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Anandtech's review for the 7 & 7+ is now up...

Hal~9000

Hal~9000

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Sep 13, 2014
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/10685/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-7-plus-review

Overall, I think that if there’s any phone that is worth 650-750 USD at its base, it’s the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. If you’re upgrading from the iPhone 6s Plus you probably won’t find a ton of differences, but it’s still a significant step up in display, camera, speaker quality, battery life, and system performance. There are some software bugs and minor performance issues, but there’s nothing that really stands out as a showstopper and these issues are due to be fixed within the coming weeks. The iPhone might not excite like smartphones once did, but the amount of attention to detail and execution in the hardware is unparalleled and a cut above anything else in the industry.
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Always takes a while for me to digest Anadtechs reviews but appreciate the amazing thoroughness they provide compared to the countless non-scientific "reviews" by sites like Engadget, TheVerge, or YouTubers which simply regurgitate the spec sheet / feature list and a few basic opinions but don't give anything of real substance.

Anything about the 7 / 7+ you discovered from the review which particularly impressed or surprised you? :)
 
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iPhone 7 battery life, especially in relation to the Plus, was pleasantly surprising and consistent with my experience so far. Also love the improvements to UIKit, color accuracy and single threaded performance.

On a side note, I'm happy that they've chosen to put out the review sooner and treat the deep dives into SOC etc. as separate articles instead of holding off on publishing anything for weeks and months like they have in the past.
 
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If Apple could break through their lingering quality control issues and PLEASE give us the option to DELETE animations entirely they'd impress me. If Apple REALLY wants to impress me personally they can:

1. Add a notification LED
2. Wireless charging
3. Ability to have different notification sounds for different email accounts
 
To those who think upgrading from 6s plus is not worth it. or even those who downgrade from 7+ to 6s plus:

"...If you’re upgrading from the iPhone 6s Plus you probably won’t find a ton of differences, but it’s still a significant step up in display, camera, speaker quality, battery life, and system performance..."
 
hey! Anandtech has just released the review of both 7 and 7+

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10685/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-7-plus-review/5


But one thing in particular caught my attention.. the battery analysis. One of the main reasons I went from 6 Plus to 6s plus was the battery life against its non-plus version. But looking at these charts seems to show a different thing in the 7. I use my iPhone mostly for safari and whatsapp. (85% of the battery usage is from these two apps)

Do you think I'll get the same usage time with the regular 7 than I'm getting on my 6s plus ?(~10hrs) or is there something wrong with anandtechs review methods?

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I had the 6S Plus and now I have the regular 7 so I cannot speak to the 7+ battery life. My 7 is getting as good of battery life, and possibly better, than my 6S+ was getting. Last night I plugged it in with 15% battery left and got about 7.5 hours of usage.

This information in the graph is interesting though.
 
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I love the anandtech reviews. It's always a very in depth interesting read.

One point he makes is that an iPhone 5 on iOS 6 is still the smoothest mobile is he's ever experienced. I couldn't agree more!!! 60fps all the time no matter what. I miss those days. And many many apps stayed fully loaded in the background and 8 safari pages too all on the 1gb of ram. Things sure have bloated since then!

As for the battery life charts. They finally look much more accurate. Usually I could never get what they would put up but now these tests seem more accustomed to real world usage. My iPhone 7 has has the best battery I've ever had so far. 2 hours more of usage for sure compares to my 6. It really sips the battery when doing light tasks now. I hit 10 hours usage the other day after I had run 10 miles with gps tracking the whole way with Spotify streaming in the background. After that I used the phone normally with lots of safari use some messages and listened to some podcasts. The most I could eeek out of my 6 on a day like that was 8 hours usage tops. In fact that's the first time I've ever hit over 10 hours of usage on an iPhone.
 
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It's hard to evaluate the 7 now that I have bluetooth on constantly because of wireless accessories. Those results make sense if web browsing on the 7 uses the baby CPUs. In everyday usage, the 6S+ probably wins easily.
 
Excited for the review but disappointed nothing devoted to audio. Hopefully in their part 2.
 
The deduction that the phone displays are individually calibrated seems to be correct from what I have seen. They are all very close, and are of a much more consistent quality than last year. Calibration is something that is long long overdue.

Last time nearly all of the 6S Plus displays were blemished, but I have seen nothing like that with the 7 Plus.
 
The plus has better battery life when idling. The larger display consumes most of the extra battery when the screen is on, so in reality the battery life difference between the plus and regular versions is mostly a wash.

