Maybe I might have upgraded my phone contract this week. My contract with EE had ended and before the Apple announcement, I wasn’t going to bother about upgrading as I had only bought the iPhone 6S Plus last October. But when they announced that the memory size was increasing, I just couldn’t help myself.
I chose the iPhone 7 128GB in Rose Gold. I made this decision for two reasons:
- It’s smaller than 6S Plus I had been using. I love the Plus and when I bought it last year, it was the right thing for me as I wanted to sell my iPad Mini and the larger screen was perfect to handle both roles as a phone and tablet. Now that there’s a baby in the picture, having a phone that I can only hold with two hands is far from ideal. I am convinced I will drop it and whilst it will always be the phone I will let fall, I would be so gutted to smash such an expensive piece of technology.
- The increased memory size. My 6S Plus was 64GB which I never thought I would come close to filling but I have only 10GB allowance left and I’ve already deleted 2000 photos to make some space. I know I will be taking a lot of photos once baby girl arrives so an increase to 128GB is a life saver.
Anyway, that’s my justification to myself. I thought I would show you what’s in the box and what it comes with;
- The phone itself, obviously
- Charging cable and wall plug
- Papers with the metal pin we all lose
- New Ear Pods with the Lightning Connector
- Adapter to allow use of normal headphones in the Lightning Port
Isn’t she a beauty! I had the Rose Gold version of the iPhone 6S Plus and there was no way I was having anything else this time. I just adore the colour. You might notice that the aerial has moved slightly (the white line along the top and bottom) and the camera is now larger than it was on the 6S range.
That much talked about lack of headphone jack! What do we think?
Personally I think it looks great without it and the additional speakers on the bottom have really improved the sound (more of that in another post)
You might not be able to tell from the image but the Home Button is no longer a button, it’s more a small pressure point. It does give a haptic response but it’s not a click like on previous models.
The new Ear Pods, the only difference I can see is the change to the connector with it now fitting in the Lightning Port. I know this has not been popular with many people but I don’t think it’s going to bother me. I don’t tend to charge my phone during the day so not being able to use the charge and ear phones at the same time shouldn’t impact me too much.
I can see this being a real turn off though if you are one of those people who constantly has their phone on charge whilst using it.
I must admit, I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s standard Ear Pods. I don’t know why they just don’t fit in my ears very well and I tend to find the hard plastic hurts my ears after a while so I’ve always stuck with my trusty £10 Sony earphones that are nothing special at all but I love them.
To use my beloved Sony earphones, I now need to use the new ear phone adapter; at least Apple was good enough to include one in the box. It’s tiny and I will definitely be keeping it permanently attached to my Sony’s in my handbag otherwise I will never see it again.
Protect, protect, protect! I can’t stress this enough. How can you spend so much money on something and not protect it. I bought this case from the phone store as I didn’t want to risk it with nothing whilst I waited for other companies to launch their iPhone 7 ranges.
I had hoped to reuse one of my old iPhone 6 case given the phones are the same size but NO! The millimetre difference in the size of the camera means that unless you have a very large cut out on the case, it will overlap and prevent the camera working properly. Clever trick there Apple, we must all buy new cases too…
The one I chose is from Case Mate and honestly, I chose it for the pink glitter. I’m not going to say it was all about the gel bumper and additional protection this provides inside the hard back case – this is a great feature and definitely helps to justify the price but it was definitely all about the glitter.
There we go, just a very very quick look at the new Iphone 7 out of the box. I’m going to give a full review in a few days time when I have used it properly and had a chance to compare it to my 6S Plus. I’ll also have had a chance to figure out and play around with the new iOS 10 features that should work the best on this newest model.
Check back soon for a full one week review.
