Gadgetory

PocketNow sign Phone 7 coverage is brought to you by D brand to buy the best fitting skin for your phone or tablet please visit D brand calm it's the best iPhone ever but let's get down to brass tacks and see what this smaller iPhone 7 can really do first up for you specs junkies not a lot has changed on paper from last year's phone you can pause the video here to get a quick rundown on the hardware we're looking at moving over to design we've all started talking about Apple products like we would purses or shoes new for this season Apple makes a daring design move that's right black is the new rose gold honestly this is a pretty sharp look for a phone and the better blended antenna lines are appreciated it's a shame Apple couldn't deliver that on the other color options yet we have to question whether a new color and a bit of sculpting around the camera housing really does constitute fresh design if an iPhone is to be considered a lifestyle accessory shouldn't Apple be working harder at being a fashion vanguard something to think about I personally enjoy the satin finish on the matte black better than the glossy jet-black iPhone but this will still pick up fingerprints like crazy what we have here though is maybe the last true premium small form-factor phone only Apple this year seems interested in providing hardware options for folks with smaller hands checking out the screen this is likely the best LCD we've ever seen for color and brightness though it still loses to AMOLED displays for contrast the retina pixel density is fine for day-to-day activities on the screen size but folks who really like to get their noses into their phones or are interested in trying out some virtual reality will likely be disappointed in this 750 p resolution the new home button isn't actually a button at all and this personally might be my favorite new feature as it addresses one of the more common failure areas of previous iPhones the tactile feedback here is fed through the phone's vibration system which can be customized and while it has a funky feel at first it won't take users long to acclimate manual buttons on older iPhones already feel a bit clunky we're also very happy to see proper water resistance on this iPhone rated ip67 the iPhone 7 should handily survive being submerged in up to meter water for up to 30 minutes the iPhone 7 suffered no issues after our pitcher of water test here moving over to software we've produced several videos on iOS 10 but as a quick recap this new version of iOS brings better gesture and 3d touch support a new control center is nicely laid out but the brightness slider can be easy to miss when on the move the new Photos app is spruced up music has a cleaner look with more options for cultivating playlists and lastly messages gets a huge update for personalizing conversations with playful transitions in new emoji we'd be remiss if we didn't reiterate that some aspects of iOS haven't aged well apples home screen organization options feel limited in this day and age and even on the smaller iPhone keeping back buttons in the upper corner can be a reach this made sense on smaller iPhones but the software just stayed like this to remain familiar even as screen sizes increased it's not necessarily ideal anymore from an ergonomic standpoint and while Apple has been improving support for 3d touch there's still very little conveyance as to which apps you can actually use with the force press the newest version of iOS on the newest Apple chipset is always a tasty recipe for performance though we occasionally do see some subtle framerate drops when flinging through the multitasking view apples 810 chipset benches like a monster and when paired with such a low resolution screen we also shouldn't be surprised that this phone is a gaming champ except for the battery life of course which we'll talk about later in this review cellular performance is good but generally around my neck of the woods reception fell slightly behind the iPhone 6s maybe because these new antenna bands have a little less surface area maybe against the glass back galaxies we see Apple fall even just a little further behind what was impressive though was to see how strong Wi-Fi reception was during speed tests of course Apple won't let you just see Wi-Fi reception but moving is far from my router as I could the iPhone could consistently pull a faster download than the galaxy s7 now moving over to photography we have the most complete examination of the iPhone camera available online in our iPhone 7 plus real camera review as a quick recap we're happy to see a faster focusing system a wider aperture and optical image stabilization on the smaller iPhone though the last two points mainly seemed to benefit low-light shots daylight photos and videos are very similar to the 6s video is high-quality though it's frustrating that for a phone with stereo speakers Apple still only delivers mono audio and Apple still has one of the strongest games around for fun features like HDR and slow motion video though this app is starting to feel old and limited against some of the truly great camera software found on competing devices we have a whole separate video talking about the camera app - which has proven to be somewhat controversial with our audience but the most controversial aspect of the iPhone has to be the removal of the 3.5 millimeter 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 ear pods results in slightly lower quality output than last year's phone from the built-in jack digital output isn't particularly impressive it's a little different than moving an mp3 file over a USB cable you wouldn't call a file transfer music at some point you need to actually create analog vibrations in the air which your ears can hear and out of the box the iPhone 7 is a step backwards Apple was the gold standard when CD quality was top dog but they just sort of stayed there as competitors caught up then surpassed them improving the situation requires buying more expensive accessories which have their own signal processing hardware and can only be used with the iPhone bluetooth is certainly more convenient than lightening headphones or adapters but currently Bluetooth 4 simply cannot compete against a traditional wired connection when looking at phones from HTC or LG well Apple followed Motorola here and we're sure that more manufacturers will follow them but at least if you own an Android and invest in USB C headphones you could still use those headphones with your MacBook no such luck with Apple's ear pods and Apple lost a headphone jack but gained a speaker moving the 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 encountered 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's stuffy nose it's a valiant effort for Apple's first stereo phone but even mid Rangers like the Alcatel Idol 4s easily give it a run for its money we can always declare that Apple produces the most power efficient handsets on the market but they face androids with larger batteries as brute force responses this year the battery grows to a 1960 milliamp hour cell over the iPhone 6s is 1715 milliamp power capacity but this is still well behind the number of Android phones which are breaking into 3000 milliamp hour territory we can't get too excited about this capacity increase though as the iPhone 7 also packs a quad-core CPU two whole extra cores over the iPhone 6s and this seems to bring battery life in line with last year's phone for most of our synthetic testing the iPhone 7 falls ever so slightly behind the 6s though in daily use it'd be difficult to declare a clear Victor running our media test streaming 30 minutes of HD video over Wi-Fi at 190 Lux the iPhone 7 drained 7% of its battery draining more than the galaxy s7 we've already produced a full comparison between the galaxy in the iPhone but we got several comments about this battery test to expand on the discussion we ran another test playing 30 minutes of Marvel future fight this game is terribly optimized for Qualcomm powered Android phones but it runs like buttah on the iPhone the Galaxy has a larger screen with three times more resolution and we know that Samsung bloat keeps a lot more software running in the background the galaxy battery is over six months old and I also made sure to run a level where there was a lot of white background to keep that AMOLED display juiced up this comparison basically hands every advantage we can think of to Apple and yet after 30 minutes the galaxy drained 13 percent of its battery and the iPhone was down 15 percent the galaxy s7 is less power efficient but it's simply going to last longer during the day with similar use the smaller iPhone is really at its strongest when it's not being used and we don't mean that as a slight Apple still maintains the best low-power mode we've ever seen and this phone really does seem to be built around the idea of short bursts of activity not prolonged use and the charging situation isn't particularly impressive either after 30 minutes on the included charger we only topped off 26% and it's a shame such a small battery paired with a faster charger would be insanely fast to recharge but we're still working with the minimum Apple can include with a 650 dollar phone so let's wrap this up where's that leave us with the iPhone 7 a few companies can generate an emotional response like Apple can the iPhone 7 is a good phone but for every step forward we find with lifestyle features 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 closer to an iPhone 6s II if you will if you're rocking 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 $100 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 pocket now site phone coverage is brought to you by D brand check out D brand calm to customize your iPhone with a real-time preview D brand skins are designed to add grip texture and kill those jet-black iPhone fingerprints they ship worldwide and iPhone skins start at under ten bucks if you're interested links are in the description below as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full iPhone coverage and helps out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos back now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review you