real world-like example similar to what people may encounter. Also, the quality of the bokeh was actually reasonably decent.

From the look and feel of the pic it is on phone focus/image stacking...one camera take care of the portrait, one camera take care of the blur? It will be interested to check out night shot with flash on and see how it handle the diff iso between the front and the back.

 

[ericlp]

It's interesting they didn't add wireless charging to the phone. I figured that would have been at the top of the list, since that would solve the no headphone jack problem. Once you go wireless charging, it's hard to go back to a phone that doesn't have it.

If pixel (new android) phones don't have wireless charging, I'm sticking it out with samsung. It's just too easy to toss my phone on a charger, then plugging the stupid thing in. Maybe pixel will one up apple and have NO ports at all!

Dunno, it will be interesting to see if they got this phone right. I hate earbuds, I like my own comfortable headphones, to me, the earbuds looks stupid. Plus just one more thing to keep and remember to have charged up. I dunno, about you, but I hate being or calling attention that I have a EXPENSIVE phone in my pocket. Hey, thieves! Look at that dude with the white 160 dollar earbuds and a 1000 dollar phone, I wonder what else he/she might have in her pockets. Sigh.

 

[Eug]

The real question is what will be the problem for the new iPhone. What will bloggers attach the -gate suffix to this year?

Home-button-gate?

Otherwise it looks like an all-around solid upgrade. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing to sneeze at either. Also, I don't expect the 7+ to have 3 GB or RAM unless the 7 does as well, which is unlikely given past history. My guess is they save a RAM upgrade for the S model next year.

There have been exactly two Geekbench 4 results posted that purport to be from the iPhone 7 line.

I can't confirm their legitimacy, but what makes them interesting is one was posted last week as iPhone9,3, and has 2 GB RAM on iOS 10.1, while the other was posted this morning as iPhone9,4 and 3 GB RAM on iOS 10.0.1, yet both the devices have very similar results. If we were to take a leap of faith, esp. knowing that such leaks often appear right around/after the launch event, that might suggest that both indeed are sporting Apple A10 Fusion, but one is an iPhone 7 with 2 GB and one is an iPhone 7 Plus with 3 GB.

Furthermore, the 3 GB rumour was told to us by Ming-Chi Kuo, who gave us most of the other accurate rumours about the iPhone 7 / Plus specs.

And finally, I've been wondering if it's just because the new dual camera needs more than 2 GB. That's a lot of image data to process, and we don't want to bog down the CPU with insufficient memory.

Did they identify the radio provider? Pure speculation, but it could be someone new (Intel) who doesn't have a combined CDMA/GSM radio.

Here is one take on that (which suggests Intel finally got a win here).

http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/07/apple-inc-iphone-7-specs-suggest-intel-corp-modem.aspx

From the look and feel of the pic it is on phone focus/image stacking...one camera take care of the portrait, one camera take care of the blur? It will be interested to check out night shot with flash on and see how it handle the diff iso between the front and the back.

Yep, and that's important to point out. My guess is that night shots incorporating this blur might not look very good, due the uneven lighting, unless they somehow process the hell out of the exposure and sensor noise for the background.

It's interesting they didn't add wireless charging to the phone. I figured that would have been at the top of the list, since that would solve the no headphone jack problem. Once you go wireless charging, it's hard to go back to a phone that doesn't have it.

If pixel (new android) phones don't have wireless charging, I'm sticking it out with samsung. It's just too easy to toss my phone on a charger, then plugging the stupid thing in. Maybe pixel will one up apple and have NO ports at all!

I charge my phone in about 4 different spots. And in several of those spots, it wouldn't make much sense to put a wireless charger. I wouldn't anyway though, due to cost.