iPhone 7 review: Apple misses the mark

Yes, it’s true. The iPhone 7 has finally killed the 3.5mm headphone jack. Sort of. Apple certainly made a lot of fuss about its wireless Airpods and Lightning-powered Earpods headphones during its iPhone 7 launch, but the truth of the matter is that you can still use your old 3.5mm headphones as long as you don't mind using the bundled 3.5mm to Lightning adapter.

It's not exactly the most elegant solution for a company that's often prided itself on simplicity and ease of use, but at least it means you don't have to fork out even more money just to carry on listening to your favourite tunes. For the iPhone 7 is the first iPhone in ages to have received a significant price hike (thanks, Brexit), rising to £599 for the entry-level 32GB version from its usual spot at £539.

Storage

In a way, it's a small price to pay for double the storage, as Apple has finally listened to reason and ditched the 16GB option. We've long complained about how 16GB just isn't enough space for a modern, flagship handset, so it's welcome to see 32GB as the new starting point.

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The other storage options have doubled in size as well, and if you grab a 128GB or 256GB model you also get the option to buy the iPhone 7 in its extra shiny Jet Black finish – which, sadly, isn't available in 32GB. It is also perhaps something of a shame that there's no 64GB option to provide some sort of middle ground, but overall this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Design

The aforementioned Jet Black version, however, takes several strides backwards. It’s now more prone to picking up mucky fingerprints than its matt siblings, and it's also considerably more slippery to hold. I never felt confident holding our Jet Black review sample, and I was constantly afraid I was going to drop it.

Apple itself has warned customers that the Jet Black's polished finish is more likely to pick up scuffs and scratches than the plain Black, Silver, Gold and Rose Gold options, advising that you invest in a case to keep it in pristine condition. This, in my eyes, rather defeats the point of buying one with a flashy back in the first place.

Home Button

The newly redesigned home button also takes some getting used to. This time around, Apple's replaced the mechanical aspect of the iPhone 7's home button with a similar kind of Force Touch technology found in its MacBook and MacBook Pro products. Rather than pressing inwards with a standard click, the button now simply vibrates whenever you apply any pressure, giving you enough feedback to let you know you've pressed it properly without moving anything inside the phone.

This should hopefully make it less likely to break and fail after prolonged use, but given Apple's heavily reliance on using the home button to navigate its iOS operating system, I didn't find it quite as easy or as intuitive to use as its old click buttons.

Waterproof protection

A more welcome addition is the iPhone 7's improved water and dust protection, as its IP67 rating means you can now drop the phone in up to a metre of water for up to 30 minutes without damaging its internals.

This makes it much more practical to use on a daily basis, as you no longer need to worry about accidentally dropping it down the loo or getting caught using it during a heavy rain shower.

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 I 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. However, I had a hard time replicating Apple's quoted brightness figure of 625cd/m2, as I couldn't coax my colour calibrator any higher than 540cd/m2, which is actually lower than the 580cd/m2 we managed on the iPhone 6S. That's still more than enough to see the screen clearly outdoors, but it's not quite as good as I'd hoped.

It’s difficult to properly benchmark the iPhone 7’s display, however, as it only uses this wider palette of colours in applications that specifically support it. As all our display tests are run in an Opera browser window – sadly, Safari just doesn’t play ball with our testing software – the iPhone 7 automatically defaults to the standard, or narrow, sRGB colour gamut. This is, quite sensibly, so that images on the web don’t end up looking overblown and unnatural.

Even in this scenario, though, the iPhone 7 is still supremely accurate. It reproduced 95.8% of the sRGB colour gamut, which isn’t quite as high a figure as the best Android handsets, but the quality of those colours means that it is more accurate than most – going by Displaycal’s measurement report, the display isn’t far off what we’d expect from a professional desktop monitor. It’s fair to say that Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge still nudge slightly ahead overall, but this is still a step up for Apple.

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, my initial test shots didn't blow me away.

