It’s the first time I write about an iPhone I own and oddly enough, it’s not to praise it or remember it.
Every iPhone I’ve ever owned gave me a little of that magical feeling commonly associated to Apple, the gasp, the excitement, the “I can’t believe I’m living in the future” feeling… except iPhone 7.
I’ve owned an iPhone every 2 years since the iPhone 3G.
iPhone 3G was my first one (after iPod Touch) and multitouch was still a technology that looked like magic. With the dawn of apps and the phenomenal mobile data speeds felt magical, incredible. Over time it became slow and almost unusable, it was the only iPhone where the experience downgraded with every update.
iPhone 4 was pretty incredible: The retina screen was beautiful to stare at and a mind-blowing achievement, the camera was the first iPhone camera that took photos that were on par with the digital cameras of that time… and the design, oh man! the most beautiful design an iPhone has ever had.
iPhone 5 was so incredibly light, and that extra screen real-estate was very appreciated. Siri was something I’ve never experienced before, the first look at the AI that I’ve seen so many times in movies, now in real life. The thinness and lightness of that phone. It was also the first phone where the screen was attached to the glass, for the first time you could feel like you were actually touching the interface with your fingers, no distance whatsoever.
iPhone 6 also had a lot of magic to it. TouchID was something incredible (it was the first phone I put a passcode to). The curved glass made gestures a bliss. The big screen was a such a welcome change. The camera was an incredible improvement, it was the first iPhone that got shots close to a DSLR.
iPhone 6 ended up being buggy, I managed to bend it and the battery went nuts after 2 years, so… instead of waiting a 3rd year for the iPhone X, I went and purchased the iPhone 7.
And so we come to my current iPhone (until next week). iPhone 7 was the first phone that had nothing special to it. It didn’t feel magical at all. The non-moving home button? Meh. Camera improvement? Good on low light, but not that much better than the 6. No headphone jack? Well that wasn’t good, just meh. The color? Yes it’s the best black they made so far… but meh. Battery life was never that good, speed wasn’t such a big improvement.
iPhone 7 has been my only “meh” iPhone. Not bad, at all, but the first phone that didn’t have anything that felt “magical” about it.
It definitely feels like a “we need to come up with something this year” kind of phone. It was the first time Apple repeated a design for a 3rd year in a row. And yes, there were a lot of pretty good improvements on it, but the distance between it and the previous model made it feel like it should have been the iPhone 6SS. So I’m not sad to see it go.
Next week my iPhone X is coming and I think it will have a lot of magic to it. I’m specially looking forward to: The blacks on OLED, the FaceID experience, the all-screen phone, the much-improved cameras and the improvement on battery life.
We’ll wait and see, but for the moment, I’m glad I’m leaving the “meh” iPhone.