Living with an 8-Year-Old iPhone, some surprises

The plan was to see how well 2016’s best phone copes with 2024 conditions. The iPhone 7 Plus became my main handheld device for two months.

It fared better than I expected, although there were frustrations. What I learned surprised me.

In the end, I couldn’t wait any longer to upgrade to an iPhone 16 Plus. There were two reasons for ending the experiment.

Today's bigger displays are better than you think

First, the display.

While going from a 5.5 inch screen to a 6.7 inch screen doesn’t sound like a big jump, there is 50 percent more viewable screen. You get so much more from the bigger, brighter modern display.

Compared with the practical reality of a larger screen, most of the other differences between the two phones pale into insignificance. Most, but not all.

Software is the biggest issue

Operating system upgrades for the iPhone 7 Plus stopped with iOS 15. There was an update earlier this year, the phone runs iOS 15.8.1.

It’s a recent enough update not to be a security headache and it performs well enough. But there is one major drawback, many apps do not support iOS 15.

When I flew to Wellington in November, the Air New Zealand app needed updating, but the app requires a more recent version of iOS to function. For the first time in years I needed a paper boarding pass.

That’s not a deal breaker in itself, but there were other apps that would only function with a new version of iOS. And when one flipped from usable to unusable during my short time with the phone, the writing was on the wall.

What I didn’t miss when I downgraded

There are many nice-to-have newer iPhone features that I found I could live without when I switched from the iPhone 15 to the iPhone 7 Plus.

Face ID is better than the Touch ID used by the iPhone 7 Plus, but it’s not essential. The main benefit of moving to Face ID is that it frees up the front of phone space for more screen.

New iPhones have built-in wireless charging, the older one did not. I have a wireless charger, but rarely use it. The only time this feature caught me out was when I was staying overnight in a hotel and put the old phone on a wireless charger, then woke up with a nearly empty battery.

I had a spare Lightning cable for charging the older iPhone. When I travelled away from home it meant remembering and carrying an extra cord, but that’s not a big deal.

Modern features I barely missed

There’s no question the 3nm A18 chip and 8 GB of LPDDR5 Ram offer much faster performance and better energy efficiency than the iPhone 7 Plus’s 16nm A10 Fusion chip with 3 GB of Ram. But I can’t say I really noticed the higher processor power in practice.

That’s probably because I don’t use demanding apps on my phone. And, admittedly, some of the recent apps that need power don’t run on the older iOS anyway. Yet, at no point in my time with the older phone did I find myself thinking things were sluggish.

Battery life, on the other hand, was noticeable. There’s just about enough juice in the iPhone 7 Plus to get through an extended working day on a single charge.

I sometimes experienced ‘range anxiety,’ though I never ran out of power completely. I did have to remember to be careful. There is none of this with newer iPhones. They have larger batteries and more frugal processors.

It was only when I checked the specifications of both phones to write this post that I noticed the iPhone 7 Plus doesn’t have 5G network support. At no point was this a problem. Indeed, there is no discernible difference between 4G and 5G network performance in everyday use.

Camera, nice but less important than you might think

All phone makers spend a lot of energy telling customers about the fabulous cameras on their phones. And yes, the ones on newer handsets are way better than the Dual 12 MP cameras and 2X optical zoom on the iPhone 7 Plus.

But at no point during the two month experiment was this an issue. I never found myself thinking “how I wish I had dual 48 MP main and 12 MP ultra-wide cameras, with enhanced low-light performance, cinematic mode and 4K video recording at 60 fps to capture this scene”.

If anything, I like the fact that pictures from the iPhone 7 Plus were instantly usable. If I ever take pictures on a newer iPhone, I have to stuff around converting them from the fancy formats like HEIC to jpg before sending them to the newspaper subs.

This was a revelation and helped me clarify thoughts about which modern phone to buy at the end of the experiment. I may previously have considered the iPhone 16 Pro Max on the grounds that I could get better work photos with the upscale camera. That fact that iPhone 7 Plus images are more than adequate spared the additional expense.

What did this teach me about modern iPhones?

Despite being eight years old, the iPhone 7 Plus came close to being all the phone I need for my work. At a pinch I could live with the smaller, less bright display, I might not be as productive or get as much from the phone, but it’s a compromise that could be worth making.

In comparison the software issue is a step too far. Yes, you can get longer life from your hardware and security isn’t scary on an eight-year-old iPhone. But the lack of key apps is only going to get worse over time. During the test I noticed one of my apps updated to a new version that’s not usable on the older phone. Sadly I was in a hurry at the time and didn’t document that.

This exercise emphasised the importance of iPhone software. Eight years is about the limit of usefulness for an iPhone if you need it for serious work. A six year old model would fare much better.