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.

Our wooden mannequin, for instance, revealed some very smeary, jagged outlines that simply aren't present on our iPhone 6S comparison shots. The iPhone 6S, on the other hand, arguably showed more noise, but the end result was much cleaner and pleasing to the eye. This is probably something Apple can fix with a software update, but it's clear from our test shots that the improvements the iPhone 7 offers are pretty minimal.

Performance

Where you're more likely to notice a difference is the iPhone 7's day to day performance. Powered by Apple's new quad-core A10 Fusion chip, the iPhone 7 is noticeably quicker than its predecessor. It scythes through iOS 10 far more smoothly, and the speed boost is particularly noticeable in the way that it springs back to the home screen.

It showed in our benchmark results as well, as the iPhone 7 finished way out in front of the 6S in Geekbench 4. In the single core test, for instance, the iPhone 7 scored 3,489 (up from the 6S' 2,493) and it scored a massive 5,652 in the multicore test (again, up from 4,102 on the 6S). That’s hugely impressive, and just nudges in front of the S7 and S7 Edge.

Graphics performance was excellent, too, as it finished GFX Bench GL's offscreen Manhattan 3.0 test with an average framerate of 62.6fps. That's the highest score I've ever seen, so you be pretty sure the iPhone 7 will run anything you throw at it.

Battery Life

For all that raw processing power, the A10 Fusion is also meant to introduce significant energy savings compared to its A9 predecessor, extending the iPhone 7's battery life by two hours compared to the iPhone 6S. This is thanks to its two 'high-efficiency' cores, which allegedly run at a fifth of the power used by the pair of 'high power' cores.

This bore out in our battery life tests, too, as it managed 13hrs 2mins in our video playback benchmark – almost two hours more than the 11hrs 18mins we got from the iPhone 6S.

However, it's still not particularly brilliant compared to its Android rivals, as the Galaxy S7 is still miles out in front with its 17hrs 48mins, not to mention the S7 Edge with its 18hrs 42mins. As a result, it's clear Apple's still got some way to go before it can really compete with the top Android phones, but at least it's an improvement on last year's iPhone.

Software

As with every new iPhone launch, the iPhone 7 comes with the latest version of iOS, which in this case will be iOS 10. I’ve already been using the beta on my iPhone 6S, and it’s a decent, if unspectacular update, but I’ll run through a quick summary of all the key features.

Read our in-depth hands on with the iOS 10 developer preview

There’s a new lockscreen, for starters, which now gives each notification its own interactive bubble. Swiping left brings up a list of widgets and a search bar, and it’s now easier to access the camera from the lockscreen, with a simple swipe to the right.

You’ll also be able to delete Apple apps (finally), 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 now has facial recognition, making it easier to create dynamic libraries for different people.

Verdict

There's no denying the iPhone 7 is a great smartphone, but none of its improvements are quite as impressive as I'd hoped, which makes it feel 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 to its Android competitors, as both the camera and the display aren't quite as good as the very best.

For me, Samsung's S7 family are still the phones to beat as the best smartphones ever made, but the iPhone 7 certainly isn't far behind. The only problem is the price, as a lot of contracts I've seen so far involve quite a significant upfront cost as well as a hefty £50-per-month fee thereafter. The S7, on the other hand, can be picked up for around £34-per-month with no upfront cost, providing a significant saving over the course of two years.

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However, if your allegiance lies firmly with iOS, then the iPhone 7 is definitely the best iPhone you can buy today. With its increased battery life, superior speed and better-looking display, the iPhone 7 offers a decent bump over the iPhone 6S, and a significant improvement over the now rather elderly iPhone 6. All of which makes it a very satisfying upgrade if your contract's coming to an end.

That said, if the new prices are just a little bit too high for you, then I'd recommend buying a new iPhone 6S instead – and particularly now that Apple's bumped up the storage and dropped the prices to £499 and £599 respectively.