Apple iPhone 7 Plus Review: Indisputably the best smartphone in the market

After having incredible iPhone updates for nine consecutive years, the benchmark has been set real high. That's why a similar hardware design on the iPhone 7 Plus had many eyebrows raised. But Apple doesn't do things for the sake of doing it and this is what defines Apple the best.

Design, display, home button and audio jack

The Apple iPhone7 Plus continues to have the same body curves as on the iPhone 6Plus and iPhone 6S Plus. Yet the biggest differentiator is the IP67 certification that makes the new iPhones water and dust resistant and gives you peace of mind. In simple terms, you need not worry in case of an accidental water spill on the new iPhones but don't just deliberately jump in the swimming pool to swim with it. Apple has addressed the biggest concern as one always fear damaging the innards with moisture or water.  That's not all as there is more to design. The antenna lines from the rear aren't visible anymore. And the headphone jack has been replaced with speaker grills. But Apple ships EarPods headphones with a Lightning connector along with the Lightning-to-3.5mm dongle to be used with traditional headphones in the box. There iPhone 7 has got stereo speakers - one is integrated into the earpiece and other at the bottom. Even,  the iconic physical home button is gone and has been replaced with a pressure sensor with haptic vibrations that blends neatly with the design. Instead of pressing the home button, a light press works with a vibration. The settings for the home button can be changed from the setting.  And if the home sensor has been tapped or pressed thrice, it enters voice command mode. Apple has also introduced two new colours to the iPhone 7 lineup - matte black and jet black. While both the colours look good, jet black is prone to scratches. Thankfully, my review unit in matte black looks pretty and stands out from the clutter of smartphones. The dual camera system module at the rear and the black matte finish in my hand had many spot the new iPhone and drool over the looks of it. Moving to the display, it continues to be the same - 5.5inch 3D touch with 1920x1080pixel resolution. However, Apple has added wider colour gamut and made it 25 per cent brighter. It isn't as bright as the 2k displays on some of the Android smartphones, it still is sharp and bright with slightly warmer tone.

Camera: There has been a significant improvement in the camera on the iPhone 7 Plus. Apple has added a dual camera system  - next to the standard 12 MP wide angle camera sensor is the 12MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom, four colour tone flash and wide colour capture. It is now a six-element lens module along with f/1.8 aperture that captures more light and results in better images and videos even in low lights. While all this sounds fancy and technical, using it is very simple as the camera app does everything. The photo option now has a 1x icon which when tapped upon jumps to 2x zoom. By holding the circular icon and swiping towards the left allows you to zoom in further (digital zoom). The much talked about depth effect and portrait mode is not yet available but to test the same, I updated the iPhone 7 Plus to iOS 10 beta. When pointing at the subject, the app suggests if more light is required or you need to move further away or have the object within 2.5m range. Depth of field works well, keeping the faces sharp and blurring the background. It works well on objects too. Both the image with the depth effect (or blur) and without the effect are saved in the camera album. A separate album also stores in images captured in the depth mode. Using this dual lens camera system was a delight as the images are crisp, sharp with more vibrant colours. It captures great images even in low lights. Wish it also had a manual mode too for further experimenting with the camera. The images captured from the 7MP front facing camera are sharper and vibrant too. The iPhone 7Plus can be used to capture some great 4k videos too.

Performance: Running on iOS 10, the nicest iOS update, it has the new A10 Fusion chip with four cores - two high performance cores and two low-power cores. The latter uses less battery power during everyday activity. The iPhone 7 Plus is definitely faster and offers great performance with better battery life over the predecessor iPhone 6S Plus. But more benefits of this faster processor can be enjoyed when more apps that have been designed targeting the A10 Fusion chipset. The iPhone 7 Plus handled daily tasks such as browsing on Safari, Facebook, Twitter, fetching emails with ease. Siri works well and responds to the queries. It has been opened to third party developers and going forward will be able to do more than it usually does. For instance, Siri was able to book an Uber ride. Gaming has been the forte of iPhone and even on the iPhone 7 Plus there wasn't as single loss of frame or any lag. Even after long duration of usage (be it calls, imaging or gaming), the iPhone 7 Plus didn't heat up. The sound from the lighting earpods is pretty decent. The sound output of the stereo speakers has dramatically improved and has enhanced movie watching experience as well. Also, the new iPhones are available in 32GB, 128GB and 256GB storage options instead of the 16, 64 and 128GB, for the same price for which the iPhone 6s Plus was launched last year.

Battery: Apple claims to have increased the battery backup of the iPhone 7 Plus by an hour over the iPhone 6S Plus. On heavy usage with calls, Facebook, Twitter, emails, camera use, browsing and Apple Watch connectivity, a full charge lasts me a day with still 15 per cent charge in store. If used carefully, it can be stretched even more.

Bag it or Junk it: The best iPhone till date. The iPhone 7Plus is not just a bigger sibling to the iPhone 7. With the addition of dual camera system, the imaging capability is worth applauding.

Price: Rs 72,000 for 32GB onwards
Plus: Camera, Performance, Battery
Minus: No 3.5mm jack