iPhone 7/Plus Best thing for iPhone 7 owners is to wait for next year

[AppleB]

Too late my 7 Plus is long gone. The Max was a excellent upgrade. Silky smooth. I really don’t miss the home button.
I fired up my old 6 Plus to erase it for the Apple Give Back and the home button seemed like a drag.
If someone wants to upgrade from a 7 Series do it if you like.
I’m glad I didn’t upgrade to a 8 Plus like I originally planned to do.

 

[Jimmy James]

Saying a modern smartphone is underwhelming is like saying a 30,000 square foot house is underwhelming because the last one was 28,000 and the new one isn’t much bigger. It’s a complete loss of perspective.

 

[NJHitmen]

I got the impression that the A12's improvements over the A11 aren't easily measurable by spec sheet. Yes, it's just 15% faster; I'm sure that speed bump doesn't translate into any discernible improvement in, say, opening apps. GPU is 50% faster, but I don't know how best to view/demonstrate that speed increase. Maybe AR, or advanced games. Neither of which the average customer uses with any regularity (well, I don't).

However, some of the improvements include the 2nd gen neural engine stuff. Reportedly, the A11's neural engine was capable of handling 600 billion operations per second. The A12's can handle 5 trillion. Those numbers boggle the mind...I honestly don't know how these figures translates into real-world performance. However - I know Apple stated that this is what enables the Smart HDR features. Makes sense, because if you look at the Smart HDR process, it certainly seems like it's processor-intensive. So, this is one clearly visible improvement over prior HDR photo implementation.

There's also the fact that the A12 is a 7nm processor. Theoretically, this should allow the processor to operate more efficiently. Again, I'm not sure how you demonstrate that improvement, beyond (I suppose) longer battery life.

tl;dr - I think we have to wait to see how the A12's improvements shake out versus the A11. Maybe it will enable additional CPU-intensive features besides Smart HDR.

 

[QCassidy352]

I’ll be keeping my 7 but not for the reasons stated. I’m not paying $1000 for a phone, but I also have no interest at all in phablets. So apple’s current lineup has nothing for me.

I do agree that the A10 remains a great processor with no noticeable slowdown compared to when it was released.

 

[44267547]

@Kendo

To me, it seems that you’re extremely pedantic about why an iPhone 7 owner should wait because the processor is only ‘slightly faster’ or the XS was ‘disappointing’. But I think you’re failing understand that not everybody shares your mindset, I respect your opinion, but everybody has different values in terms of _why_ they want to upgrade from the device they are currently using. It doesn’t have to just for the few vague reasons you provided, but for those who do upgrade from the iPhone 7 to an XS or even XR, it’s substantial, not minor.