iPhone 7 Plus Notes

1. The difference between the displays on my iPhone 6 Plus & iPhone 7 Plus is really rather striking. The additional brightness of the display & the crispness of colour is a surprise to me. I expected any difference to be imperceptible.
2. The non-clicky home button is wonderful. The default click strength mimics pretty closely the physical feedback from a traditional home button. I do find myself wanting to now click other areas on the chin of the phone, since the haptic feedback suggests that the click response is distributed all the way across the width of the phone as opposed to concentrated in a physical button as with previous generations. Here’s what I really want to know though - will Chinese & Japanese iPhone users now stop using the assistive touch menu which many say they use through fear of wearing out the home button. I doubt it, I think that behaviour is pretty well entrenched by now.
3. The 7 Plus camera array is shockingly good in low light. I haven’t taken any shots worthy of sharing yet, but suffice to say the difference between my 6 Plus and 7 Plus is quite literally day and night.
4. I’ve been using iOS 10 betas on my 6 Plus, but seeing the GM on a seven feels like a totally different beast - in particular because there is a lot of utility now hiding behind the force touch gesture on home-screen icons, through which apple may finally have solved the discoverability problem for today widgets and the today screen in general.
5. I have been using Bluetooth headphones for years, and so the lack of an audio output is of no concern to me. I find it quite amusing that apple is shipping an adapter which turns any 3.5mm headphone jack into a lightning audio device, and people are still supposedly in uproar about it.
6. I have a bunch of cases for my 6 Plus which don’t fit the 7. That’s a bummer.
7. The reserve-a-phone functionality on apple.com was a total crapshoot. I ended up using a bot which told me when my preferred device was available for a reservation. Without that I’d undoubtedly still be waiting on my pre-ordered device which was due to arrive next month. Thanks, Mark!
8. The people I saw getting iPhone’s in the Amsterdam store were disproportionately interested in the Piano Black iPhone, which was inevitably sold out. Maybe it’s the novelty value of a whole new version of the iPhone, or maybe normal people are far less concerned about scratches and fingermarks than he average of the geeks I am surrounded by.

Published on 18 September 2016 – iPhone – iOS – Hardware