Apple iPhone 7 Plus review – CNET

The Good Dual rear cameras delivers true 2x optical zoom, with a cool bokeh mode to come via a forthcoming upgrade. The phone is water resistant, and the battery lasts longer than last year’s model. Bigger storage options include 256GB model for serious photographers.

The Bad There’s no standard headphone jack: you’ll have to use Lightning, or the included adapter, or go wireless. Design is showing its age, as competing phones squeeze a 5.5-inch screen into smaller, sexier bodies.

The Bottom Line Apple’s best camera phone pushes the envelope to offer great results, but its full potential hasn’t yet been tested.

If you’re a hardcore photographer, go for the iPhone 7 Plus.

In the mobile phone Olympics between Apple and Samsung, the two have been playing ping-pong lately. Apple had the best camera; Samsung had the best camera. The game evens up, then one pulls ahead for a few months.

Apple iPhone 7 Plus makes a good thing even…
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When Apple first made the larger Plus phones back in 2014, the appeal was always about screen size, battery life, and to a small extent camera. Really, all the larger 5.5-inch model had that the standard 4.7-incher didn’t was optical image stabilization (OIS). This year, the iPhone 7 finally gets OIS — great for smoothing out shaky-handed pics and videos.

But the 7 Plus, reviewed here, leaps ahead with a a new first for an Apple phone: dual rear cameras. (Apple is following in the footsteps of LG and Huawei, both of which already offer dual camera models.) One is identical to the wide-angle model on the 7, but the second one adds telephoto, including true 2x optical zoom. And the phone’s software deftly fuses the two, so you can effortlessly jump between them, or have them stitch together a single image.

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The 7 and 7 Plus have much in common otherwise. Really, they’re two variants on the same phone. Both are water resistant, and have the same fast A10 Fusion processor. Yeah, they both lack headphone jacks. Even battery life has evened out a bit: The smaller 7 makes greater gains over last year’s 6S than the 7 Plus does over the 6S Plus.

Two iPhones, straight outta Brooklyn.

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Put another way: Everything we like — and dislike — about the smaller iPhone 7 applies to the 7 Plus model, too. (Read the iPhone 7 review here.) Just know that you’re paying a premium of $120, £120 or AU$190 when you step up to the 7 Plus at each storage capacity. (Yes, the price has creeped up a bit from last year.)

I’ve bounced back and forth between the 4.7-inch iPhone and the 5.5-inch version over the past few years. I used to hate the idea of the Plus. Then I preferred it. Then I shifted back to the smaller iPhone and used a battery case. The smaller one feels better to hold. The larger one has the superior display, but feels awkward in my hand.

The iPhone 7 Plus is Apple’s most advanced phone to date.

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Samsung and other manufacturers are doing a far better job folding identical 5.5-inch or larger displays into bodies like the S7 Edge that feel smaller and better in your hand. But now with cameras that can truly differentiate it from its smaller sibling, the 7 Plus finally has an easy justification for that jumbo size. It’s finally the step-up experience the larger phone needed.

I’m not a pro photographer, but I’m trying to get better. James Martin, a Senior Photographer at CNET, is. He shot with the 7 Plus in the Bay Area, while I took it around and used it for everyday life in New York and New Jersey.

Compare and contrast James’ photos from the 7 Plus to 6S Plus to the Samsung Galaxy S7 here.

Editors’ note: We’re still testing the battery and the camera performance of the iPhone 7 Plus. Consider the ratings to be tentative until finalized.

Did we mention it’s water resistant?

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How the dual cameras up the ante

The dual cameras don’t actually zoom, like a point-and-shoot camera with a protruding lens. Instead, the phone switches between the wide-angle camera and the telephoto, from 1 to 2x. From there, the camera app can digitally zoom up to 10x versus 5x on the iPhone 7. For video, it’s 6x.

Digital zoom works better than it used to, but zooming in too far still results in blurry, digitized pics. It can’t work miracles. But adding the 2x optical helps frame photos: I found many landscape shots transformed.

The camera made these nosebleed seats look good.

Scott Stein/CNET

I walked around Brooklyn, went to the New York Jets’ season opener and sat in the cheap seats. And being able to zoom in closer to the game action with less loss of detail was a great change — all without a big heavy camera around my neck.

Note, too, that the camera equals the low-light performance of its smaller sibling, which is an improvement over the 6S/6S Plus models.

It takes better low-lighting photos than the iPhone 6S.

James Martin/CNET