The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship
by Joshua Ho & Brandon Chester on October 10, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iOS
- iOS 10
- iPhone 7
- iPhone 7 Plus
Video Performance
While still images probably constitute a significant portion of what a smartphone camera is used for, video performance still remains important as anything moving or with a notable sound requires video or something that is but quite isn’t a video. In order to test video performance, we use direct comparison with two devices recording simultaneously on the same rig.
| iPhone 7 Video Encode Settings | ||||
| Video | Audio | |||
| 1080p30 | 16 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 86 Kbps, 44.1 KHz AAC | ||
| 1080p60 | 25 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 86 Kbps, 44.1 KHz AAC | ||
| 4kP30 | 48 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 86 Kbps, 44.1 KHz AAC | ||
| 1080p120 | 38 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 86 Kbps, 44.1 KHz AAC | ||
| 720p240 | 38 Mbps H.264 High Profile | 86 Kbps, 44.1 KHz AAC | ||
Before we get into the actual results I want to discuss the video encode settings. It's kind of interesting to see how the iPhone only records mono audio, which I suspect is a function of not having enough microphones to do noise cancellation and useful stereo recording. It's also interesting to see how Apple can actually encode AVC High Profile for all video – including 4kP30 at 48 Mbps – which is more than I can say for a number of high-end flagships this year. This suggests that the encode blocks are capable of keeping up without any strange problems.
| 1080p30 Video |
Looking at 1080p30 video I'm just profoundly disappointed by how high-end Android devices perform in comparison. The state of affairs here is so depressing there's really no reason to compare 1080p60, 4K, or slow motion capture because it's clear to me that something is just fundamentally broken (or consistently misconfigured) with Snapdragon 820's encode blocks. Even casual examination reveals massive macroblocking any time the sky comes into view, which is something we've consistently seen with the HTC 10, Galaxy S7, LG G5, and OnePlus 3. Other than this, the LG G5 and Galaxy S7 both have extremely oversaturated color rendition which just doesn't represent reality. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus clearly have better output than any other Android device. The iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 7 with the 28mm focal length camera perform quite similarly to the iPhone 6s Plus other than some improvements in dynamic range and noise reduction, so I'd refer back to the iPhone 6s review for those interested in learning about how the iPhone 7 stacks up because the state of the art in Android has not progressed since then.
| OIS Video |
In the interest of trying for completeness anyways, I also tested image stabilization performance. Relative to the Galaxy S7 we continue to see how the lack of software stabilization to go with the hardware stabilization leads to really shaky and jerky footage when recording while walking. The iPhone 7 still shows large motions, but it's much smoother and also handles wind noise better. The HTC 10 is much more competitive with the iPhone 7 here but I would say that Apple's software stabilization appears to be slightly better and the lack of PDAF on the HTC 10 camera is definitely noticeable in the focus transition testing but it's important to keep in mind that the HTC 10 has no software stabilization if you enable 4K video. The LG G5 has basically all of the same traits as the Galaxy S7 in this test and needs improvement in all of the same areas as a result. If you're upgrading from either the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, or 6s you're going to also see a major improvement as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus both have OIS which works with the software stabilization to maximize the reduction in hand shake when capturing video.
I also went ahead and tested the iPhone 7 Plus with some quick footage to see what difference it provides when capturing video, and it's fairly obvious that the secondary camera lacks OIS but also dramatically increases captured detail which makes it useful for static shots where you can avoid inducing hand shake but its utility rapidly decreases in low light or high hand shake conditions.
Overall, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus remain the best phones on the market for video capture. Strange issues with Snapdragon 820 video encode blocks mean that all Snapdragon 820 devices are just barely passable for video capture. Considering how OEMs have had almost a decade to get this right, it is truly incredible that phones costing 600 US dollars still have these obvious problems, and that Apple remains among the few to get it right.
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tuxRoller - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link
Oh yes, AnTuTu. What does that do again? How does it do it?Geekbench is SLIGHTLY better as it explains, at a fairly high level, how each test is performed. It even lets you know that they are preference apple by using llvm everywhere.
None of these are worth respecting reporting on, however, unless the benchmarks are open source.
Ranger1065 - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
The old Anandtech...maybe :)Dribble - Monday, October 10, 2016 - link
If you like your wireless headphones that's great, but don't try to sell me that ONLY having them is somehow fine. It's not like you couldn't use wireless for iphone 6 and now suddenly you can. Sometimes wired is better - e.g. phone in the car, you are charging phone and plugging into the jack to play music off it. You don't want to have to take some silly adaptor dongle everywhere with you in case you need wired (that's a bad user experience).It would also have been more honest to say why they removed it - it's not for some mythical extra space to add other stuff like you suggested, its 100% to make more $$$. Irrespective of who designs or makes it anything that plugs into apples proprietary jack has to pay apple money because they own the copyright. They don't own any copyright on the 3.5mm jack. Hence they removed the jack to force devices to use apples jack and hence pay them more money (something we the consumer end up paying for).
solipsism - Monday, October 10, 2016 - link
1) Cars with BT have been on the market for over a decade, it comes with inexpensive automobiles, and those buying a new iPhone 7 aren't likely to be driving a 1984 Toyota Tercel.2) If you're really against BT, and this is to be used while in the car, then why are carrying around this adapter? Wouldn't you just leave it in the car, which is now a single plug into the device, instead of two. If you claim that you wouldn't keep the adapter in the car, are you also saying that you're moving your USB and analog audio cables with you everywhere, too? If so, then what does it matter?
