Hands-on with the iPhone 7 Plus: Is bigger always better?
SAN FRANCISCO -- Much of what you need to know about the Apple iPhone 7 Plus, which was unveiled here Wednesday, can be found in the iPhone 7 hands-on. These handsets are of a piece.
Like the iPhone 7, the 7 Plus is virtually the same size and shape as its predecessor. In the demo room I fiddled around with the very sharp-looking matte Black finish. It's almost hard to believe that Apple could take the exact same material, Series 7000 aluminum, and create such diametrically opposed finishes. The polish on the Jet Black is like the surface of water, and the matte Black reflects almost nothing.
And, no, in case you're wondering, the iPhone 7 Plus doesn't use its larger body and extra space to offer a 3.5mm headphone jack. That technology is dead to Apple. Instead, the bottom edge looked just like the iPhone 7, with two grills and a lighting port. It's just a bit wider.
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Two cameras
Aside from the obvious discrepancy in size (the iPhone 7 Plus has a 5.5-inch display while the iPhone 7's is 4.7 inches), the only notable difference between the two phones is the camera. And it's a big difference. The iPhone 7 Plus is Apple's first dual-camera smartphone, and they did a pretty good job of integrating the larger bump into the body. It helps that the case curves to meet the edge of the dual-lens housing.
The cameras themselves are both 12 megapixels. One has a wide-angle lens and the other uses a 2x telephoto. Only the former has optical image stabilization. However, they work in concert to give you new photo capabilities.
In the demo room, I was able to take photos and also use the cameras simultaneously. When I opened the camera app, the interface looked pretty much as it has for a while, but I could see the little "1x" floating near the bottom of my image. If I tapped it, it instantly zoomed to 2x, which meant it was accessing the second telephoto lens and not using software to zoom. Right now I use an Olloclip iPhone lens attachment to add 2x zoom to my iPhone 6, so I really appreciate having this built in.
When I held my finger on the button, I got a sort of dial that let me zoom all the way into 10x. I took a picture or two this way. They looked okay -- I've never been a huge fan of digital zoom, but at least you're starting with an image that's been optically pulled twice as close.
Those two lenses will eventually let you take beautiful portrait shots with defocussed backgrounds, but the software that can do this wasn't ready in time for the demo room. I only saw the same pictures Apple showed off during the initial unveiling.
The rest of the device
The Taptic Engine behind the device's immovable home button felt just as responsive as it did on the iPhone 7, and the stereo speakers were at least as loud.
This phone is also water and dust-resistant, features I couldn't tell you much about based on my experience in the demo room (but I'm awfully glad they're finally here).
Inside, the iPhone 7 Plus is the same new A10 Fusion CPU, a chip designed to offer more power when you need it and preserve energy when it can. Of course, the larger iPhone 7 Plus will always offer more battery life than the more diminutive iPhone 7.
The iPhone 7 Plus looks just as sharp as the iPhone 7, but the camera is an interesting question. It offers a number of cool and promising features, but does more to break up the perfectly clean lines of the iPhone 7 Plus than the single lens does on the iPhone 7. Only time will tell if this bothers people or not.
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
