Skip to main content

Review: Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus

The new iPhones don't look different, because what they look like doesn't really matter anymore.
Image may contain Electronics Phone Cell Phone and Mobile Phone
Lupine Hammack for WIRED

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

Rating:

9/10

Remember when the iPhone was exciting? When every new design and app was an event in itself? When copy-paste was a feature to line up for? Those days are gone. Now, each year's unprecedented combination of incredible technology feels ordinary, even expected. That doesn’t mean the magic’s gone. It’s just harder to see when it’s everywhere.

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are out this Friday, starting at $650 and $770 respectively. They're the best, fastest, strongest iPhones yet. They also indicate, nine years into the iPhone experiment, that we're nearing some platonic ideal of a smartphone, the device in its final minimalist form. This is happening everywhere, by the way, not just in Cupertino. All the wildest ideas about smartphones are actually wild ideas around smartphones: hardware and software that connect to us and each other through our phones. For the smartphones themselves, there's forever thinner, faster, stronger, and maybe curved-screenier, but that's about it. At least, until the next world-bending material sciences breakthrough.

The iPhone 7 may look like the iPhone has for years, but it works better. Differently, too. It's more seamless, more open to third parties, and more connected to the rest of the Apple ecosystem. More than anything, this phone is Apple's acknowledgement that how an iPhone looks is increasingly beside the point. What matters is what an iPhone can do.

More and Less
Lupine Hammack for WIRED

As always, the new iPhone is a better iPhone. Its new A10 Fusion processor is ludicrously, outrageously fast, somehow even more so than last year's (already crazy fast) A9. It's a quad-core processor, with two cores dedicated to running simple tasks and two to more taxing ones. That means if you don't really game or watch high-res video on your phone, your battery life is going to be extraordinary. When I used the iPhone 7 for only simple things, I got more than 24 hours of life from the 7, and nearly 48 from the 7 Plus. As soon as I fired up Riptide GP: Renegade and streamed Halt and Catch Fire, I had to charge once during the day or be left stranded by 9pm.

The 7's screen is brighter than the 6S, but for the life of me I can't imagine why you'd ever use your phone at full brightness. The earpiece now doubles as a speaker, so you get surprisingly decent stereo sound out of the phone itself. It's not great, or even good, but it's much better than the 6S. Really, the best news on the spec sheet is that the iPhone 7's internal storage starts at 32GB and goes up to 256GB. No more "Storage Almost Full" messages while I'm trying to take pictures of my dog! Or at least, it'll take a lot longer to get there.

The basic frame of the iPhone 7 hasn't changed a bit from the slim, metal rectangle you already know. The 7 Plus still has a 5.5-inch screen, and 4.7 for the iPhone 7. There are a few subtle ways to tell the new model from the old, like the more subtle antenna lines and the sloping edges around the camera hump that now rises like a volcano rather than protruding like it was hole-punched. The two new colorways, jet black and black, are also a dead giveaway. Or, as I call them, I Already Scratched It Glossy Black and Awesome Secret Agent Matte Black.

Lupine Hammack for WIRED

Of course, the easiest way to figure out what phone you're holding is to try and plug in headphones. If you can't, congrats! You've found a new model. There's really nothing to say about the absence of the headphone jack except that it's not there, which really is annoying sometimes. Like when I'm on the train, and can't charge from an external battery and listen to music at the same time.

Apple's solution to these gripes is a pair of wireless, $159 AirPods, but your answer will probably be to buy yet another awkward dongle that lets you still plug your wired headphones in. That's another gripe; any time I left the tiny white connector at work, I couldn't use my preferred cans. I'm into the idea that wireless is the future, but getting there is going to be painful and adapter-filled.

After a week, I've stopped trying to plug things into my phone's phantom headphone jack. But I cannot, for the life of me, get used to the iPhone 7's new home button. It's not a button anymore, just a capacitive surface that uses haptic buzzes and taps to provide feedback. That's great for the longevity of your phone, since the home button tends to break before anything else. It's even really cool in some places on the iPhone, lending a certain physicality to on-screen stuff by buzzing when you get to the end of a list or rattling like an actual machine gun when you fire upon the unsuspecting enemy. But when I press to unlock my phone, my thumb vibrates like it's about to dent the glass. It's not like it ruins the phone, but I miss the click.

Honestly, though, I'm happy to trade both headphone jack and home button to get a water-resistant phone. (Not that I should have to, as Samsung and everyone else have proven.) Being able to use my phone in the shower, or at least inside the Toothbrushing Splash Radius, is wonderful. Even more than that, knowing my IP67-rated iPhone 7 can handle a light rainstorm or splash of tequila brings a wonderful peace of mind. The iPhone 6S was already sort-of mostly waterproof, but the iPhone 7 is the real deal.

