iPhone 7 - The Problems

[stefan109]

As a decade-long Apple fan, I was excited to see what changes the company would make to the iPhone line yesterday. However, the post-conference feeling is one of disappointment. Now clearly, the iPhone 7 is an excellent phone and, personally, I still feel the iPhone betters all of its competitors. In fact, I would have no qualms recommending it to anyone who was in the market for a new handset.

For me, though, the iPhone 7 is boring.

As we went from the 3G to the 4, we were presented with what at-the-time was a stunning glass front and rear, with attention to detail including machined volume buttons that Steve Jobs likened to a Leica camera. From the 4 to 5 we had a (in my opinion) much needed larger display combined with a refined and lightweight design. The iPhone 6 was perhaps the most controversial redesign, with some liking it and others not. Personally, I felt that the antenna lines and protruding camera looked a little cheap and prototype-like, but it was 'good enough'. From the iPhone 6 to the 7 we basically got... two new colours (yes, I know there are other minor changes like a change in the camera housing and such but it's all very minor).

For people who change iPhone at every new number series, we have previously been used to a solid bump in specs as well as a nice, well thought-out redesign. Now we just get the solid bump in specs.

In addition, we have the controversy surrounding the headphone jack. The problem is not that they ditched the headphone jack, but that they ditched it for a proprietary standard. If they had used USB-C, their argument about 'moving forward' would have had more credibility. This seems like a lame attempt at profiting from accessories in the short-term rather than having the industries' best interests at heart. When they started removing their SuperDrives (CD drives, for everyone else) from laptops, it was because flash memory and the cloud was just clearly easier. You know what would not have been easier? If they had removed the SuperDrive for a proprietary memory card or something similar. Something that would only have worked with Apple products. That would have sucked. However, that's exactly what they have done with the headphone jack.

Finally, Apple, can you please stop overcharging customers for extra storage capacity. For a company that likes to keep things simple and with a CEO that's well-regarded for his supply chain innovation, I find it surprising that you continue to offer 3 storage configurations across 5 colours and 2 different screen sizes. Transitioning over to one storage capacity and charging a standard price for the current flagship iPhone would allow you to reduce the variation of flagship iPhones from 28 (no Jet Black on 32GB configs) to 10. I feel that many of your customers don't mind paying a premium for your products, but no-one likes to feel ripped off.

I know some might think this (long) post was just bashing, but it's really not. I just want to see Apple do well, and do the right thing.

 

[Newtons Apple]

I have little doubt that Apple will do well. Everyone has a choice to buy or not.

I can't wait to get my hands on the 7 Plus!

 

[stefan109]

I have little doubt that Apple will do well. Everyone has a choice to buy or not.

I can't wait to get my hands on the 7 Plus!

It's great you're looking forward to the 7 Plus - the camera does look awesome.

Of course everyone has a choice whether to purchase, but it doesn't mean Apple can't do better than it is at the moment. For me, Apple has led the way for a number of years in both specs and style. I feel the style aspect for them is fading a bit now.

 

[Newtons Apple]

It's great you're looking forward to the 7 Plus - the camera does look awesome.

Of course everyone has a choice whether to purchase, but it doesn't mean Apple can't do better than it is at the moment. For me, Apple has led the way for a number of years in both specs and style. I feel the style aspect for them is fading a bit now.

Apple has not "led the way" in years now. They are conservative in their new features for sure.

 

[stefan109]

Apple has not "led the way" in years now. They are conservative in their new features for sure.

It depends on how you define leading the way. If you mean shoving as many things as possible inside the phone with less attention to paid to how well it actually works then sure, Apple haven't really ever been leading the way as a complete package.

However, flagship Android phones still continue to display too many lagging interfaces, poor UI, poor real-world camera abilities (although the S7 range does take some good snaps), etc..

With regards to style, I get it, it's all personal. However, with perhaps the exception of Samsung's curved displays, I still think the iPhone looks better in pretty much every aspect. The difference between the iPhone and its competitors is just smaller than before (IMO).

 

[5105973]

I don't think you're bashing. I think their keynotes go down a bit each year and get a big weirder, in a way I can't put my finger on. Though I thought this one was better than that one where they had some lady drone on and on and on about online shopping on the IPad Pro or some such nonsense. But this one, instead of coming away jazzed and enthusiastic, left me a bit put off and a bit depressed.

And as much as I appreciate Sia's songwriting talents and think her show suited HER just fine...that was a horrible jarring performance for such an event. All of that crying and those people looking like they were dying in an epidemic...really, wth! Even the most enthusiastic Apple fan must have had a moment of depression there.