3) You don't even have to look at a teardown of the iPhone to see that internal volume makes a difference to what you can include inside a device. Physics still exit, right? Just look at the back of the iPhone to see that the camera is moved down. Then look at the camera, battery size gain, the better taptic motor, and the barometer, to name a few. If anything, I'd say this move is overdue, and you'll soon see this happen to to the rest of the smartphone market.
4) Apple doesn't own Bluetooth, so how does that argument fit into your 3.5mm jack copyright argument? I assume you know that over 15% of headphone unit sales were wireless last year and that it accounted for over 50% of the market. People typically don't like wires, yet, if you a huge fan of them you have so many options from using a stationary adapter in your car, to not buying a new iPhone, to not buying anything from Apple. Vote with your wallet.
Lolimaster - Monday, October 10, 2016 - link
His is not against bt, he against forced behavior and make the customer believe its the right choice, the future.What hes refering to, is that without the jack change, you had both options without hindering aesthetics and without make the device look stupid and retarded (which will make fashionistas wannabes buy the propietary haedphones), and also make sensible people annoyed by having a "dongle" to use their 3.5 headphones for no other reason but sucking more money out of monkeys/isheeps.
Dribble - Monday, October 10, 2016 - link
1) lots of cars don't have BT even those owned by apple users, it's generally an extra that you have to pay (too much!) for, it's also not as reliable as a solid jack connection.2) I am charging my iphone and playing music I can't plug in both at once. I am in someone else's car and want to share my music.
3) rubbish, the space taken by the jack was tiny, every other phone including all the previous iphones manages fine with a jack.
4) You have to remember to charge wireless headphones, and BT is never as reliable as it's meant to be, it gets confused, takes time to connect. A headphone jack doesn't have those problems, it just works all the time every time. Like I said I am pro having the option to use BT, in fact pretty well every phone on the market and all previous iphones support BT, yet a surprisingly large number of people still use wired - why is that?
grayson_carr - Monday, October 10, 2016 - link
My $19,000 Hyundai Elantra and my wife's similarly priced Honda Civic, both purchased in 2012, both came with bluetooth. And we didn't get the upgraded stereo systems or navigation or anything. If you bought a new car in the past 5 years and it didn't come with bluetooth, you must have really been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Also, I would like to know what car is so barebones?wolfemane - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Wife and I bought a uses 2002 Nissan Maxima 4 years ago and it had bluetooth... and a tape deck.I don't understand the hate people have towards the removal of the jack. And I wonder how many of those complaining are actual iphone users? I can't remember the last time I even used the headphone jack, been bluetooth for so long.. Personal, and anecdotal, but to the point.
oh and I have an iPhone 6s plus. First iPhone I've ever owned, came from a long line of Android phones (mainly Galaxy's). Gotta say, I dig it a lot more than my old S6.
Klug4Pres - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
People like open standards, and solutions that are effective technologically.Wireless headphones might be "good enough" for many people, but consider that some have invested quite a lot of money in a superior, wired set of headphones. Yes, they can still use them with a dongle, but that is a "friction point" and causes problems with charging while listening to music.
Apple has done this to make money selling Airpods. Remember, it bought a purveyor of crappy headphones, and the company has to get a return on that investment.
This is an unsettling reminder that when buying many consumer electronic devices, we are beholden to companies who will position their products in such a way as to maximize their profits, and not in such a way as to give the best possible value to consumers.
Yes, I know, we can choose to buy or not buy etc. That is what critics are saying - they won't buy, or they will, but reluctantly. Markets do not always provide what people would like to buy. In the smartphone industry, Apple has significant market power, and knows how to milk the consumer (e.g. by drip-feeding features to boost unit replacement, RAM rationing, controling OS updates to break or cripple older phones etc., limiting repairability, sealed batteries, to name a few). On the other hand, a forced replacement cycle is what funds R&D, OS development, customer service, people with jobs at Apple, people with jobs in China, and so forth.
azulon1 - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link
Look some of your stuff is a little over the line. I think the general argument is that they make their phones only as good as they must to defeat the competition. And I think that they are doing a fine job at it. For instance when you talk about ram rationing? Do they need to add more ram to defeat android headsets?