 The world was shocked when the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus burst onto the scene completely devoid of non-proprietary ports with only a single lightning connector. That is to say the parts of the world who have completely ignored anything that Apple's done in the last couple of years, they were shocked. Anyway, I've spent my usual few weeks with the latest iShiny, and I am ready to talk about the experience. Intel's Skull Canyon NUC features a sixth-generation Core i7 quad-core processor and Thunderbolt 3. Learn more at the link in the video description. The iPhone 6S won my 2015 Phone of the Year award for its shocking performance, and it would appear as though the iPhone 7 is gunning for the same prize. It rocks Apple's stunning A10 Fusion, a quad-core design that borrows, at least conceptually, from the big little chips that have been commonplace on Android phones for years in both Qualcomm's Snapdragon and Samsung's Exynos processors. It features two high-performance cores, about 40% faster than the A9, if Apple's to be believed, and two low-performance cores that consume only about a fifth of the power of the high-perf ones. And it seems to be working wonderfully. The iPhone 7 installs apps as quickly as I can download the last one, and managed, with only a moderately larger 1960 mAh battery, to completely address my ongoing complaint about Apple's devices. That they have wonderful standby power, then they drain so fast you can watch your battery bar burn if you have the audacity to use GPS to go any further than the corner store. As for the rest of the specs, there's more good news. iPhone users finally get more RAM at 3 gigs, if they get the bigger 7 Plus. The earphone speaker doubles as a serviceable stereo speaker now, yay! Apple used the headphone jack space to add a barometer, which is neat, I guess, and you can get up to 256 gigs now of regrettably non-expandable storage, with the 16 gig model having finally been axed to make way for 32 gigs on the base model of the traditional colors, or 64 gigs on the new jet black color. Which I guess is a clever scheme to raise ASPs by convincing status seekers to buy a higher tier than the base, if they want their friends to even be able to tell that they have the new one, since the 7 looks externally so similar to its predecessor. On the subject of other things similar, the screen hasn't changed much either. Wide color gamut is a welcome and forward-looking upgrade, but Apple has stuck with 1080p on the iPhone 7 Plus and 750p on its little brother. But I support this, and even though they put the lock and volume directly opposing each other, which is a frequent gripe of mine, they got the tactile feel perfect. I almost never accidentally pressed one while reaching for the other. Some of the other physical changes, though, I'm a little more hesitant to endorse. Let's do the solid state home button first. I really like this move. It feels as clicky or subtle as you want, and like the 2015 MacBook, I often forgot that it didn't move. It will only wear out if the upgraded Taptic Engine inside the phone dies, and it improves the 7's resistance to water and dust. The only thing missing here is a software update to allow its pressure sensor to operate without skin-to-button contact. I haven't needed gloves yet this year, but as we Canadians say, winter is coming. Next up is the IP67 water and dust resistance. I'm surprised this took so long, given that water and falls account for 95% of iPhone deaths, but I absolutely love this move. And customer happiness aside, more alive iPhones is great for Apple's trade-in program and refurbished device business. Selling a product for a margin, even a little bit of margin, a second time, is just plain good business. Leading us to number three, the removal of the headphone jack. I said in my Odyssey Sign Review, which you can check out here, that if they removed it, I'd better be getting something significant in return. And honestly, especially with the waterproofing, I think they pulled it off. And besides, what I've discovered from talking to other 7 and 7 Plus owners and trying to keep my own mind open, is that even my general objection to carrying around a stupid adapter put me in a smaller minority of general consumers than I previously thought. I think my badminton buddy Jason put it best when I asked him about it. Eh, I haven't really noticed. I use my Jaybirds for everything anyway. Great wireless Bluetooth headphones like Sennheiser's PXC 550s are everywhere. And a little retention doodad like Motorola includes with the Droid Z would easily address the issue of losing the included adapter for audiophile IEMs, which won't go wireless anytime soon. Meaning that my only real remaining issue is charging and listening to podcasts while I sleep at the same time. A $15 problem or $25 if I want one that also adds volume and track control. Onto the camera. It's, simply put, amazing. And I even spent most of my time with the single sensor 7 as opposed to the dual sensor Plus. It doesn't have oodles of more megapixel or whatever, but Apple's color science and auto white balance deliver a much more true-to-life image on full auto than I thought was possible. And through third-party apps, you can capture raw photos, which is almost like an extra bonus at that point. Low light performance is on point, the selfie cam was upgraded, and even the app launch time is amongst the best that I've seen. Though auto wake screen and swipe to the side is still a touch slower than a gesture or a physical button that I can press without looking at the device. In some situations. With that said, I have much bigger complaints about iOS 10. Software-wise, there is some good stuff. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but Apple Maps has a great UI now. Siri still works better for me than OK Google. I don't use a ton of widgets, but it's swell to have the option, and Force Touch continues to improve with notification interactions combined with being able to respond within the notification itself being my favorite use for it. But there are also some glaring emissions and some polished efficiencies. Dictating while writing an email allows the cursor to scroll under where the keyboard would be, making it impossible to see what you're saying. I still find the swipe back gesture very inconsistent. One-handed operation in general feels bolted on and clunky rather than like a fundamental part of iOS's design. I'm baffled that the Google Now clone today view thing on the left of the home screen doesn't have a working back button when you click on a suggested article. I don't get the organization of the settings menu sometimes. The dial pad and phone controls still aren't on the same screen adding unnecessary button presses. I really missed Samsung's excellent magical white pages powered spam and caller ID database. I hate how I still can't control the cursor precisely on first touch. If I have steady hands, please let me turn off the auto guidance here. Android's management of multiple volume sliders is much better since it actually allows the ringtone to be adjusted while listening to music for example. And finally and perhaps most importantly, where the f*** is T9 dialing Apple? Some of us know a lot of people and this is an unassailably better way to call in frequently used contacts that doesn't interfere with any of the other ways that people can also use it. Just add it. But this is the company that took years to add copy paste, so eh. Bottom line time, the iPhone 7 is not a revolutionary product and I could go on for a while longer with all of my complaints about its accompanying operating system, but I'm sure we're all bored of that. But what it is is a continuation of Apple's onward march towards hardware perfection and the ATAN processor at its heart gives a lot of credibility to the analysts who believe that Apple will eventually replace the Intel processors in their thin and light designs with their own. But that's besides the point. Do I recommend the iPhone 7 and the 7 Plus? Well, as long as you have big enough hands for the Plus and as long as you don't mind making a pile of useless apps to reach the ones that you care about, then yeah, I guess I do. dbrand is your source for the wicked vinyl skins you saw on our iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. In fact, the marble one on the iPhone 7 managed to sell one of my friends on a dbrand skin pretty much immediately. That's one of their newer styles. They've got a wide variety of different colors of a genuine 3M vinyl skins and they all feature unrivaled precision thanks to the way they are cut. Their configurator is great too because it allows you to view and pick out exactly what you want for your device and preview what it's going to look like in your hand, whether you want something tasteful or whether you want something totally gaudy and tacky. You will know exactly what's going to arrive and there's no excuses, which isn't to say though that their customer service robots aren't great and easy to deal with if you ever do have a problem. dbrand skins are affordable, they're available for a wide variety of devices including phones, tablets, laptops, game consoles and game controllers and they ship worldwide at the link in the video description. Alright, thanks for watching guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. I said link twice, whatever, it's okay. Also linked in the description is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should totally join. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next. Well, hey, if you're a phone person and you watch this video, so maybe you are, you can check out the video where I water-cooled a bunch of high-end phones a while ago. I don't remember when it was, but there's a link there. You can look at the date under the video to sell a kit.