However, before the plague struck the villagers, I was becoming quite enthusiastic about the potential of the new iPhone 7 camera to suit my rather specific needs for the coming school year. (The Samsung cameras I have used recently are indeed amazing but have an Achilles heel iPhone cameras don't). For once the smaller model was going to suit me fairly well, though I am disappointed we are still stuck with that low dpi display. But at least it won't kill the battery off.

But I found Phil Schiller's tone extremely arrogant and condescending regarding the removal of the headphone jack. As someone very opposed to that move for THIS model (because it's not substantially changed from last year's in build) I was quite put off. I could almost buy the excuses they gave about needing the space for other features. But my Note 7 and the Galaxy S7 manage to be waterproof and one even accommodates a stylus yet also stay very close to IPhone 7 plus and IPhone 7 in size.

But their overall tone and corporate attitude at the keynote...ugh. Our UK friends are over in another part of the forum have been questioning their corporate attitude toward the UK as reflected in their pricing strategy. There may be legitimate reasons for all that Apple decides to do. But it's not really coming across well to some of us.

Also, the keynotes have become horribly formulaic and clichéd. If they seem to coast on their keynotes, one can't help wonder what else they have been coasting on.

At any rate, I can certainly appreciate your concern and questioning Apple's direction and attitude after a keynote like that. This is the first time since iPhone 5 that I am not preordering. I will possibly get the iPhone 7 and AW2 but I will put a lot of thought into the phone purchase and I'm not getting the AW2 until next summer.

Edited a day later to add: my husband told me Sia's performance was a tribute to the people who died in the Orlando nightclub massacre. No disrespect intended on my part by my comments. But that just appeared suddenly as part of the keynote and I was sitting there with my kid wondering what the heck was going on.

 

[RedOrchestra]

I am upgrading to a 7 but only for the camera - the rest of what Phil had to say was neither here nor there.

I'm not a big user of my iPhones, I use it simply for when I'm out and around - telephone calls, text messaging, maybe email, some photos, Apple Pay AND particularly while on vacation when I do take a zillion photos and where I can change out SIMS with ease. I also own a 9.7" iPP for heavier lifting. While I haven't totally embraced the ecosystem I am into it up to my bloodshot eyeballs.

 

[Rayy42]

Still can't justify it and surprisingly I'm still using an iPhone 6 Plus.

I really have zero desire to invest in a new device and accessories for this device when the real game changer is now a year away.

I'll just be enjoying my low month to month bill with Verizon since my device is paid off.

 

[stefan109]

I don't think you're bashing. I think their keynotes go down a bit each year and get a big weirder, in a way I can't put my finger on. Though I thought this one was better than that one where they had some lady drone on and on and on about online shopping on the IPad Pro or some such nonsense. But this one, instead of coming away jazzed and enthusiastic, left me a bit put off and a bit depressed.

And as much as I appreciate Sia's songwriting talents and think her show suited HER just fine...that was a horrible jarring performance for such an event. All of that crying and those people looking like they were dying in an epidemic...really, wth! Even the most enthusiastic Apple fan must have had a moment of depression there.

However, before the plague struck the villagers, I was becoming quite enthusiastic about the potential of the new iPhone 7 camera to suit my rather specific needs for the coming school year. (The Samsung cameras I have used recently are indeed amazing but have an Achilles heel iPhone cameras don't). For once the smaller model was going to suit me fairly well, though I am disappointed we are still stuck with that low dpi display. But at least it won't kill the battery off.

But I found Phil Schiller's tone extremely arrogant and condescending regarding the removal of the headphone jack. As someone very opposed to that move for THIS model (because it's not substantially changed from last year's in build) I was quite put off. I could almost buy the excuses they gave about needing the space for other features. But my Note 7 and the Galaxy S7 manage to be waterproof and one even accommodates a stylus yet also stay very close to IPhone 7 plus and IPhone 7 in size.

But their overall tone and corporate attitude at the keynote...ugh. Our UK friends are over in another part of the forum have been questioning their corporate attitude toward the UK as reflected in their pricing strategy. There may be legitimate reasons for all that Apple decides to do. But it's not really coming across well to some of us.

Also, the keynotes have become horribly formulaic and clichéd. If they seem to coast on their keynotes, one can't help wonder what else they have been coasting on.

At any rate, I can certainly appreciate your concern and questioning Apple's direction and attitude after a keynote like that. This is the first time since iPhone 5 that I am not preordering. I will possibly get the iPhone 7 and AW2 but I will put a lot of thought into the phone purchase and I'm not getting the AW2 until next summer.

Great comment - nicely articulated and made me laugh a little! The keynote was indeed extremely strange this year - perhaps it's the pessimist in me, but it just felt like some of those on stage were trying way too hard to be young and cool and instead just gave off a big dose of.. Well.

Out of interest, how do you find the Note 7? It has been a few years since I took a punt on a flagship Android and I was left feeling like it was too unpolished in comparison to Apple's offerings.

