iPhone 7 Review | Hacker News Reader

iPhone 7 Review

theverge.com

22 pointsokneil52 comments

Much of the conclusions were not very positive...how'd it end up with a 9?

The Verge always seems extra giddy about iPhones. They'd never rate a ho-hum Android phone with "disappointing" and "incomplete" features this highly.

"my jet black review unit scratched and scuffed almost instantly"

I don't see a point of making smartphones thinner if they are so fragile that they have to be in cases. A phone that's a few millimeters thicker and a bit heavier might still feel smaller for the customer if it's usable without a case.

Pretty sure those two things (scratch/scuff on the jet black and thickness) are completely unrelated. It's scratches because of how they've created the finish. It could weigh 10kg and be 20cm X 20cm X 20cm and it would still scratch.

For me it's less about the fragility and more about the grip. My iPhone easily slips out of my hands unless I have a case covering it. I do find it odd that Apple sells an iPhone an attractive finish that people will instinctively want to cover up with a case.

What does that have to do with having an easily scratchable finish???

If the phone has a nice showy fragile finish users may feel compelled to protect it by putting it in a case. Negating the benefit of a thinner phone.

The thin phone with special finish that "needs" a case is still thinner than thicker phone with finish that needs case just as much (or little). Thickness is a red herring here.

Alternatively, by making it thin and small, they've enabled customers to still have a reasonably sized phone after they've customized it with their choice of case.

Exactly this has crossed my mind many times. What's the point of having a super thin phone with really nice design if you're going to keep it in a thick pink rubber literally all the time?

Also room for more battery. Priorities.

Neh, allows you to buy add-on battery case that wirelessly charges the phone that's in it. Marketing priorities!

Why the downvote?

Oh right, the iPhone can't be charged wirelessly. Silly me.

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobil...

If nothing else, it's refreshing to see a more logical take on the headphone jack issue. All of tech media will not stop harping on this, just like they did when the optical drive was no longer standard on Macs (you need to buy a $35 USB optical drive, the HORROR).

Maybe Apple was a little ahead of their time to remove the optical drive, and maybe they are with the headphone jack too. So far the more level headed of the user base don't seem to give too much of a shit.

Well the major difference is that optical drives were becoming more and more obsolete with the increase in streaming and download services. With spotify, netflix, amazon prime, itunes, etc, the main uses of optical drives for dvds and music disks were decreasing in popularity pretty rapidly. The only uses I ever have these days for my optical drive is to install drivers for new hardware in my PC, which in most cases can be found online anyway. And even this isn't needed on Macs because, unlike customisable PCs, you'll never need to install drivers for a fancy new PCIE wifi card.

The headphone jack is different, because it isn't being replaced by convenient online services. Sure there are wireless alternatives, but the cost increases, difficulty of pairing, and the fact that 3.5mm is a standard across a huge range of devices from simple headphones to complex audio recording/mixing/playback setups means it just cannot be replaced. They could remove the optical drive without including the external drive because most people wouldn't need it, they definitely could not have removed the headphone jack without including an adapter in the box because of how popular the jack still is.

My issue with the headphone jack removal is that it is a more reliable port than the lightning port. I've had a lightning port on an iPhone become damaged before through normal wear and tear. I have to now position the cable just right to charge it. There's no way that I'd want to use that lightning port even more by trying to play music on it and I definitely don't want to have to hold the adapter a certain way to get music to play.

Are you sure the port is actually damaged? A common issue is lint clogging it up. I had an issue where I had to jiggle the cable to get it to charge and when I finally brought it to an Apple store they disappeared out back and returned with so much lint I don't know how it even fit in the port. You can remove it yourself with a paperclip but I'd take it to the Apple store so that if the port really does get damaged removing the lint they're liable.

Whoa, never thought of that. It's definitely possible. I'm going to give that a try. Thanks!!

Edit: It worked! (I used the cut stem of a q-tip instead, wasn't brave enough to try a paperclip; lots of lint)

Great! It's a common issue apparently. It also happened to my lock switch which wouldn't move for a while.

I haven't opened my DVD drive except by mistake for 2 years or more. Definitely obsolete.

How do you plug it in to charge at the same time as using the headphones so you can, for example, listen to music at work?

Another option is http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNN62/iphone-lightning-doc...

Bluetooth headphones or this: http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F8J198/

or this one with lightning to 30 pin adapter:

https://www.amazon.com/3-5mm-Audio-30pin-Cable-Iphone/dp/B00...

This is marked as a dupe but is clearly not. Of course flag abuse is nothing new on HN for Apple articles.

We can't have two iPhone 7 reviews on the front page. The discussion about this particular review is welcome to continue here, or on the article currently on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12486946.

