Using the iPhone 7 in 2021 - worth it? (Review) By 91Tech

The iPhone 7 and 7 plus released in late 2016 and shocked the world by being one of the first phones to be rid of the headphone jack, something that had been a staple in any portable electronic for years, and yet here we are approaching five years later and hardly any phone includes them nowadays, and it's kind of a pity. That's what this phone will always be remembered for, because the iPhone 7 was a great phone and the 7 plus was even better and even still today, they hold strong and perform well on the latest version of iOS, hey how's it going I'm josh from 91 tech, and today we're going to be looking at how the iPhone 7 and 7 plus hold up and whether they could still even be worth buying. So how do the phones hold up? Well, they hold up pretty well. The camera, probably, is the weakest spot compared to newer iPhones, but even that really still can be pretty good, with generous lighting. Of course, battery life, especially with the small iPhone 7, can no doubt be rough depending on how much it's been used over the years, although the 7 plus has always been pretty good there and with a simple battery replacement, I bet you could easily squeeze some more life out of your phone if you're using an iPhone 7 right now, you don't need to upgrade you've got at least another year, or maybe even two of software updates and the phone still feels pretty spiffy, especially considering the age. It even has a lot of modern commodities like water resistance and with the 7 plus the ability to take portrait mode photos, but if you're on an even older iPhone and are considering buying, v7 or 7 plus, because you want to save some money, that's where things can get tricky, you're likely to turn to the used market, and things can be a bit hairy over there.

You never really know for sure what you're getting and things like the battery can be an immediate disappointment I'll get to that a bit later, but in short, the iPhone 7 can be worth it if you're on a strict budget and need a phone for the basics and are willing to upgrade again in a couple of years. When software support inevitably expires, it's still a fairly fast phone and one that can do basically anything the longevity of iPhones nowadays are so underrated. This phone does not feel the nearly five years old. It is and, comparing it to say, the original Google Pixel, which came out at the same time, the iPhone 7 is in a completely different league. So there's the answer out of the way the iPhone 7 might actually be worth buying, depending on your situation, and it certainly is still worth using.

If you have one, the battery life might be a concern, but of course that goes for any older phone, but let's back up here and go into some more detail, starting with the design of the iPhone 7 and 7 plus the iPhone 7 has a fully aluminum body. Just like the 6 and 6s before it, but with a much cleaner design, moving the antenna bands to make them more subtle. This is a much classier look in my eyes, and I actually quite like this design. Of course, aluminum has its downsides and no wireless charging, but the durability is generally much better and the phone does feel pretty comfortable to hold. This is probably the last iPhone I'd be okay with not using a case with, although of course, you probably still should use a case to be safe with a slightly updated design.

We get some of the most colors we've ever had on a single iPhone jet black matte black silver gold rose gold and then the limited time only product red model that can be tough to find now and for some reason, has white bezels on the front. The jet black is quite unique. It's aluminum, but it's coated with a glossy black finish that scratches very easily and looks amazing. It's kind of reminiscent of the black iPhone 3g and 3gs from back in the day, and it's the darkest iPhone we've gotten in recent years, as apple generally. Just has space gray options nowadays, but the iPhone 7 plus I have here had the matte black color and I really love it.

I do think I prefer the jet black, but the matte is not going to scratch as easily, and it looks great all the same mix that with the black bezels and capacitive home button, and you have one sleek device. What's a capacitive home button, you ask well basically it's not an actual home button, I mean it is, but it's not. It doesn't physically click, but instead imitates a click with haptic feedback or in other words the vibrations. It feels actually quite good, although a little strange at first and less moving parts means less breakable parts, so you know no more eventually stuck home buttons like we had on old iPhones, and it also helps with the ip67 water resistance. This phone has, as no liquids can get in that way and because it doesn't physically click, it is a bit faster as well, and the touch ID here is blazing fast touch.

The home button barely and bam you're into your phone. It works perfectly and, although I'm still someone who prefers face ID, it's not hard to appreciate just how good touch ID is. The bezels are fairly thick compared to newer iPhones, but I'd. Imagine a lot of you out. There really don't care that much after all, it ultimately doesn't add much to get rid of the bezels.

Besides, you get a bit more screen real estate. The display, though, is good, being retina and either 4.7 inches with the small iPhone 7 or 5.5, with the iPhone 7 plus, the pixel densities are high enough that everything looks sharp and although the screen is LCD, which means it isn't going to look as good as the iPhone 12 or 12 pro, it still is on par with the iPhone 10r and 11. In fact, the iPhone 7 plus actually has a higher resolution than both those phones. If that sounded like a lot of nonsense, words to you basically iPhone 7 display is good. Not amazing, don't worry about it.

As mentioned before, we have no headphone jack on the bottom of the phone. We do, of course, have the lightning port for charging. The speakers on this phone are also quite good, as it was the first iPhone to properly utilize the front-facing earpiece speaker, as well as the one on the bottom to produce a louder, richer, sound. You might notice the iPhone 7 actually brought a lot of the little things we kind of take for granted with newer iPhones. But of course the big talking piece with it was the headphone jack and everything else was kind of just overlooked.

Well, most things anyway were overlooked. The big new feature that was really talked about was the second camera lens on the iPhone 7 plus the first one on any iPhone. The main rear sensor on both the 7 and 7 plus is 12 megapixels and optically stabilized. It can take decent photos, nothing mind-blowing with what we have now, but with good outdoor lighting I'd say you can still get a nice shot at night or indoors. The 7 does struggle, but considering it is a 2016 smartphone that isn't a surprise.

