Apple iPhone 7 was launched two months back but still it is one of the most popular smartphone of 2016. We were trying our hands on the device since last few weeks for a detailed and in-depth review.

And in this article, we are going to share the detailed hands-on review of Apple iPhone 7 with all readers of Geeky Stuffs.

This Apple iPhone 7 review is divided in various section, talking about the pros and cons of each of them.

Apple iPhone 7 : Detailed Hands-on Review, Features and Specs


Retail Box and Unboxing


Apple iPhone 7 comes in a small retail box. Inside the box you will find the smartphone, charger, lightning USB cable, earphones along with the lightening to 3.5mm audio jack connector , some user guides and SIM card tray ejector pin.

You can watch our Apple iPhone 7 unboxing video below.



Design


Apple iPhone 7 is like the rest of the Apple smartphones. If you have used any recent iPhone then, you will not find anything new in the design of iPhone 7.

On the front side, there is 4.7 inch screen, a Home key with fingerprint sensor, front camera and earpiece. On the left there is power button and volume rockers are on the left along with the ringer switch. At the top, there is SIM card slot. There is no memory card slot.

At the bottom, there is the speaker grills and the lightning port. There is no 3.5mm audio jack provided in the iPhone 7. On the back, there is shiny apple logo in the middle and the camera at the top left corner with flash.

Even though our iPhone 7 was the Matte Black variant, it is not having the matter finish all over it. The bezel part is very reflective and the Apple logo is very shiny as well. The device is lightweight and easy to handle with one hand due to small size.

The matte black back panel of the iPhone 7 is a fingerprint magnet and you will find your clearly visible fingerprint all over it after using it just for few minutes. The same goes with the Home key as well. Good thing is that you can remove them easily y by swiping the back of the iPhone with a cloth. But you will have do it pretty frequently if you want to your iPhone 7 to look good.

Overall iPhone 7 design is good but in doesn’t bring anything new to people. If you are a fanboy, you will like it otherwise there is nothing special about it.

Hardware and OS


Apple iPhone 7 comes with Apple A10 Fusion clocked at 2.34GHz. The amount of RAM is 2GB. Though it sound very low with respect to other flagship smartphones, IOS 10 is designed to serve well even with low amount of RAM. You will rarely feel any lagging on iPhone 7. The only lag we felt is while using the Home key and reaching the Home screen from any other screen

The GPU used is a hexa-core one and it performs really nicely and provides great quality graphics and gaming experience on iPhone 7.









In benchmarking test, Apple iPhone 7 performed brilliantly. Specially in BaseMark OS II test, our particular device reached the second best score ever and received a silver medal from the app for its score.

The fingerprint scanner is fast but perform poorly even with slightest moisture on the finger. Since the fingerprint sensor is in the Home key, like many other smartphones the only purpose it serves is to unlock the device and making payments.

iPhone 7 is rated IP67 for its water and dust resistance ability. We performed a water test on our iPhone 7 and the device performed perfectly without causing any damage to the device. You can watch our Apple iPhone 7 water test below.



iPhone 7 is a single SIM device and there is no microSD card slot provided. So if you are looking for any of these two in your next smartphone then, you can reject the iPhone 7 right away. Network and 4G LTE connectivity is good and so is the voice quality.

iOS 10 is one of the most popular and feature rich OS. It comes with lots of nice options and improves productivity and user experience. If you are an iPhone user, you should be knowing and using most of them already.

Screen and Display


Apple iPhone 7 comes with a 4.7-inch screen with 1334 x 750 pixel resolution that will provide 326 PPI. Though it sounds less with respect to resolution of other high-end smartphone, it is not a big deal. Due to small screen size, this resolution is good enough for human eyes.

The screen is bright and having nice color output. The viewing angles are good and sunlight readability is good as well.

The screen comes with the fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating. But unfortunately, there is no protection provided on the screen. So you will have to use a cover and screen protector for the safety of your screen.

Camera and Imaging


Apple iPhone 7 sports a 12MP primary camera with features like ƒ/1.8 aperture, Optical Image Stabilization, quad-LED True Tone flash, backside illumination sensor and Auto HDR. There is Sapphire crystal lens cover used to avoid getting any scratches to the lens.

Since there is no Laser autofocus in iPhone 7, it uses the Focus Pixels technology that helps in quick autofocus. There are basic features like face detection, geotagging, timer mode, burst mode, panorama etc are provided. The Live Photo mode is a copy of Lumia Living Images and pretty useless actually with respect to Lumia’s.

The image quality of iPhone 7 is impressive and the output comes with lots of details. Noise is usually reduced and provide good image quality in low light conditions. Sometimes the image comes out a bit overexposed and oversaturated based on the lighting conditions. Up to 5x digital zoom is provided but like any other device, it reduces the image quality a lot.



iPhone 7 is capable of recording 4K HD videos and it let user capture 8MP resolution images while recording a 4K video. There is continuous autofocus video and Optical Image Stabilization provided for better focusing and stabilized video. The video quality is nice with lots of details and geotagging option is available for video as well.

Slo‑Mo video recording can be done at 1080p@120 fps and 720p@240 fps speed. The 720p slow motion video recording out put Is really impressive.

The 7MP front camera is nice and produces good quality images. There is Auto HDR and Retina flash option provided for taking selfies in low light condition that work well. There is also Burst mode for front camera provided along with 1080p full HD video recording.



Entertainment and Gaming


Apple iPhone 7 comes with a small 4.7-inch screen, so it is not preferred for watching movies and videos even though the display quality is nice. iPhone 7 is virtually capable of playing any audio and video codec. There are some extra feature like AirPlay Mirroring provided for streaming content.

Since there is no 3.5mm audio jack provided in this device, you will not be able to listen music on your favorite headphone until you are not carrying the Lightning to 3.5mm audio port converter with you. But the stereo speaker is loud and the audio output is nice well.



The gaming performance of Apple iPhone 7 is great, thanks to the hardware used. The graphics quality is of top class and the performance of the sensors are good too. You will not feel any lag or heating issues while playing the high-end games on iPhone 7.

Productivity


iOS 10 is a nice and productive OS. It comes with lots of nice features for better productivity. It comes with lots of new features like Night Shift, new Notification Center, HandOff, Control Center etc.

There is an improved Siri as voice-activated virtual assistant to help user in performing most of the task.





Battery Life


iPhones are having a bad reputation of having poor battery life and iPhone 7 is not an exception. It comes with a small 1960mAh battery that survives a day max with moderate usage. If you are a gamer or take lots of images, record videos and stream content online then battery life will be even shorter.

There are some battery saving options provided but that reduces the device performance. It shows that why iPhone cases with battery are so popular.

Conclusion




Apple iPhone 7 is one of the best smartphone currently. It comes with nice screen, first time waterproofing in iPhone, great performance, impressive camera capabilities and signature iPhone design.

If you can manage with the poor battery life then, Apple iPhone 7 is a must buy. But if you are looking more value for money deal then, OnePlus 3T, HTC 10, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge are much better options for sure.
 
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