Let's get right down to it: if Apple had launched the iPhone 7 in place of the iPhone 6S last year, it would probably have been the phone of the year.
We're used to the S variants of the iPhone being minimal upgrades - just the right amount of change to encourage a purchase by those with ageing handsets - and if the myriad changes on this new iPhone had arrived in 2015, it would have been fantastic.
Instead of the iPhone 6S, with just a 3D Touch screen in the way of new features and a few power boosts here and there, we'd have had a waterproof handset with dual speakers, a brighter and more colorful screen and a boosted 12MP camera that took better pictures than the one on the iPhone 6.
Changing the home button from a clickable entity to something that responds to pressure - and possibly even the loss of the headphone jack - would have been seen as innovative and alternative in a sea of identikit handsets.
And if Apple had thrown in the new Jet Black finish with a top-end 256GB storage model. well, that would have been a real challenger, a chance for the brand to cast off the'tick-tock' mentality of keeping the smaller upgrades confined to the S variants, and remind us that it just makes great phones.
But that didn't happen, and now the metronomic quality of Apple's upgrades seems to have come to a halt - or the pendulum is stuck.
