5-series vs 7-series iPhone

[ericld]

I had a 5 series (LCD revision code, most people know what I am referring to. Tutorial at the end of this post) While this is the LCD rev number, it also says a lot about the phone. I gave my 5-series phone to a relative who didn't have them in their city, and got myself a new one. The second time around I got a 7 series and I'm not as happy with the overall build quality. The screen is dimmer, it is more likely to have visible white grid spots, and there is a better chance that the black plastic backing squeaks or shifts. While a 7-series owner may not experience all or any of these problems, I have all 3 maladies... although my white spots are not as prevalent as other ones I've seen.

Is there a way to tell if you have a 5 or 7 from the outside of the box before its opened? (I doubt it). Also, are there more 5's made than 7's or vice versa.

FOR NEWCOMERS, to find out what revision your phone is, go to the phone pad and dial *3001#12345#* and hit "call". Go under the "version" menu and see what the first digit is in your LCD number. 5 is preferable.

 

[jamoses66]

I had a 5 series (LCD revision code, most people know what I am referring to. Tutorial at the end of this post) While this is the LCD rev number, it also says a lot about the phone. I gave my 5-series phone to a relative who didn't have them in their city, and got myself a new one. The second time around I got a 7 series and I'm not as happy with the overall build quality. The screen is dimmer, it is more likely to have visible white grid spots, and there is a better chance that the black plastic backing squeaks or shifts. While a 7-series owner may not experience all or any of these problems, I have all 3 maladies... although my white spots are not as prevalent as other ones I've seen.

Is there a way to tell if you have a 5 or 7 from the outside of the box before its opened? (I doubt it). Also, are there more 5's made than 7's or vice versa.

FOR NEWCOMERS, to find out what revision your phone is, go to the phone pad and dial *3001#12345#* and hit "call". Go under the "version" menu and see what the first digit is in your LCD number. 5 is preferable.

Actually, aside from the dimmer (yet higher contrast LCD) the most noticeable difference I've noticed is that the 5 series iPhones have better battery life.

I am trying to collect data on the battery performance relative to the LCD series and submit it to apple engineering, so please respond to this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=3949355#post3949355 with your LCD series and your battery usage results.

 

[ecks618]

I have a 7 series but I seem to get normal battery life (after a whole day of usage i still have about 50-60% left). Should I go and try to exchange it for a 5 series, or just leave it?

 

[Jeremy Gray]

What is Apple going to do?

I mean, I have the polka dots all over mine and can literally watch my battery bar deplete whilst using Wi-Fi...but I really don't feel like driving two hours to the nearest iPhone retailer again. Is Apple going to do a recall? I mean, this seems like a pretty serious issue.

 

[phoneorpda]

Is there a way to tell if you have a 5 or 7 from the outside of the box before its opened? (I doubt it). .

i believe there isn't.

the closest you can get to not open it is to do it with the plastic still on, since you can go into "emergency call" mode and dial the Field Mode number.

 

[jersey]

I have a 7 series and really can't find any problens with it. Yes, it has faint dots at full brightness, but I only use it at half brightness, so I never see them. I compared it to a 5 series this weekend, and much prefer the saturation and contrast of the 7 to the brighter 5.

As well, my battery life is awesome. For example, today the wifi has been on since 8 am, I've talked for about 30 minutes, browsed for an hour, sent about 5 texts, and I have about 80% battery left as I type this.

Could I ask for more? Probably not.

 

[swordfish5736]

i have a 5 but am getting the battery life of a 7 and the bottom row of my keyboard has died i.e. no spacebar, numbers, or return button in text and mail and others in safari. even though sometimes it works in maps and youtube. Apple is sending me a free loaner phone while they fix mine.

my battery life is completely depleted to 20% after 3 to 4 hours of usage not sure of my stats exactly though so i'll look into that and the battery life thread

 

[swordfish5736]

I have a 7 series and really can't find any problens with it. Yes, it has faint dots at full brightness, but I only use it at half brightness, so I never see them. I compared it to a 5 series this weekend, and much prefer the saturation and contrast of the 7 to the brighter 5.

As well, my battery life is awesome. For example, today the wifi has been on since 8 am, I've talked for about 30 minutes, browsed for an hour, sent about 5 texts, and I have about 80% battery left as I type this.

Could I ask for more? Probably not.

do you mind going to the usage setting and seeing what it says about standby and usage??

 

[[G5]Hydra]

i have a 5 but am getting the battery life of a 7 and the bottom row of my keyboard has died i.e. no spacebar, numbers, or return button in text and mail and others in safari. even though sometimes it works in maps and youtube. Apple is sending me a free loaner phone while they fix mine.

my battery life is completely depleted to 20% after 3 to 4 hours of usage not sure of my stats exactly though so i'll look into that and the battery life thread

No - you are getting the battery life of a defective 5 series if that is what you have. It is bordering on ridiculous the lengths people are going to say that the 5 is "better". The above quoted post is a excellent case study. We have someone who has a 5 series phone with:

A) A Defective Battery which he likens to a 7 series battery life
&
B) The loss of the bottom row of his virtual kb (I am not entirely sure of what that means - is it the touch panel not working or the screen isn't showing you the kb?)

