iPhone 7 Review
Sections
- Page 1 iPhone 7 Review
- Page 2 Screen and Speakers Review
- Page 3 Performance and iOS 10 Review
- Page 4 Camera Review
- Page 5 Battery Life and Verdict Review
Verdict
There are many positives to take from the iPhone 7, but unfortunately they’re negated to a large extent by poor battery life and a lack of basic features.
- Great screen and speakers
- Incredible performance
- Water resistant
- Excellent camera
- Clever Haptic engine
- Poor battery life
- Looks the same
- Where’s the headphone jack?
- Expensive
Key Specifications
- Review Price: £599.00
- 4.7-inch 326ppi wide-colour-gamut display
- 32, 128 and 256GB storage options
- Water-resistant IP67
- A10 Fusion chip
- 12MP camera with OIS
- 7MP front camera
- Taptic engine with 3D Touch
The iPhone 7 entered the world with a bang, thanks to headphone controversy and a price hike seemingly in the wake of Brexit.
But at first glance you’ll wonder what’s changed – it looks pretty much the same as an iPhone 6. I loved that design, but then I loved the design of the iPhone 4 – that doesn’t mean I want a phone that looks like that in 2016. Still the 6 design was good, but would any other company get away with a two-year-old look for its flagship phone?
Get past this and the iPhone 7 delivers a unique experience among iPhones, which is both a good and bad thing. The new features – water resistance, an incredible quad-core processor and, crucially, a 32GB starting storage capacity – are all very welcome. So is the excellent camera that’s had the right upgrades to make photos look better.
But like the eponymous Batman villain, the iPhone 7 has two faces. The removal of the headphone jack feels unnecessary and restrictive, the handset costs more than the 6S did when it was released last year (in the UK at least), and the iPhone 7’s battery life is a real problem.
If you want a small Apple phone you’d be better off opting for the iPhone SE. Alternatively check out our iPhone 7 Plus review. Yes that phone is even more expensive, but it lasts a lot longer and has an even better camera that offers proper zoom. There’s is one other option to consider too if you’re hooked on Apple. The iPhone 6S Plus remains a great phone, has strong battery life and costs exactly the same as the iPhone 7.
iPhone 7 – Design
There’s not much to talk about when it comes to the aesthetics of the iPhone 7. If you’ve used an iPhone 6 or 6S you’ll feel like you’ve returned home after a long holiday and the window curtains have been changed.
For standing out from the iPhone crowd, the new Jet Black finish is really your only option. A Jet Black iPhone 7 looks like no other handset. It’s not like the plastic iPhone 5C – this is a phone made out of metal, but which is smooth to touch without being slippery. Yes, it attracts fingerprints, but who cares when it looks this good? One not of caution, though. It does mark up a little easily so you’ll need to treat it with care if you want it to keep looking good.
The second new colour on offer is simply called Black. This replaces the Space Grey of previous models and makes the iPhone 7 looks like a mean machine. The other versions available are Silver, Gold and Rose Gold.
The iPhone 7’s size and shape is almost identical to the previous models, however the antenna bands that formerly ran across the back now tastefully curve around the ends, and the camera nub is more rounded. These changes are small, but welcome, although it does mean you won’t be able to use an old 6 or 6S case.
The iPhone 7 retains those chunky top and bottom areas of its bezel and this means it offers less screen space for its size than the HTC 10, LG G5 or Samsung Galaxy S7. The latter has very similar dimensions but comes with a 5.1-inch screen, compared to the 4.7-incher on the iPhone 7. It feels like some other brands have overtaken Apple when it comes to phone design.
That’s all there is to discuss about the aesthetics. However, there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to design. Apple’s made some fundamental changes to the iPhone 7 that will affect the way you use your phone for better and worse.
Let’s start with the missing headphone socket. For some people this is going to be a big issue, but it hasn’t been a problem for me.
There are a number of potential reasons why Apple’s decided to remove the 3.5mm socket from the iPhone 7, but the company won’t outright tell us why.
Space seems to be the primary factor when you look at the internal design. The new Haptic engine is a lot chunkier and takes up some of the space, as does the louder speaker that’s been crammed into the bottom. Apple has clearly decided improved features on the iPhone 7 are better than keeping a 50-year-old connection, particularly since wireless headphones have become increasingly popular over the past few years. In fact, Apple has launched its own wireless headphones, called AirPods. Shame you’re going to need ‘courage’ to wear AirPods outside…
Related: iPhone XS review
That’s all well and good, but for many who own a great pair of wired headphones this will prove a problem. Apple has resolved it to a great extent by providing a pair of Lightning Earpods and a small adapter in the box with the iPhone 7. The adapter lets you plug wired headphones into the charging port. It works well, but you won’t be able to charge your phone and listen at the same time, plus it’s small and easy to misplace.
There are some neat third-party Bluetooth aptX headphone adapters available, such as the £69 Noble Audio BTS, but be prepared for an inevitable drop in audio quality when used with high-end headphones.
I haven’t been too affected by the lack of jack. Having bought into the convenience of wireless headphones a few years ago, I now favour them over my better-sounding wired pairs. It’s a transition I expect many of us will make over the coming years.
The other design change I got to grips with quickly is the new Home button – if you can still call it that.