I hear you about the UK. I'm based over here and the sustained price increases are becoming a bit difficult to justify. The iPhone 3G was under £400 when it was the latest and greatest. Now a 7 Plus could easily exceed double that.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I don't think you're bashing. I think their keynotes go down a bit each year and get a big weirder, in a way I can't put my finger on. Though I thought this one was better than that one where they had some lady drone on and on and on about online shopping on the IPad Pro or some such nonsense. But this one, instead of coming away jazzed and enthusiastic, left me a bit put off and a bit depressed.

And as much as I appreciate Sia's songwriting talents and think her show suited HER just fine...that was a horrible jarring performance for such an event. All of that crying and those people looking like they were dying in an epidemic...really, wth! Even the most enthusiastic Apple fan must have had a moment of depression there.

However, before the plague struck the villagers, I was becoming quite enthusiastic about the potential of the new iPhone 7 camera to suit my rather specific needs for the coming school year. (The Samsung cameras I have used recently are indeed amazing but have an Achilles heel iPhone cameras don't). For once the smaller model was going to suit me fairly well, though I am disappointed we are still stuck with that low dpi display. But at least it won't kill the battery off.

But I found Phil Schiller's tone extremely arrogant and condescending regarding the removal of the headphone jack. As someone very opposed to that move for THIS model (because it's not substantially changed from last year's in build) I was quite put off. I could almost buy the excuses they gave about needing the space for other features. But my Note 7 and the Galaxy S7 manage to be waterproof and one even accommodates a stylus yet also stay very close to IPhone 7 plus and IPhone 7 in size.

But their overall tone and corporate attitude at the keynote...ugh. Our UK friends are over in another part of the forum have been questioning their corporate attitude toward the UK as reflected in their pricing strategy. There may be legitimate reasons for all that Apple decides to do. But it's not really coming across well to some of us.

Also, the keynotes have become horribly formulaic and clichéd. If they seem to coast on their keynotes, one can't help wonder what else they have been coasting on.

At any rate, I can certainly appreciate your concern and questioning Apple's direction and attitude after a keynote like that. This is the first time since iPhone 5 that I am not preordering. I will possibly get the iPhone 7 and AW2 but I will put a lot of thought into the phone purchase and I'm not getting the AW2 until next summer.

Edited a day later to add: my husband told me Sia's performance was a tribute to the people who died in the Orlando nightclub massacre. No disrespect intended on my part by my comments. But that just appeared suddenly as part of the keynote and I was sitting there with my kid wondering what the heck was going on.

The keynote was strange. Even though I knew most of the features from the leaks they usually try and sell the phone, even using gimicky features. This year the keynote did not sell me the iPhone like it usually does. I've pre-ordered a 128GB iPhone 7 plus in rose gold but I think that's more FOMO than anything else lol Hopefully I'll be more excited by the actual phone when it arrives.

 

[5105973]

Great comment - nicely articulated and made me laugh a little! The keynote was indeed extremely strange this year - perhaps it's the pessimist in me, but it just felt like some of those on stage were trying way too hard to be young and cool and instead just gave off a big dose of.. Well.

Out of interest, how do you find the Note 7? It has been a few years since I took a punt on a flagship Android and I was left feeling like it was too unpolished in comparison to Apple's offerings.

I hear you about the UK. I'm based over here and the sustained price increases are becoming a bit difficult to justify. The iPhone 3G was under £400 when it was the latest and greatest. Now a 7 Plus could easily exceed double that.

Unfortunately we had the Note 7 only two weeks, and not really a full two weeks since we were going on vacation and had to wait until we got to our destination to set up.

My husband, who was an Android hater, fell in love. I had never really used Android before. I fell in love.

We both found the S-pen quite useful. The curved glass was refined from the S7 Edge so that it was not as distracting at the edges and there were few false touches. The screen is beautiful. Battery life was good, but not as good as iPhone 6S Plus. Some apps could lag. Pokemom Go was laggy.

There can be odd random glitches that I don't run into very often in iOS on my iPhone SE or 6S Plus. My iPhone 5s and my iPhone 6 Plus were very glitchy so I can't say Android on the Samsung compares that horribly.

I have outlined my immediate concerns on another thread that I will copy and past in for you on this thread. Brb, after I find it.
[doublepost=1473438864][/doublepost]

Great comment - nicely articulated and made me laugh a little! The keynote was indeed extremely strange this year - perhaps it's the pessimist in me, but it just felt like some of those on stage were trying way too hard to be young and cool and instead just gave off a big dose of.. Well.

Out of interest, how do you find the Note 7? It has been a few years since I took a punt on a flagship Android and I was left feeling like it was too unpolished in comparison to Apple's offerings.