And yet he claims to know the 5 series is obviously better than the 7. LOL. I have never seen a screen problem like that reported as of yet so I must conclude the 5 series has a serious design flaw for such a thing to happen. You should have kept the 5 series phone though, god forbid you get a 7 series screen back. I know I would sleep much better at night knowing I had a 5 series screen even if it was non-functional This is hilarious.

 

[swordfish5736]

No - you are getting the battery life of a defective 5 series if that is what you have. It is bordering on ridiculous the lengths people are going to say that the 5 is "better". The above quoted post is a excellent case study. We have someone who has a 5 series phone with:

A) A Defective Battery which he likens to a 7 series battery life
&
B) The loss of the bottom row of his virtual kb (I am not entirely sure of what that means - is it the touch panel not working or the screen isn't showing you the kb?)

And yet he claims to know the 5 series is obviously better than the 7. LOL. I have never seen a screen problem like that reported as of yet so I must conclude the 5 series has a serious design flaw for such a thing to happen. You should have kept the 5 series phone though, god forbid you get a 7 series screen back. I know I would sleep much better at night knowing I had a 5 series screen even if it was non-functional This is hilarious.

i didnt even know what a 5 series or 7 series was until i opened the thread and wasnt thinking that mine was any less prone to defects. I was thinking of bluetooth pairing with the bmw 5 series and 7 series but turns out it was the screens.

The keyboard issue i have i've seen on here once or twice before...the conditions are while in portrait mode i loose all functions of the kb's bottom row of buttons. that part of the screen still works everywhere else like the home screens phone, mail, safari and ipod buttons and in safari portrait mode the back, forward, bookmarks and tabs button works.

 

[meagain]

I have a 7 series and have no 'polka-dot' issue. The screen is smooth, vivid, rich, with great blacks and super white whites. In all the pics of the 5's vs. 7's I've seen, I prefer the 7's as I find the 5's more washed out/pissy.

 

[hexonxonx]

I have a "7" series and have excellent battery life. I now have 12 hours of usage, mostly iPod and phone with about an hour of Safari. I recharged Friday night, still on the same charge and my phone hasn't hit the 20% warning yet.

This is the best performance so far, I turned off the automatic brightness and have only had the wifi on during the one hour of surfing.

On the screen, I haven't noticed any of the little dots people keep mentioning with the 7 screen, the colors are crisp and the display is always bright.

There is no relation between battery life and the two differant screen versions. It is just a random thing.

 

[chriswg]

Has anyone noticed a correlation between screen version and build week? Are all the latest iPhones the 7-Series or is it just random? Because if the latest builds are all the 7-Series, you can probably tell which screen you will get by the serial number on the box. (by checking the build week). I don't have an iPhone, so I can't test this. But that's how the serial numbers and build weeks are on Macs, so I assumed they were the same for iPhone boxes.

 

[iph0ne]

I went to the Apple Store and asked a Genius about the 2 different screens. He looked at me like I was crazy, said he "had no idea what I was talking about"....unless "I'm talking about the difference b/w the 4GB and the 8GB iPhone" Because apparently, the 4 GB only come with 5 LCD and the 8 GB only come with 7 LCD...but that doesn't seem like...what you guys are saying?

 

[jersey]

do you mind going to the usage setting and seeing what it says about standby and usage??

I didnt check back in after posting ,and recharged the phone last night (all the way, with the glow, and no fancy tricks needed). I'll use it as I normally would, and post the stand by late tonight or in the morning.

 

[swordfish5736]

i got my loaner phone from apple today. It is an 8gig with applecare service engraved in the back and has a 7 series screen

another thing i noticed is this only has 7.29 gigs of free space available so thats what 700mb taken up by the OS while the 4 gig has 3.49 gigs of free space so the OS is only 500mb

 

[Xenious]

If it helps I have an 8gig purchased on June 30, its version number from the field test begins with a 5. So far it seems just fine.

 

[iSee]

I've got a 7-series and the screen is superb. I know some people are having real problems with it, but I don't think that should scare anyone off the 7-series screens.

I really can't see how the relative brightness between the two is a problem since I use my phone at 1/2 brightness and it's still the brightest LCD I've ever used--when I first got it, I naturally jacked up the brightness to max, assuming that as always I would prefer this to the level they ship 'em with. LOL, just about burned my eyes out. I really had to run it at a lower level. Also, I agree with the other poster who thinks the colors on the 7-series look better. I've only seen the pictures in these forums, so I couldn't say for sure unless I saw some in person, side-by-side (maybe those 5-series just need to have the brightness turned down a little!).