Video on this phone is fairly capable as well with up to 4k30 recording. So all in all an older but still fine main sensor, but with the seven plus we also get the telephoto camera lens. This gives us two times zoom, also at 12 megapixels. Although there is a bit of a drop-off in quality, so you can get photos closer to the subject without physically moving very cool. But what was fascinating was the portrait mode.

The telephoto lens was used to judge the distance of the subject and the background and produce an image kind of like a fancier DSLR camera. In that the background has both or is blurred out. This can produce very nice cool looking photos, although it generally only works with humans and can be quite inconsistent as you'd expect. This has improved massively with many newer iPhones continuing to enhance the experience and even perfect it. The new ones are pretty darn good.

The smaller iPhone 7 doesn't have the telephoto lens, but something both phones have is a 7 megapixel selfie camera, which was an upgrade over the 5 megapixels with the iPhone 6s. It takes a half decent selfie, it's fine. It was one of the better options back in 2016. It'll easily satisfy your desire to show your face off to the world. All in all, the camera setup was really impressive back in the day, particularly with the telephoto lens on the 7 plus.

Nowadays, though, it hasn't aged, amazingly simply because what we have now just blows it away. So can the iPhone 7 still take a good photo absolutely, but if you're, someone who really wants to be taking more consistently great pictures, especially in potentially worse lighting, a newer iPhone is worth looking at, like the iPhone 10r 11, something like that, especially the 11, really, by the way for those interested, I will have my full iPhone buying guide linked in the description below one thing that has aged really well is the technical specifications. You pull basically any android from 2016 and while it might still work it'll more than likely lack two things current or even somewhat recent software support, as well as a smooth, fast experience due to its poorly aged hardware. Good news, the iPhone 7, doesn't suffer from this, at least not as badly as its competitors. We have the a10 chipset and two gigabytes of ram in the smaller iPhone 7 and then three gigabytes of ram in the 7 plus.

Both phones are still fully usable on iOS 14 running any app and doing basically anything you'd want to do on your iPhone without issue any game any app, you name it. It likely will also get another year or two of software updates. This, of course, isn't guaranteed. It even could only get iOS 14, but I really doubt that, and I'd say it's pretty likely: it will at least get iOS 15 at the end of 2021. If you're watching this, and you're like hey my iPhone 7, isn't so great well, if it feels slow, there's a good chance, this is being caused by a degraded battery and the battery life was never amazing in the first place on the smaller iPhone 7, hopefully getting you a day, but probably not with heavy use.

The 7 plus is quite a bit beefier. In my experience, giving a day with relative ease assuming the battery health is still pretty good to check you go to settings battery then battery health, and you can see what percentage of battery you still have as time goes on, and the phone is used more, and more smartphone batteries will naturally degrade and have less of its original capacity and if it gets to around 80 percent or below, that's when you'll want to look at an upgrade, and you'll likely start noticing, slowdowns or even possibly random shutdowns, if you're in the low 80s or below it, I'd, consider upgrading to a new iPhone or getting your battery replaced through apple trust. Me it'll make your phone feel brand new, and you'll get a lot more use out of it, but assuming your battery's fine, I don't have much to complain about with the iPhone 7 and 7 plus at least keeping the age in mind. It's still fairly fast. The camera is good enough to do the job.

The design is nice, albeit older, and of course you do get a lot of the newer niceties we've come to expect with iPhone such as water resistance, good speakers and very fast. Biometrics touch ID, in other words, at least with this phone. Is this a good time for you to upgrade from the iPhone 7? That's really up to you. If you have the smaller one, I'd personally, consider it just for the much, much better battery life than say the iPhone 10r or 11, but the phone is still pretty decent and can get you another year or two of use if you need it to, if not even longer, but maybe you're, on an even older iPhone as in something older than the 6s or SE, as if you have either of those phones, you might as well get something better than the 7, and you know you're wondering if the 7's still worth buying well, it can be turning to ebay. com, prices can vary, but I tend to see the smaller 7 go for around 120 to 150.

The lower end of that is definitely a good deal and if you can find it for even cheaper I'd, say it's 100 worth picking up you're getting the latest version of iOS the ability to basically do anything and likely at least one more major software update. That's pretty darn good for not much more than 100 bucks. The iPhone 7 plus is a tougher call and more like 200 is, sometimes less that's not too bad, and it is a lot cheaper than buying an iPhone brand new. But we are starting to get to that territory where you have to ask whether you really want to buy such an old phone for that much money, the iPhone 10r used can be found for 300 is, often more, but you know sometimes less and that's not that much more money than the iPhone 7 plus and with it, you're getting a much better phone, an updated design, better camera, better specs. You know it's something to think about at least but the 7 plus at ideally a bit less than 200 bucks.

If you can find it I'd say, is still a pretty fair price for the phone overall, I'm pretty impressed with how well the iPhone, 7 and 7 plus have held up. They might be approaching 5 years old, but they certainly don't feel it, and I'd say they still have a bright future ahead of them, as they continue to get iOS support and working well for the millions of people who still own and use them daily, and with that I think I'm about done here. Any of you have the iPhone 7 how's it working for you. Let me know in the comments down below if you found this video interesting or helpful, maybe hit that like button and consider subscribing for more content. Just like this, you can follow me over on Twitter and Instagram.91 underscore tech, if you're into tech- and we also have a discord, server link in the description. Thank you so much for watching I'm josh from 91 tech, and I will see you all next time you.

Source : 91Tech