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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UtilityMax - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
They don't the same OS, but they often run the same applications, so the comparisons are valid. For example, there exist the same web browser benchmarks that run on both OSes.Constructor - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
On top of the faster CPUs, iOS is also optimized for more efficient resource use plus several special 64 bit optimiziations.Especially memory garbage collection on Android was a bad design mistake which keeps devices stuttering at random intervals.
ACM.1899 - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
"the headphone jack because that’s what users say they want."i have bunch of nice earphones at home and i don't need (want) to buy BT headphones.
they removed the 3.5mm jack and what did they add instead? at least a built in dac (like HTC 10, v10 or v20) would have been nice.
i've heard the sound through the dongle isn't as good as iPhone 6s.
or bluetooth headphones (in general) are not as good as analog headphones (with the same price).
every time Apple does something stupid we say it's because of this or that or for that you can do this or it's the future....but WHY?
for now the only (main) reason is marketing.(Apple & Beats)
as long as a good BT headphone is not the same price as a good analog headphone , i don't want them.
until then the 3.5mm jack should have not been removed.
at least i don't need that bs taptic engine...
ACM.1899 - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
or if Audio (through a smartphone) is that important to me , i can buy an android phone.btw i guess they won't remove it from the mid-range iPhone (SE).
serendip - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
That Redmi Note 3 will be staying at the top of the WiFi web browsing chart for a while longer. How the heck did AT get 12 hours? I've got the same phone and the longest I've seen is 10 hours on WiFi with LTE on but not enabled for data.zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
I love your conclusion piece. I still hate Apple but they are commendable for the constant SoC improvement and the large die size of it. I'd get over the missing headphone jack if the quality of the adapter is good. They did an awesome job on the display too, extracting the best possible performance from the display. I'd get goosebumps if they would the same attention to detail using AMOLED displays for the next generation.I never warmed to the Google Pixel devices as they are too expensive with the unimpressive Snapdragon 821 or 820. I'd just get an S7 Edge for the hardware. The software part is the only missing piece as I'd rather have stock Android with yearly, latest updates from Google.
UtilityMax - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
SoC improvement is fine, but how much SoC improvement do people really need? It's not like smartphones are running PC games or are using for engineering design work. A three year old Nexus 5 with its Snapdragon SoC is still perfectly adequate as a daily smartphone when SoC is concerned. Now, the SD820 offers about twice the performance.blackcrayon - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
How much? An infinite amount. It has to keep increasing in order for smartphone operating systems to get increasingly better. One example is using CPU power to increase photo quality. But no one wants to wait 10 seconds between shots...UtilityMax - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
Your argument is useless because not even a one year old Nexus 5X with a much criticized Snapdragon 808 SoC does not need to take so much time to take a picture. Any modern smartphone has a pretty adequately fast camera. If you find a smartphone with a slow camera that's not an excuse to buy an overpriced iphone with no expandable storage, no "approved" way to upload your media into it without using the iTunes junk, and no 3.5mm headphone jack.blackcrayon - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
Your counterargument is u... nevermind.You need to research what happens when you take a photo on a modern smartphone. There is a lot of processing done in software, which of course utilizes the hardware, to achieve better photos than would be possible without it. I'm not sure what you think your comparison means though. An iPhone "1" could take pictures too. It doesn't mean it could do the kind of instantaneous post processing something like an A10 can do. In this particular case it's Apple's ISP doing much (most?) of the work, but the analogy still stands. In order to add enhancements to the device that can work without drawbacks, they have to be fast. The more speed you have to spare, the more cycles you can use on things like instantaneous image processing, compression/decompression, "AI" that works locally on the phone, etc.
Anyway, the Nexus 5X running Chrome alone should tell you SoCs aren't fast enough, especially with a poorly optimized app.