Another year, another iPhone
By Abhijit Asad
Whatever visions of freshness that the late Steve Jobs brought to Apple on his triumphant return in the late ‘90s have long evaporated since his departure and eventual passage. Current CEO, Tim Cook, has been trying his best to keep the company running, but he is sadly lacking in terms of spearheading innovation and novelty. It’s safe to say that Apple has been running on fumes for several years now, but what continues to remain impressive is the sheer volume of said fumes, because the momentum, while not radically escalating, has not particularly diminished either.
Anyway, Apple has churned out another iPhone this year. If I sound disdainful about this fact, it’s because the iPhone 7 is nothing to be particularly excited about. Yes, it’s still a premium (and still grossly overpriced) device which looks gorgeous and svelte (and now comes in five different colors), but it also bears a large number of shortcomings.
In a spectacularly bad move, Apple has decided to remove the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7, instantly rendering billions of dollars’ worth of amazing audio gear around the world incompatible with it. The sturdy 3.5 mm headphone jack has been around for decades, and it’s a safe bet to assume that it will eventually be phased out in favor of something superior in the near future. However, while Apple has managed to get the initiation of the ‘phasing out’ part right, it has not managed to provide a superior alternative in its place in any way.
The situation is further worsened by the fact that unless you are willing to shell out $10 for a tiny adapter which would allow you to plug your own deluxe headphones into the phone, you’re stuck with Apple’s mediocre Lightning earbuds. Of course, you cannot charge your phone and listen to music at the same time either, since both purposes now share the same port. You also have the option of paying a ridiculous amount of $160 for Apple’s new wireless AirPod earbuds, which not only require frequent recharging but are almost too easy to misplace or lose, on account of being nothing more than two untethered stubs.
As another interesting design decision, the iPhone’s ever-present home button has been replaced by a capacitive pad that serves the same purpose. On being pressed, it manages to emulate the click of a physical button pretty well (without actually being depressed).
The resolution of the iPhone 7’s display is still depressingly low, stuck at a mere 1334×750 pixels in an era where 2560×1440 is rapidly becoming the norm from 1920×1080. The display is quite small at only 4.7 inches, so the pixelation isn’t immediately noticeable, but compared to the Android flagships, it’s in a rather sad shape. On the plus side, the colors and brightness look better than ever, although it’s still not bright enough to hold its own against unfiltered daylight.
The iPhone 7 does have quite a few things going in its favor. Apple has finally made the jump to a quad-core processor, and the performance difference is only too visible compared to the dual-core processors powering earlier iPhones. The phone feels very zippy in terms of performance, and the improvements brought along by iOS 10 (including many ‘innovations’ lifted straight from newer versions of Android) certainly help.
It’s no surprise that the iPhone cameras are some of the best around, and the iPhone 7’s 12-megapixel shooter is as good as they come. But faced with heavyweight competition like the Huawei Nexus 6P and the Samsung Galaxy S7, the iPhone is a relative underperformer in the camera department.
While the iPhone 7 did get a slight battery upgrade over its predecessor, it’s still lagging behind the competition, and one would be lucky to get through the day on a single charge. It should also be noted that this is the first iPhone that is water-resistant (not waterproof, though), and can shrug off splashes and even a few dunks in a few feet of without much trouble. Just don’t take it swimming with you.
As a whole, the iPhone 7 is a formidable phone on its own, and arguably the best iPhone ever made (despite its shortfalls), but it is by no means the best phone on the market, and the bang you get for your buck is a rather hollow one. The competition from the Android front is now tougher than ever, and Apple really needs to step up its game in order to stay relevant in the future, instead of removing useful features and shaving a millimeter off the phone’s thickness every year. If your money is burning a hole in your pocket, and you’re looking for a fashion accessory to flaunt before a high society, get an iPhone 7 because it’s not really worth it for any other reason.
