iPhone 7 vs. iPhone 7 Plus: Which One Should You Buy?

When trying to decide which of Apple's new phones belongs in your pocket — the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus — yous essentially have to answer 3 questions. How big an iPhone do you want? What kind of photographic camera do you lot need? And just how much are you willing to pay?

That's because the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus accept more than in common than you might remember. Eager to attempt out that pressure-sensitive dwelling house push button? You'll discover it on both new phones. Can't wait to get your iPhone back in black? Both the vii and 7 Plus feature the matte black and jet black options (though the latter is restricted to college capacity versions on both the 7 and 7 Plus).

Eager for a telephone with a headphone jack? Uh, perhaps I could involvement you in these lower-priced iPhone 6s and 6s Plus phones, because you won't notice a headphone jack on either new iPhone.

So if y'all're trying to decide whether the iPhone 7 or 7 Plus is the phone to become, here's a handy rundown of the differences between the two models.

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Size

Apple continues to offering its phones in two different sizes. The iPhone 7 has a four.7-inch screen while the iPhone 7 Plus offers a 5.5-inch display.

Those different sized screens mean two differently shaped phones. The iPhone vii is 5.iv x 2.6 x 0.three inches to the half dozen.2 x 3 x 0.3-inch dimensions of the iPhone 7 Plus. (These are the same sizes of the iPhone 6s and 6s, respectively.) The iPhone seven Plus is bulkier at 6.half dozen ounces than the 4.9-ounce iPhone vii. Both new phones take shed a 10th of an ounce off the weight of their predecessors.

If you like larger screen phones, you lot'll probable cover the added real estate the iPhone vii Plus commands. If phones with displays larger than 5 inches experience beefy in your pocket, the iPhone 7 may exist more your speed.

Display

Different sized screens mean different resolutions. For the iPhone seven, that's a 1,330 x 750-pixel brandish, compared to the 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution of the iPhone seven Plus.

Those numbers shouldn't surprise you: they're the same resolutions found on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. At least the new phones can say that their displays are 25 percent brighter than their predecessors', though you're still not going to misfile the iPhone's Retina Hard disk drive display with the Super AMOLED screens on the Milky way S7.

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Camera

Hands, the cameras on these new phones will be what sets them apart for most users. Apple tree fabricated improvements to the rear cameras on both models, though the changes to the iPhone 7 Plus are far more substantive.

Allow'south start with the iPhone 7 rear camera, though: It's the same 12-megapixel shooter as before, though the f/1.8 aperture is wider than before, so that the iPhone 7's camera lets in 50 percent more light than the iPhone 6s did. A six-chemical element lens ways the iPhone seven will shoot sharper images from edge-to-edge. And that 12-MP sensor is both faster and more efficient than earlier.

Apple tree improved the paradigm signal processor on the iPhone 7'due south photographic camera, with the Internet access provider now offer twice the throughput as before. That ways information technology can carry off tasks similar setting the exposure, adjusting the focus and white balance, mapping the tone and reducing the noise in nigh 25 milliseconds, according to Apple.

Optical prototype stabilization used to be restricted to Apple'south Plus-sized phones. That's irresolute with the iPhone vii, which now offers the feature — very welcome when your easily are as shaky as mine.

Apple tree also fabricated changes to the flash on the iPhone seven, using four LEDs to provide more light. A flicker sensor can now detect artificial lighting and adjust for it when you use the flash.

That's all pretty impressive. So how does Apple tree make the iPhone seven Plus stand out? By adding a 2d 12-megapixel lens to the rear camera.

That dual-photographic camera setup features a wide-angle lens and a telephoto one. (The wide-angle lens has an f/i.8 aperture — same as the iPhone seven's camera — while the aperture on telephoto lens is f/2.8.) With the two lens, you get a 2x optical zoom but by tapping a push button. For close ups, you can take advantage of the 10x digital zoom.

Another cool feature with the dual-photographic camera setup on the iPhone 7 Plus is something Apple calls the Depth Upshot, where an object in the foreground stands out in precipitous focus assorted to a fashionable background blur. This feature will be available equally a software update to the 7 Plus.

Up front, both new phones feature a seven-MP FaceTime camera for selfies and video chats.

Battery Life

Apple tree is unremarkably pretty stinting most details like how big the bombardment is in its phones, and the iPhone 7 continues that fine tradition. The company has told u.s. to await the iPhone vii to last two hours longer than the 6s, while the iPhone 7 Plus improves on the battery life of the 6s Plus by an hour.

You can expect longer bombardment life from the vii Plus, though. Apple tree says its larger phone offers 21 hours of talk time, 16 days of standby and 13 hours of 4G Internet use. That compares to 14 hours of talk fourth dimension, x days of standby and 12 hours of spider web surfing for the iPhone 7.

Price

Dual-camera setups, bigger displays and longer battery life have their price. In the iPhone 7 Plus'south instance, the price is $769 for the 32GB model. Prices scale upwardly by $100 to $869 and $969 for the 128GB and 256GB versions, respectively.

You can save yourself $120 if you opt for the iPhone 7. It starts at $649 for 32GB with the same $100 cost jumps for the 128GB ($749) and 256GB ($849) models.

Regardless of which phone yous get, you can opt for the argent, gilded, rose gilded, black and jet black finishes. (The jet blackness option is limited to the 128GB and 256GB phones, though.)

Outlook

Which iPhone is right for you depends on how serious you are almost photography. If you depend on your smartphone for pictures — and want those photos looking every bit sharp every bit tin be — the iPhone seven Plus and its dual rear cameras are hard to ignore. Still, if you cramp at a larger telephone or call up that the improvements to the iPhone 7's 12-MP camera sound like they'll meet your needs, you can opt for the smaller telephone and save yourself $120.

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Philip Michaels is a senior editor at Tom's Guide. He has strong opinions about Apple, the Oakland Athletics and old movies. Follow him at @PhilipMichaels.