maybe I can clear it up, there is hissing as on most phones, laptops and electronic gadgets and my guess this is just a lottery from manufacturing variances in components, this will manifest as a constant hiss if you listen closely to the phone and in my opinion if you can only hear it with the phone stuck in your ear then it's nothing to worry about and likely is in line with most units, however some people have received really bad units where they can hear it with the phone far away in which case I can understand not being happy with it but I imagine all units will do this to some degree, as noted it's been on previous phones too.
Then there is white noise which is to be expected in a quiet room where the phone boosts the gain really high and again just about every smartphone microphone will display this, this too will be on every single phone out there, it's just the way these things work.
However I think the issue people are having is that recordings are picking up noise that isn't just white noise and instead seems to be a combination of the hissing and another noise that consists of ticks and hisses (this noise could be interference or it could be physical and is being picked up by the mic being so sensitive), this noise isn't constant and manifests.. well it sounds something like "scutscutscutscutscutTSSSscutscutscutscutTSSSTSSSTSSSSscutscutscutscutscut" and as far as I know this new to the 7 though I could be wrong if anyone wants to prove otherwise.
If it is physical then I don't think there is a fix and will too come down to a lottery, some people will get lucky and get a quiet phone but if the odds are anything like with coil whine (which this sound really reminds me of) in other products then the odds are against you and I hope Apple would try to compensate through software by reducing the max gain on that mic.