Jan 01, 2017 06:01 PM
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The shape and feel of the iPhone 7 Plus is very much like that of the two versions before it. It's big – properly big – especially when you add a case to it.
Yes, it has an expansive screen, but it's the iPhone 7 Plus’s height that makes it a handful.
If you haven't used a phablet before, it's worth testing out first. I found it takes about a week to get accustomed to a larger phone, but I wouldn’t go back. There's just so much more you can do with a screen this size, but some will struggle to use it easily.In other respects the design has been refined a little. The antenna bands that strapped the back now curve across the top and bottom edges of the phone. On the back there's a far more pronounced camera bump.
There are two brand-new iPhone 7 Plus colours to choose from and both feel very different. The first is Jet Black, which has a slick, almost ceramic, feel to it. It looks fantastic, it's grippy and it's the colour I’d choose. There are a couple of catches, though: you'll need to polish it regularly to get fingerprint marks off it, but more worryingly it marks with fine scratches a little too easily. If you do choose it, you'll need to treat it with kid gloves to keep it looking its best.The new Black version looks like a darker version of Space Grey. Oddly, though, it doesn't have the same grippy texture as other iPhone colours, which means it's a bit slippery. I wouldn’t use it without a case, but when you’ve seen as many smashed screens as me, you’d use a case for any phone.
Those alterations are all cosmetic, though. There are three really important changes of which you should be aware when it comes to the 7 Plus. The first is that it's water resistant to an IP67 rating. That means you can submerge it in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. It's a great addition to the iPhone – especially if, like me, you've accidentally dunked phones and ruined them in the past.The second is a change to the iPhone 7 Plus’s home button. Gone is the iconic click to which we've become so accustomed. It's not a button at all now, but rather it's a capacitive pad. It recognises your fingers in much the same way as the touchscreen does, so that means you don't actually depress it. Instead the clever boffins at Apple have used the rumble provided by an upgraded Haptic engine to make it feel as if it's been pressed.
It works, too. It took me minutes to get used to the new feel, and now I prefer it – if only because it's a lot less likely to go wrong now that it's no longer mechanical. Of course, it still comes with the excellent Touch ID fingerprint scanner built in.
The third big change will likely affect you the most. It’s the now infamous removal of the traditional 3.5mm headphone jack. Yes, it’s an annoying omission, but it hasn’t bothered me as much as I thought it would.
The 7 Plus comes with a small cable adapter that is now permanently attached to my Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 headphones, and you also get a pair of Lightning EarPods for good measure. What Apple is really trying to do here, though, is move us all towards wireless headphones. I’m a convert to them simply for their convenience, and there are now plenty of excellent wireless headphones to choose from.