Gone is the iconic click; it now has capacitive touch sensitivity. That means it works using the tiny bits of electricity in your fingers, just like the screen does, so if you’re wearing normal gloves it won’t function.
Incredibly, I could’ve sworn that the button had some give to it until I turned the phone off and realised that I’d been duped. That’s how good the new Haptic engine is. The feedback it offers tricks your brain into thinking the button can actually be pressed. This isn’t just smoke and mirrors; it feels real. I thought I’d miss the old iconic iPhone Home button, but I don’t.
That Haptic engine is used for more than just the Home button, though – the iPhone 7 now feels like it talks to you by vibrating at key moments. Whether you’re scrolling through the timer or getting a call, the refined buzzes tell you a lot more than the iPhone 6S ever did.
iPhone 7 – Water resistant
One of the reasons the Home button has been changed is because of the iPhone 7’s headline feature: water resistance.
Apple may not be the first to create a water-resistant phone, but it’s a brilliant feature to have nonetheless. That’s because one of the main reasons people ruin their phone is through water damage. I’ve broken a phone or two by dropping it in the wet stuff in the past.
The iPhone 7 is hardy enough now to withstand a moderate dunk in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. The iPhone 7 manages an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance, which is a little less than the certification achieved by the Galaxy S7 and Sony Xperia Z5. Don’t let that bother you, though. The difference is small and I’ve used the iPhone 7 in the shower and left it in water for 30 minutes and it still works just fine.
Water resistance is an added level of insurance for flagships that cost a lot to replace. It certainly came to my rescue when I dropped the iPhone 7 in a puddle while camping on a wet weekend.
How we test phones
We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Источник
Where Is the iPhone Made?
It takes a village to build an iPhone
Anyone who has bought an iPhone or another Apple product has seen the note on the company’s packaging that its products are designed in California, but that doesn’t mean they’re manufactured there. Answering the question of where the iPhone is made isn’t simple.
Assembled vs. Manufactured
When trying to understand where Apple manufactures its devices, there are two key concepts that sound similar but are different: assembling and manufacturing.
Manufacturing is the process of making the components that go into the iPhone. While Apple designs and sells the iPhone, it doesn’t manufacture its components. Instead, Apple uses manufacturers from around the world to deliver individual parts. The manufacturers specialize in particular items—camera specialists manufacture the lens and camera assembly, screen specialists build the display, and so on.
Assembling, on the other hand, is the process of taking all the individual components built by specialist manufacturers and combining them into a finished, working iPhone.
The iPhone’s Component Manufacturers
Because there are hundreds of individual components in every iPhone, it’s not possible to list every manufacturer whose products are found on the phone. It’s also difficult to discern exactly where those components are made because sometimes one company builds the same component at multiple factories.
» data-caption=»» data-expand=»300″ data-tracking-container=»true»/>
Maritsa Patrinos / Lifewire
Some of the suppliers of key or interesting parts for the iPhone 5S, 6, and 6S and where they operate, included:
- Accelerometer: Bosch Sensortech, based in Germany with locations in the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan
- Audio chips: Cirrus Logic, based in the U.S. with locations in the U.K., China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore
- Battery: Samsung, based in South Korea with locations in 80 countries
- Battery: Sunwoda Electronic, based in China
- Camera: Qualcomm, based in the U.S. with locations in Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and more than a dozen locations through Europe and Latin America
- Camera: Sony, based in Japan with locations in dozens of countries
- Chips for 3G/4G/LTE networking: Qualcomm
- Compass: AKM Semiconductor, based in Japan with locations in the U.S., France, England, China, South Korea, and Taiwan
- Glass screen: Corning, based in the U.S., with locations in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Turkey, the U.K., and the United Arab Emirates
- Gyroscope: STMicroelectronics. Based in Switzerland, with locations in 35 countries
- Flash memory: Toshiba, based in Japan with locations in over 50 countries
- Flash memory: Samsung
- LCD screen: Sharp, based in Japan with locations in 13 countries
- LCD screen: LG, based in South Korea with locations in Poland and China
- A-series processor: Samsung
- A-series processor: TSMC, based in Taiwan with locations in China, Singapore, and the U.S.
- Touch ID: TSMC
- Touch ID: Xintec. Based in Taiwan.
- Touch-screen controller: Broadcom, based in the U.S. with locations in Israel, Greece, the U.K., the Netherlands, Belgium, France, India, China, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea
- Wi-Fi chip: Murata, based in the U.S. with locations in Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, India, Vietnam, The Netherlands, Spain, the U.K., Germany, Hungary, France, Italy, and Finland
The iPhone’s Assemblers
The components manufactured by those companies all around the world are ultimately sent to just two companies to assemble into iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Those companies are Foxconn and Pegatron, both of which are based in Taiwan.
Technically, Foxconn is the company’s trade name; the firm’s official name is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd. Foxconn is Apple’s longest-running partner in building these devices. It currently assembles the majority of Apple’s iPhones in its Shenzen, China, location, although Foxconn maintains factories in countries across the world, including Thailand, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines.
Pegatron is a relatively recent addition to the iPhone assembly process. It is estimated that Pegatron built about 30 percent of the iPhone 6 orders in its Chinese plants.
Источник