The review(text only)

According to Apple it is the best iPhone ever! Though, the iPhone 7 arrives at a time when consumers are holding onto their phones for longer stretches of time, and this premium phone faces intense competition from mid-range and flagship phones from last year. Will this phone help spark a little more excitement in the iOS fan camp to upgrade?

In this (my personal first review and post) review it’s time to see what’s improved, what’s stayed the same, and what might have taken a step back from last year’s iPhone 6.

For you specs junkies, the tech updates for the iPhone 7 are fairly modest. Apple moves from a dual-core CPU in last year’s A9 to a quad-core CPU in the A10 chipset. This still comes with an impressively powerful six-core GPU. Offsetting the more powerful CPU, the battery is bigger than last year’s phone, and we’re very happy to see that now the base model iPhone ships with 32GB of storage instead of last year’s anemic 16GB base model iPhones. Otherwise, the rest of the platform is very familiar to last year. We get virtually identical dimensions, the same size screen, and 2GB of RAM.

We’ve all started talking about Apple products like we would to purses or shoes, and new for this season, Apple is bringing back black. Customers have their pick between a glossy Jet Black, and a satin finished matte black. Personally, I think the satin finish on the matte black looks better than the glossy jet black, but even the matte finish will still pick up fingerprints like crazy.

It has  a pretty sharp look for a phone, and the better blended antenna lines are appreciated. It’s a shame Apple couldn’t deliver this on the other color options. I do have some  questions though, whether a new color, and a bit of sculpting around the camera, really constitutes a “fresh and unique” design. If an iPhone is to be considered a lifestyle accessory, shouldn’t Apple work harder at being a fashion vanguard?

The iPhone is still smaller in every dimension, and with a smaller screen. Samsung has done a terrific job of shrinking the frame around the Galaxy S7 display, but it still has a 5.1” screen. Looking at that diagonal, with the overall larger volume and higher curb weight, it positions the S7 as “normal” sized. Is the Galaxy right near that border between “normal” moving towards “small”? Sure. But, you wouldn’t confuse one in the hand for other 4.7” screened phones like an iPhone 6-7, or an HTC One M7.

Similarly, is the iPhone 7 near that border of “small” moving towards “normal”? Absolutely, but one hand usage is still easier on the iPhone 7 than on the smaller Galaxy, especially when interacting with the home buttons on each device.

The most controversial aspect of the iPhone has to be the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack in favor of moving to the Lightning connector or to a wireless solution. Moving the DAC off of the phone, and over to the included adapter or EarPods(which look horrible in my opinion), results in slightly lower quality output than last year’s phone from the built in jack.

Digital output isn’t particularly impressive. It’s little different than moving an MP3 file over a USB cable. You wouldn’t consider a file transfer “music”. At some point you need to actually create analog vibrations in the air which your ears can hear.

Out of the box, the iPhone 7 is a small step backwards from the 6S.

Apple was the gold standard when CD quality was top dog, but they just sort of stayed there. Competitors caught up, then passed them. Improving the situation requires buying more expensive accessories which have their own signal processing hardware, and these options can only be used with iPhones and iPads. Bluetooth is certainly more convenient than Lightning headphones or adapters, but currently Bluetooth 4 simply cannot compete against a traditional wired connection when looking at phones from HTC or LG.

Apple lost a headphone jack but gained a speaker, moving to stereo output, which is certainly a welcome change when watching videos and playing games. Two speakers bring louder ringtones and alerts, but to our ears, actual quality lands mid pack. At full volume, we rarely encounter bad distortion, but highs can be a bit shrill. For phone speakers we’ve got a nice amount of bass, but there’s a dullness to the upper mids which can sometimes make the phone sound like it has a stuffy nose. It’s a valiant effort for Apple’s first stereo phone, but even mid-rangers like the Alcatel Idol 4S handily give the iPhone a run for its money.

Few companies can generate the emotional response like Apple can. The iPhone 7 is a good phone, but for every step forward I find, there seems to be a step back somewhere else. Trading pieces around, in many ways the iPhone 7 feels like a lateral move from the iPhone 6S, less like a true successor. Perhaps an iPhone 6SE if you will.

If you own an iPhone 6S, water resistance and stereo speakers are nice perks, but little else will separate the daily experience from what you currently own. Ignoring Android options, the iPhone 7 actually finds itself in tough competition from the revised 6S with more storage for a hundred dollars less, and folks who like the iPhone 5 form factor can find a bargain in the iPhone SE.

And both of those phones have better headphone audio.