Worth the wait? A closer look at the iPhone 7 & Watch Series 2

September 18th, 6:28pm September 18th, 6:40pm

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After all the hype of another Apple release I decided to jump on board the band wagon and visit the nearest Apple Store. As much I love Apple products, unfortunately, I left empty handed.

All iPhone 7s and Apple Watch 38mm devices were completely sold out at the Chadstone branch in Melbourne, and I’m sure all other branches are suffering the same loss of stock. Lucky for me, I wasn’t waiting 48 hours in the rain to purchase the new phone, but I did get to try on the new Nike Apple Watch.

After spending time developing and using the first watch, I think the watch technology is improving. An impressive addition is the water resistance, meaning we can all record workouts whilst swimming. The back of the watch is also ceramic meaning better heart rate readings and detection of skin temperature. But overall I think the biggest improvement for the watch is the battery life. Most previous watch users can agree on the annoyance of having to charge your watch every single night.

The new software emphasising Nike branding. Users waiting hours just to have a try.

After playing with the watch and pushing past all the tech indulgent users, I finally got my hands on the iPhone 7. After upgrading my iPhone 6 plus to iOS 10, I didn’t really notice much difference with the software, so I dug deeper into the hardware specs. I think the biggest improvement on this device is the camera. It showed some nice improvements with picture quality, and speed with switching between back and front cameras. In the camera application, there is also a nice little (2x) button to zoom in closer, whilst still keeping picture quality. But I wouldn’t recommend zooming anymore as the quality degrades quickly. If you compare this with the Samsung S7 camera, I think Apple have come along way, but I still think the picture quality on the Samsung S7 is a little better.

Most people had to wait inline just to try the new phone.

The new phone has more upsides than just the camera. Customers have the option to purchase 256GB of memory, and a set of wireless headphones. The biggest question will be whether the wireless headphones are worth the extra cost. I think the idea of having another device that I have to charge as slightly irritating, but users may want to see this from a different angle. After using the Beats Studio wireless headphones, I can sympathise with those who don’t want to go back to using an audio jack. Eventually, bluetooth headphones will become the norm, so we are simply witnessing the start of an old technology being phased out.

Overall, the new iPhone has come along way on hardware specs, but I wouldn’t recommend growing away your iPhone 6S just yet. In the meantime I’ll be spending my money on a new pair of studio headphones, and see what Apple has to offer next year.

Michael Williams a mobile developer and the founder of Flush Arcade. His debut book Xamarin Blueprints is out later this month.