The regular iPhone 7 does even better on battery life when paired with an external battery since it simply uses less power overall.
 
rsbacon said:
On a side note, I'm happy that they've chosen to put out the review sooner and treat the deep dives into SOC etc. as separate articles instead of holding off on publishing anything for weeks and months like they have in the past.
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Me too! :)

I didn't mind waiting as Anandtechs reviews are worth the wait, but the 6s review was in November, so an October release for the 7 review is a nice surprise.
 
Hal~9000 said:
Me too! :)

I didn't mind waiting as Anandtechs reviews are worth the wait, but the 6s review was in November, so an October release for the 7 review is a nice surprise.
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Their is no word on networking and cellular part.
I did nt find anything about qualcomm and intel modems.

Why so?
Anand used to do best review and analysis
 
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nephron8 said:
Their is no word on networking and cellular part. I did not find anything about qualcomm and intel modems.

Why so?

Anand used to do best review and analysis
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Not sure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean they covered all the essential parts:
  • Design
  • Display
  • CPU / GPU
  • Camera
  • Battery life
  • iOS 10
If they decide to not cover a particular non-essential topic then I'm willing to give them a pass... especially since it's not like they have any real competiton in the thorough review space (ArsTechnica and YouTuber Erica Griffen are the only other two that come to mind which do any sort of real testing / substance to their reviews).
 
An informative review as always, but better speakers? The i7 speakers are tinny, nasty things. They take the sheen off the whole phone for me and are probably right up there with the worst speakers I've heard on any smartphone (The Samsung Note 4 wins that particular accolade). So what if there are two and they're reasonably loud, it's the quality that matters. Give me the loudspeaker from the 6+ any day of the week.
 
I always enjoy reading Anandtech reviews. Better than anyone else, they really highlight how Apple is innovating in ways that most media outlets don't notice or acknowledge, but go a long ways towards improving the user experience.

One thing that stood out was the comparison of iPhone 7 photography performance versus the Galaxy S7 and other Android models. The common line you hear is that the Galaxy still beats the iPhone when it comes to photography. Anandtech did find examples where this was true, but more often than not they found deficiencies with the S7. They found that the S7 over-processed the image, lacked color accuracy, and struggled more with motion shots. And the iPhone blows all the others out of the water when shooting 1080p or 4k video, which is pretty important to me.

sunking101 said:
An informative review as always, but better speakers? The i7 speakers are tinny, nasty things. They take the sheen off the whole phone for me and are probably right up there with the worst speakers I've heard on any smartphone (The Samsung Note 4 wins that particular accolade). So what if there are two and they're reasonably loud, it's the quality that matters. Give me the loudspeaker from the 6+ any day of the week.
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Huh? The speakers on the 7 are way better and louder than the prior generation. They are not meant to equal separate dedicated speakers, but are great for hearing things clearly in a loud room.
 
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redman042 said:
I always enjoy reading Anandtech reviews. Better than anyone else, they really highlight how Apple is innovating in ways that most media outlets don't notice or acknowledge, but go a long ways towards improving the user experience.

One thing that stood out was the comparison of iPhone 7 photography performance versus the Galaxy S7 and other Android models. The common line you hear is that the Galaxy still beats the iPhone when it comes to photography. Anandtech did find examples where this was true, but more often than not they found deficiencies with the S7. They found that the S7 over-processed the image, lacked color accuracy, and struggled more with motion shots. And the iPhone blows all the others out of the water when shooting 1080p or 4k video, which is pretty important to me.



Huh? The speakers on the 7 are way better and louder than the prior generation. They are not meant to equal separate dedicated speakers, but are great for hearing things clearly in a loud room.
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I disagree bigtime. The 6+ speaker was rich, bassy and non-shrill. The 6S+ speaker was louder but brash. The 7+ speakers are loud and there are two of them, but they're horrifically tinny. The iPhone is a premium entertainment device and the speakers are also there for playing audio, not just taking conference calls.
 
sunking101 said:
I disagree bigtime. The 6+ speaker was rich, bassy and non-shrill. The 6S+ speaker was louder but brash. The 7+ speakers are loud and there are two of them, but they're horrifically tinny. The iPhone is a premium entertainment device and the speakers are also there for playing audio, not just taking conference calls.
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Yeah I'm not impressed with my 7 Plus speakers. I knew they wouldn't be HTC M8 good but it doesn't even sound full like any of other dual speaker phones. Even the LG G4 sounds full and pleasantly warm for a single speaker phone.
 
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sunking101 said:
An informative review as always, but better speakers? The i7 speakers are tinny, nasty things. They take the sheen off the whole phone for me and are probably right up there with the worst speakers I've heard on any smartphone (The Samsung Note 4 wins that particular accolade). So what if there are two and they're reasonably loud, it's the quality that matters. Give me the loudspeaker from the 6+ any day of the week.
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Oh please. The speakers on this thing is by far one of the best speakers on a phone.
 
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