Why can't there be two reviews on the front page? They are (or should be) genuinely unique pieces of content that could be more valuable together than apart ... having two perspectives on such a widely used piece of gear might be 10x as useful as one, no?

Also, now the daring fireball one is down to the second page, so the dupe flag seems possibly to have unilaterally made it so there are no reviews on the front.

You should probably implement a merge comments thing for situations like these.

The list of "bad stuff" in the article is longer than the list of "good stuff", yet it receives a 9/10.

Looks strange (biased) to me, yet I'm not an Apple hater, in fact I've ordered an iPhone 7 Plus for myself last Friday.

But I have to say that I would have bought the Note 7 if they had the same US promotional offer in the EU with a free Samsung Gear Fit2 if you preorder a Note 7. (instead we get the Gear VR - which is less interesting for most consumers)

Also the Note seems to take better pictures, at least that's true for the images compared in the video review.

At least the removal of the headphone jack is no issue for me as I'm a happy user of wireless headsets for quite some time now and I don't plan to ever go back to wired ones.

Does anyone have links to some sample (real) raw or full size unedited iPhone 7 Plus images?

Using 900x676 pixel ~400kB JPEGs for demoing camera performance is hilarious.

I know right? Especially when you're looking at them on a 5K iMac ha!

"Bad stuff:

* Looks just like an iPhone 6 in a case"

> Great display

How can they write that as a plus when it is the same screen size and resolution as the previous model, and the competition as a better display overall?

http://www.kimovil.com/en/compare/apple-iphone-6-plus,apple-...

Why not mention the lack of SD card slot or removable battery? <-- EDIT : Thank you all for your openness of mind!

How can they write that as a plus when it is the same screen size and resolution as the previous model

If I make a display with twice the pixels, ten times the size, and give it 16-bit dithering color, will you call it obviously better based on more pixels + larger?

Or are there factors other than dimensions and pixel count that affect how we evaluate display technology?

>> "How can they write that as a plus when it is the same screen size and resolution as the previous model"

...because there's more to a display than those two qualities? It's 25% brighter if I'm remembering right and now supports the DCI-P3 color space.

>> "Why not mention the lack of SD card slot or removable battery?"

Because these are things that have never featured on an iPhone, probably never will, and everybody knows that. Lack or removable battery is also something the main competition is switching to for better water resistance (S7 does not have a removable battery).

>Why not mention the lack of SD card slot or removable battery? Because no one expects that from an iPhone. As much as I'm not a fan of the new 7, I don't think anyone really expected that.

Also no mention of the Lightning port being a downside. Requires a cable not used by literally any other manufacturer? Doesn't provide anything material that USB-C doesn't?

Might as well mention the lack of a hardware keyboard and possibly DVD drive and parallel port at that point - no iPhone ever has had an SD card slot or removable battery.

A parallel port is useless junk at this point for all but very special use cases.

A removable battery is quite useful and the norm for many home devices.

It's not the same, it has "Wide Color" http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/07/08/iphone-7-and-apple...

> Why not mention the lack of SD card slot or removable battery?

I found the Android user.

Seriously why is this so important to some people? I went for the 64 GB iPhone 6 Plus last time my upgrade was ready and I've never had it more than 40% full. The hell are you people doing with your phones where you need 512 gigs of storage?

> Why not mention the lack of SD card slot or removable battery?

Because only a tiny but vocal minority cares about it.

iCloud is taking care of photos, there are large GB models and most people needing more battery life are just buying those $10 lipstick USB chargers.

Or just Amazon Photo. Free with Prime and the app works well enough that I don't miss the iCloud subscription cost.

because nobody needs an sd card slot. and nobody replaces their battery. at least not in an iphone. i've owned 4 iphones since 2009 and _never_ had to replace a battery. the phones are still working, btw. (well, the 4s battery would need a replacement - after 4! years)

these two are just bs benchmarks. like floppy disks and dvd drives.

edit: the display. well, i'd go so far as to say that nobody in the industry has as good as displays as apple. and nobody needs higher resolutions on that physical space when they already can't see pixels anymore.

My iPhone 6 needs a new battery desperately, but I can't easily replace it. So yes, someone needs to replace an iPhone battery. Would that it were easy.

I found iFixit guides very easy to follow.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+6+Battery+Replacement/29...

It's an $80 service at the Apple Store.

It's $0 on one of my old Samsung Galaxy phones + cost of a battery + not having to give up my phone for a few days (they said they'd have to ship it somewhere at the Apple Store).

The cost of battery is included in the $80. And Apple will almost always do the replacement in-store while you wait.

The battery itself is like $30 IIRC. Much of the cost is labor for the replacement.

you paid what, 600 bucks for that damn thing? just get it replaced at the genius bar. and fix your usage pattern :p

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