Gadgetory

hey it's the iPhone 7 now I promise we're going to talk about the headphone jack but let's start with something fun the iPhone 7 is water-resistant it's not quite as water-resistant to Samsung's phones but it's still not gonna freak out if you get it wet and that's awesome the new iPhone 7 and 7 plus look more or less exactly like the iPhone 6 and 6-plus from 2014 there are some small differences like stereo speakers tweaked antenna lines and bigger camera bombs but the biggest change in the new iPhone is the removal of the headphone jack it comes with lightning ear pods and a dongle for using your old headphones which costs $9 if you lose it Apple's forcing a big change by taking away the headphone jack and the ecosystem around that change is pretty immature this is all going to be really inconvenient while everyone adapts and builds adapters Apple is also pushing wireless audio really hard and I got to try out a pre-production set of ear pods the new wireless earbuds I can't review them since they're prototypes but they worked pretty well even though every single person I showed them to thought the case looked like dental floss apple says it needed to take out the headphone jack so could add all kinds of other new features to the iPhone 7 like better cameras the taptic engine haptic feedback system water resistance and maybe most importantly a bigger battery so the real question is whether all that stuff is worth it and whether it's worth upgrading the iPhone 7 while the world around us is still adjusting the biggest io change in years the iPhone 7 is one of the most beautiful refined designs Apple's ever made particularly the two black ones where the antenna lines blend right into the sides of the body but let's be honest the second you stick this thing into a case it looks just like the iPhone 6 the galaxy note 7 might have problems with exploding but from a visual design perspective Samsung's definitely pulled ahead this generation inside the case these are completely new phones though with a bunch of interesting ideas take the home button for instance it doesn't move anymore instead it's totally solid the taptic engine makes feel like a click when you push down on if the phone is off doesn't move at all you can set it to three different levels of feedback but none of them feel like a real button I'm ok with this but other people have tried my phone really don't like it your gonna have to try it yourself to understand it the taptic engine also adds all kinds of other fun feedback to the phone when you drop the notification shade down that phone bumps a little bit it's way more useful than 3d touch which I always thought was a gimmick and still hasn't really caught on the iPhone 7 and 7 plus also have the new a10 fusion processor it's fast but it wasn't noticeably faster than my iPhone 6s plus during my boring day to day use I'm sure high-end games and other apps will eventually take advantage of this new processor but that'll take some time the real news with a10 fusion is it has four cores two of which are special low power cores that means a phone can use less power in out stressing it saving battery life in about a week of use I got 8 to 10 hours a day of battery life with the iPhone 7 and about 10 to 12 hours of battery life with the 7 plus that's pretty much what Apple claims but depending on how much you use your phone during the day it could be just the same as the 6s the other big news the iPhone 7 is the improved camera it's improving over the 6s but it is not a huge lead but it's about the same as a galaxy s7 the front camera on both new iPhones has been upgraded to a 7 megapixel sensor while the rear camera on the regular iPhone 7 has a faster F 1.8 lens and optical image stabilization both which improve low-light performance and the 7 plus has a radical dual camera system on the back with two 12 megapixel shooters a wide-angle lens and a telephoto lens the two cameras work together as a single system so you can smoothly zoom from 1x to 10x and eventually Apple will enable some fancy depth tricks that will blur the background like a much fancier camera here's the thing the camera is only a little bit better day to day you might not notice it but at the edges of performance in low-light with extreme detail it is noticeably better the major tells are that the sevens wider aperture lens leads to a slightly softer background and colors are a little bit more vibrant straight off the camera and where you'll really see that increased vibrancy is on the iPhone 7 screen which can display a much wider range of colors than the 6s it's a very noticeable not only is a screen warmer than the success display but photos look amazing on it you can definitely tell a 7 photo apart from the success when you look at them on the 7 other phones with dual cameras the honor 8 let you do very impressive focus tricks Apple says a forthcoming software update will enable a similar depth effect for portraits but for now what you get is the ability to switch between 1x and 2x modes by tapping a button and digitally zooming between them and then up to 10x front cameras are almost more important than rear cameras in our snapchat world and the iPhone 7s front camera is excellent it's not quite as wide angle is Samsung's cameras but it's bright it's sharp and the retina flash is still a terrific idea the new iPhones are on iOS 10 which is a terrific upgrade over iOS 9 it has a slick new version of iMessage with all kinds of new features a new version of Siri that can be extended by third-party apps better integration with smart home devices and a ton of other new stuff of course you can get iOS 10 on any recent iPhone so it's not worth buying a whole new phone just to get it but it's definitely worth upgrading in general the world just isn't ready for the iPhone 7 the most interesting feature of the dual camera doesn't ship at launch apps have you been updated to use that taptic engine the entire ecosystem of new headphones and adapters required to make use of lightning and wireless audio is just getting off the ground right now using the iPhone 7 in case feels just like using an iPhone 6s with a weird or home button and more dongles it's kind of like Apple shipped a prototype of next year's iPhone disguised as an iPhone 6 that's not all bad the iPhone 7 is a terrific phone with a great camera in a gorgeous display if you need a new phone right now sure buy one the iPhone 7 starts at six hundred $49 for 32 gigs of storage and goes all the way up to nine hundred and $69 for a seven plus with 256 gigabytes of storage but unless you're excited to live that early adopter life you won't be missing out on much if you wait another year so good one more the brightness needs to come down