Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

anandtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 159 posts

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#81

Post by antisthenes »

davidf18 wrote: post #64

Hardware feature table mentions WiFi, but not the LTE modem and radio which is far more important as LTE has to deal with skyscrapers and buildings with stone and steel which conveniently block LTE signals, population density, and spectrum consumption has been dramatically increasing year to year. The unit has the Qualcomm X12 modem but that modem doesn't cover AWS-3 (Band 66) which is a very large swath of spectrum,…

Thank you for bringing this to light. It's extremely frustrating when reviewers focus 90% of their attention on the easily available specs like screen resolution or whether it has the latest wi-fi spec (my landlines at home or work can't even saturate 2.4ghz 802.11n, let alone anything higher)

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#82

Post by mbel »

criddell wrote: post #72
mbel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is UX a nightmare on desktop right now? Nearly all desktop/laptop computers can have their OS changed to different one. There is technically nothing stopping mobiles form working in the same way.

> There is technically nothing stopping mobiles form working in the same way. What about power consumption issues? If you load up Windows on a Mac laptop the battery drain rate is doubled. That's a pretty big user experience issue IMHO.

I wouldn't call this a UX nightmare. This is certainly an issue. On the other hand, as in case of today's laptops, users themselves decide to switch the OS and it's their responsibility in this scenario.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#83

Post by izacus »

hyperbovine wrote: post #71
Yhippa wrote: post #50

> At the start of this review I said it was important to consider perspective because at the end of the day, I use Android devices. Doing the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review is important, but also deeply disillusioning. With the iPhone 6s review I showed a number of clear and present issues in Android devices relative to the iPhone, and these issues continue to appear time and time again. More than ever it’s obvious to me…

Of course it provides a better value, the upshot of this review is that if you sell your smartphone for the exact same price as an iPhone, you automatically lose. I had expected the headline with the Pixel phones to be something like "near iPhone performance for half the price". I can't possibly see how these new google phones are going to be a success at this price.

Same way as Samsung Galaxy Notes and S series could be a huge success at the same price I guess?

Pixel pretty much offers very similar hardware without having to buy into the Apple ecosystem. There's value in that.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#84

Post by ak217 »

davidf18 wrote: post #64

Hardware feature table mentions WiFi, but not the LTE modem and radio which is far more important as LTE has to deal with skyscrapers and buildings with stone and steel which conveniently block LTE signals, population density, and spectrum consumption has been dramatically increasing year to year. The unit has the Qualcomm X12 modem but that modem doesn't cover AWS-3 (Band 66) which is a very large swath of spectrum,…

Thank you! This is the kind of detail I would have expected from AnandTech. It's a bit disappointing that they'll use the great teardown work provided by iFixit and Chipworks but not capitalize on it by actually analyzing the guts of the phone.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#85

Post by dpark »

samstave wrote: post #79
madeofpalk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chris Ziegler (formerly The Verge) I do wonder if he is _still_ at Apple after whatever was happening was made public (and possibly known to Apple as well)

can you expand, i am out of the loop

He took a job at Apple and didn't actually quit at The Verge. Just stopped communicating with them but kept collecting a check.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13036012/a-note-from-the-e...

Apparently there was about a month where he actively worked for both, too.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#86

Post by criddell »

mbel wrote: post #82
criddell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is technically nothing stopping mobiles form working in the same way. What about power consumption issues? If you load up Windows on a Mac laptop the battery drain rate is doubled. That's a pretty big user experience issue IMHO.

I wouldn't call this a UX nightmare. This is certainly an issue. On the other hand, as in case of today's laptops, users themselves decide to switch the OS and it's their responsibility in this scenario.

Does anybody really care that much about operating systems any more? The big three on the desktop - Windows, macOS, and Linux - are all good enough.

What matters (and I think this has always been true) are the applications. When friends ask for my opinion on what they should get, I almost always recommend buying from Apple (gamers probably want Windows). The two big reasons are (1) they can (legally) run more software than anything else and (2) you can walk into a store for support that's actually pretty good.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#87

Post by JustSomeNobody »

nextos wrote: post #52
DavidWanjiru wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I quit Apple precisely when the iPhone 1 was released..." Just so I understand, since the iPhone was the first phone Apple made, are you saying you stopped using their PCs (and music players?) because they'd made a phone? If you were happy with their other products up to that point, how does the phone change the grand scheme of things? I'd want to hear what your ideology is.

I expected iPhone to be like Newton. But it ended up being a walled garden. I realised trading a bit of my freedom for convenient user interfaces was not a good plan in the long run, so I gave up on Mac and went back to Linux. I thought Macs would become less open and less important for Apple in the future, with their marked shift to mobile. I think it was the right decision. Almost a decade later, Macs still lack co…

I'm glad they don't ship with a package manager. Home brew fills that need for me.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#88

Post by jeswin »

WildUtah wrote: post #66
quickben wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for the same reasons my current company is migrating away from anything Microsoft. Given the past actions, one just doesn't know what the pricing will be in future, and it makes sense to spend money to move to Linux now, instead in x years under deadlines. I realize this is unrelated to the main topic, but it illustrates human foresight.

The principal problem with abandoning Apple at this point being that you can't get developer grade desktop hardware anywhere outside Apple at a reasonable price. And if Apple ever goes back to making new laptops, those will probably be head and shoulders better than the competition at the same price, too. We don't know for certain, of course, since it's been two years since Apple has made new MacBook Pros with more t…

That reads like a comment on an Apple fansite.

1. For the same price as an iMac, you can buy a 4k display and way, way more powerful CPU, graphics and storage.

2. The superiority of the MacBook Pro is a myth, now more than ever. There are plenty of laptops today with much higher resolution and better color reproduction, and of course, Skylakes and recent GPUs. Dell XPS, Precisions, Surface Books, high-end Thinkpads, ASUS models etc etc.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#89

Post by mirsadm »

davidf18 wrote: post #64

Hardware feature table mentions WiFi, but not the LTE modem and radio which is far more important as LTE has to deal with skyscrapers and buildings with stone and steel which conveniently block LTE signals, population density, and spectrum consumption has been dramatically increasing year to year. The unit has the Qualcomm X12 modem but that modem doesn't cover AWS-3 (Band 66) which is a very large swath of spectrum,…

In addition, touch screen latency is something that never gets tested but is a huge factor in how the device feels to use. Some phones have terrible latency and its impossible to find out until you own the device.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#90

Post by ericd »

jeswin wrote: post #88
WildUtah wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principal problem with abandoning Apple at this point being that you can't get developer grade desktop hardware anywhere outside Apple at a reasonable price. And if Apple ever goes back to making new laptops, those will probably be head and shoulders better than the competition at the same price, too. We don't know for certain, of course, since it's been two years since Apple has made new MacBook Pros with more t…

That reads like a comment on an Apple fansite. 1. For the same price as an iMac, you can buy a 4k display and way, way more powerful CPU, graphics and storage. 2. The superiority of the MacBook Pro is a myth, now more than ever. There are plenty of laptops today with much higher resolution and better color reproduction, and of course, Skylakes and recent GPUs. Dell XPS, Precisions, Surface Books, high-end Thinkpads,…

The missing piece in other laptops, as always, is not raw specs, but build quality, and things like a great trackpad. No one else seems to be able to nail trackpads. I really wish I could buy a different brand of laptop, but I've been spoiled by the MBP's trackpad.
Post reply on HN