by: Ivan Habib
Website Editor
My first phone was my mom’s old iPhone 6. Despite being the best-selling iPhone of all time, the prohibitive latency and bottlenecked at iOS 12 rendered me unable to do much of anything on the ten-year-old phone. The next logical upgrade would probably be the somewhat recent iPhone 15, or perhaps a less expensive refurbished iPhone 11. However, why would I spend, at minimum, an extra $400, when my grandma had several iPhone 7’s lying around, an ancient relic of the many internet and phone carriers giving new phones for free. As such, my next phone was the iPhone 7 Plus. Society is slowly forgetting the amazingness of the iPhone 7, which is coming up on its tenth anniversary. Deprecated in 2022, I can proudly claim my phone as officially, Apple deemed “vintage.” With my vintage status, I am stuck at iOS 15, meaning that the quintessential Canvas, Google Docs, Quizlet, and of course, Chat-GPT are entirely non-functional on my phone. Even the web versions of these tools come with obscure zooming, inaccessible buttons, and the classic freeze-and-restart. The only silver lining? While my phone might render productivity infeasible, it is recent enough to support Clash Royale — because who needs a GPA when you can destroy your opponents’ dreams with a level 15 Mega Knight (relax, I do not play Mega Knight. I have some standards).
In all honesty, the iPhone 7 Plus is a tank. Despite the significant operating system’s lack of support, its structural integrity remains impressive. Whereas my friends will drop their phones once and have them completely shatter, I have dropped my phone over three times in the past month alone. I like to think of the screen protector scratches as battle scars. My iPhone 7 is a survivor. The home button still tricks me every time, an insane feat of engineering, getting me to press a button that does not even exist. My battery life, despite crossing the dreaded 80% cliff, still lasts me a full day with ease. My 12 megapixels, despite taking every single picture with a “cinematic blur” that is definitely not the result of my repeatedly scratching the lens, gives each memory a charming appeal. Each moment I wait in agony for an app to load is a moment of mindfulness. And best of all, I never paid 1,500 dollars for a slight improvement in the newest iPhone.