So far, unless you have a bad history with phones and toilets or an intense goth streak, there's nothing about the iPhone that would make any 6S or even 6 owner jump at the upgrade. The thing Apple's hoping will push you over the top is staring out the back of the iPhone 7 like a Wall-E robot: the new and improved camera.

Lupine Hammack for WIRED
DSLR.app

The iPhone 7 camera is the easy one to review. It's terrific. The 12-megapixel sensor now comes with an f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilization, which all together means you'll get brighter, sharper photos and video even in terrible lighting. (If that's not enough, the flash is now much brighter as well.) Apple made hay about the 100 billion calculations the camera does every time you shoot a photo, and how fast the new processor is, but I didn't notice a big difference in the actual shooting experience over last year's model. The photos and video are the important part, though, and they're much better now. You can even shoot in RAW and process photos later. And for selfies, the 7-megapixel FaceTime camera takes Kardashian-ready shots every time.

The 7 Plus is the more interesting camera, mostly because it's actually two cameras, both 12 megapixels, each with a different focal length. The wider camera, at 28mm, is basically the same you'll find in the iPhone 7. Next to it there's a similar lens at 56mm, and the camera app lets you switch between the two instantly.

What they offer is real, true, actual zoom on a smartphone. It's only 2x optical zoom, plus digital zoom up to 10x, but it makes a big difference. Hiking in the redwoods, I'd take a snap from the ground, then zoom in and appear to be shooting from among the branches. I could also take portraits without standing creepy-close, which made friends and loved ones happy. Both cameras capture data every time you hit the shutter, and the images stitch together to achieve even more noise reduction and quality assurance.

The iPhone 7 Plus can't match a truly professional-level camera, but I've gotten more detail and richness from my photos than I can ever remember getting off a smartphone.

Lupine Hammack for WIRED
A Blank Slate

The iPhone really isn't a single device at all. It's a million different devices. When you buy a phone, you decide what it becomes by downloading apps. Your iPhone could be a Snapchat machine, or an Instagram factory, or a universal remote for your TV. The smartest thing Apple ever did with the iPhone was to imagine it as an empty vessel, waiting for users and developers to fill it with their homes and dreams and email apps.

All these years later, Apple's taking the blank-slate approach that led to the App Store to the rest of the iPhone. It's opening up APIs for RAW and wide-color image capture, which means photo apps could totally rethink how they process images. Developers can use the taptic engine to make games and apps more responsive and interactive. iOS 10 gives developers substantial access to Siri (and thus AirPods), along with Messages, Maps, and more. The iPhone's role is increasingly to be a blank canvas, one that developers can fill however they please.

It's a strategically smart move that makes for boring hardware. A phone that's meant to be tweaked and twisted can't cause problems by breaking or dying prematurely. It can't turn off buyers with controversial or complex design. It needs enough power and versatility to live up to a developer's most outrageous dreams. In other words, it's the iPhone 7.

So, no, the iPhone 7 won't blow your mind with its design or features. It's still a fantastic phone. And philosophically, it feels like Apple is throwing open a door. The iPhone 7 might not be a revolution, but it might be the catalyst for lots of them. Your phone will be better in a few months, and even better a few months after that. And wouldn't that be exciting?

Update, a few months later

You know what I don’t miss anymore? The headphone jack. I keep a bunch of dongles with me just in case, but I hardly ever need them. My car has a USB port, my headphones have no cables, and the iPhone 7 charges so fast that the whole “I can’t charge and talk at the same time” problem hasn’t really been one. Besides, there are at least two handfuls of really good wireless headphones, and you won’t regret making the leap when you do.

There aren’t many surprises to the iPhone 7, really. I’ve had my phone in the shower, been caught in a rainstorm, and had it poolside, all without a problem. Lots of apps have updated to add widgets, goof around in iMessage, and make 3D Touch useful. iOS still feels like a more modern app ecosystem than Android. (Super Mario Run is out!) Since September, the other big change has been to the iPhone 7 Plus, which got a software update that enabled the soft-focus features from the dual cameras. I’m sure you’ve seen it on Instagram. Personally, I think the effect looks fake and bad, but lots of other people love it.

The iPhone remains terrific. Surprise! But not long after it came out it met its steepest competition in years, in the form of the Google Pixel, the best Android phone ever made. For the first time in a long time, I suspect Apple is looking over its shoulder. Meanwhile, 2017 will be the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, and the rumor mill is already flying. This year’s update was excellent but sort of unexciting, but next year’s might change that.