I hear you about the UK. I'm based over here and the sustained price increases are becoming a bit difficult to justify. The iPhone 3G was under £400 when it was the latest and greatest. Now a 7 Plus could easily exceed double that.

Okay sorry this is a bit long...from my post on another thread on response to someone else trying to decide between iPhone 7Pljs and Galaxy S7

~~~~~~~

Sounds like what I'm going through trying to decide between GalaxyS7 and IPhone 7 when I go to trade in my iPhone 6SPlus.

The Galaxy S7 I'm using now is just a temp until my new non exploding (I hope) Note7 gets back to me.

I'll have the Note7 on a new line and the iPhone SE (that I'm keeping) on my original line. I have an iPhone 6SPlus sitting around without a sim that I am going to trade when the warranty is up on it. Meanwhile I'm using it like an iPod.

I would have been fine with just the SE as my daily driver in-pocket phone and my Note 7 as my phablet. But then I got to try the S7 and I realized I liked the size well enough, liked the water resistance and really appreciate having loads of storage via the SD card. I have to baby my SE when I'm around water, which is often, and I'm already almost out of the 64GB's due to my penchant for photographing and videoing every day.

The Galaxy S7 would be a no-brainer as my alternate pocket friendly daily driver except for:

*In indoor incandescent lighting, I can't easily get non blurry photos of people in motion. They have to pose stock still for me or the pic is blurred. I had this same problem on my Note7. (SE can get the same scenes in focus but they will be dark).

*Some colors are just too saturated. Even if I view them on my iPhone screen. Color accuracy is a bit off, too. Everything looks gorgeous and well lit, but the people are blurry, dull maroon shirts are bright red and blues pop too much.

*The damned phone sometimes locks me out when my fingerprint fails to register after a few tries. It's happened once on the Note 7 and twice on the Galaxy S7. Then it forced me to wait for a 30 second countdown timer before I could try my print or even a password again! On the Note 7 I tried my print again when the countdown timer finished and it made me go through another timer when my print failed. I got locked out of my phone a full minute! I can put up with this on a phablet I'm using as a pocket planner but I will NOT put up with this horsepoop on my daily driver.

Why why why does it do that sometimes, seemingly at random, and how do I make it stop, never to return again? Normally my prints register very well and fairly quickly on the S7. But if my hand is a bit damp after washing up it can fail to register. Or if I'm in a rush.

*There seem to be some shenanigans with emails. I sent a photo from my SE using my Gmail account to my ICloud account. The photo made it just fine to my ICloud account and went to my SE. It would not go to my S7. It's been a day and it is still missing. I also replied to a friend's email using my S7. There is a possibility she did receive it and just hasn't answered back yet. But my friend is not one to delay and our conversation was one we are eager to have. Not quite to texting level urgency. But we usually get back to each other fast. I'm not sure she's gotten it. I'll follow up in a day or two, but after my email to myself went astray, I wonder.

That's it for now. My morning coffee is wearing off and I can not brain much further.

I'm not rushing into an decisions and will wait for the reviews to come in for the iPhone 7. As you all might be able to glean from my new signature, I am really, really burned by the lack of a headphone jack. I would not mind so much if Phil Schiller had not come across as such an arrogant donkey about its removal.

 

[iphone1105]

Nice post, I think it reflects what's great about Apple as a company, we all care about it as if it were our own, which is great! I think any iphone update, only certain users benefit, and it is those who buy a new phone every 2 years or such. By that point you see such better upgrades to RAM, speed, etc that it really is a new universe. At least that's how it is for me! I went OG phone, waited until the 4 to upgrade, then skipped 5, went to 6plus and been there two years so I am sure I'll love all the new features I've yet to enjoy! So for peeps like me it works out and I am sure people like me must make a up a large portion of their buyers(I would assume).

Nice post, be well!

 

[Lakailb87]

This is the first time I haven't preordered nor have any intentions of getting the new numbered iPhone since the 3G. I have always been on that upgrade path and every time I thought about preordering I felt so.. non excited at the though of getting the new phone in the mail, thats a first for me.

Now I am not sure what I will do, might even try out Android for a bit. iPhone 7 is just far too boring for me, I could care less if reddit opens .1 seconds faster than on my 6.

 

[ScubaCinci]

When I killed my iPhone several weeks ago, I got a pre-paid Galaxy S4 Android to gap the time before the 7 came out. I couldn't get rid of that phone fast enough. Had some nice features not on the iPhones like expandable storage and replaceable battery but otherwise I was not a fan. To each his/her own.
Agreed, the 7 really isn't the normal big new features and excitement we expect with each # change. I'm indifferent about the lack of headphone jack. If it wasn't for the camera improvements (I do a lot of photography) and the fact that I'm coming from a 6 where I couldn't do live shots and 3D touch, I would've kept what I have.
The water resistance is nice since that's how I killed the aforementioned previous phone.