I did see the white dots after trying for a while.

I turn the brightness up and then tilt the phone so I'm looking from the bottom right or left corner of the screen across the phone, with the phone tilted at about a 45 degree angle away from me. It's hard for me to consider this a flaw, though. For one thing, the colors have already started shifting in the normal LCD way, while the dots are pretty faint. At that angle color shift is much more of a problem than the dots are for quality viewing. Also, they are only visible on pure black. Thirdly, I wouldn't even be using the phone at that angle. Maybe if I was offhandedly dialing a number or changing songs, but in that case I couldn't see the dots anyway--only if I'm holding the iPhone steady, close to my face. And all this, only if I turn the brightness up beyond comfortable and hold it at exactly the right angle.

From my perspective I'd rather have the (apparently) higher quality 7-series screen whose superior color I can enjoy all the time--the dots are not there in any even semi-reasonable usage scenario. And at their worst they are very faint.

I know some of you have worse screens, but I don't think this is strictly a 5-series vs. 7-series thing.

On the other hand, my battery life bites. If the .1 patch doesn't fix it, I'll have to start calling up Apple. I can barely get from morning to bedtime, and I would describe my usage as light.

 

[weeman]

has anyone tried going to the applestore to swap the 7 series for a 5 series? how did it go?

 

[Cybergypsy]

I have a 7 and it just amazing, color is awesome and not a dot in sight, also batt is great, 4 to 5 days standby and 5 hours of use, who could ask for more?????

has anyone tried going to the applestore to swap the 7 series for a 5 series? how did it go?

my son had to exchange his because of poor batt life, not sure it was a 5 or 7, but the new one is a 7 if that helps

I went to the Apple Store and asked a Genius about the 2 different screens. He looked at me like I was crazy, said he "had no idea what I was talking about"....unless "I'm talking about the difference b/w the 4GB and the 8GB iPhone" Because apparently, the 4 GB only come with 5 LCD and the 8 GB only come with 7 LCD...but that doesn't seem like...what you guys are saying?

I have a 4 my son has a 8 both are 7's ;;;;;

 

[aristobrat]

another thing i noticed is this only has 7.29 gigs of free space available so thats what 700mb taken up by the OS while the 4 gig has 3.49 gigs of free space so the OS is only 500mb

Remember that an 8GB iPhone is really only a 7.81GB iPhone and a 4GB iPhone is really only a 3.9GB iPhone, so the 8GB model loses an extra ~100MB that the 4GB doesn't.

(The way companies advertise a GB = 1000 bytes when computers see a GB = 1024 bytes...)

 

[Hipnomac]

has anyone tried going to the applestore to swap the 7 series for a 5 series? how did it go?

I tried swapping because my dots are prevelant, and they said I was crazy, and all the phones at the store had it, and the ones they let me check were all 7 series including two employees phones.

 

[RidleyGriff]

This is why I hate paranoia threads like these.

Folks, there is no conclusive proof that a 7-series phone is any more likely to have any type of physical defect, save for the "polka dot" screen issue, and even that does not seem to affect ALL 7-series screens.

If there seems to be anecdotal evidence as to their being more reports of problems with phones with 7-series screens, this is most likely due to the fact that a limited number of 5-series phones were produced before switching to 7-series. Put simply, there are more 7-series phones in the field, so there will be more 7-series problem reports.

In other words -- if you are happy with your iPhone, and don't notice any problems -- ENJOY IT! Don't look for problems that aren't there. And if you are having issues with one of the well-known problems (polka dot, battery, etc), contact Apple, and they will take care of you.

 

[Natalia81]

i didnt even know what a 5 series or 7 series was until i opened the thread and wasnt thinking that mine was any less prone to defects. I was thinking of bluetooth pairing with the bmw 5 series and 7 series but turns out it was the screens. QUOTE]


You mean this isn't a BMW thread!

 

[ThanatosId]

I assume we are all looking at our phones from the bottom left corner at a 30 degree angle in order to see the dots on our "good" 7***** series. They are definately there in a pitch black environment, but not easily seen in any other condition. However, if you look from the top right, they are not visible at all!!
If you hold the iPhone 7 series upside down (as if you were looking at it like you always do) the black looks rich and flawless on the home page.

Is there any chance that the 5*****series could be installed differently from the 7****? Is there any chance that the dots that no one sees on the 5***** could be visible from another angle? I know this seems too simple an answer...but there is a cliche for such things for a reason.
Could any 5***** series users please go into a pitch black room with 100% brightness on the phone and tell us if you see any (even faint) dots when you hold it upside down (no jokes about the screen facing the ground please). I will be anxiously awaiting.