Snuffling amongst the reviewers who actually had a copy of the iPhone 7 to play with, rather than trotting out the usual Tame Apple Press line about it being “super, cool and wonderful” it would appear that the phone is poor value for money.

The Guardian complained about the iPhone’s tired, out-of-date design and its poor battery life.

“To make matters worse, the iPhone 7 has the worst of all worlds: short battery life and tediously slow charging. Even using the 12W charger that came with the iPad Pro it took well over two hours to fully charge the iPhone 7.”

It thundered: “The iPhone 7 is a missed opportunity. Apart from a bit of fluff retention the fit and finish, the cameras, fingerprint scanner, snappy performance and waterproofing are all great. But what does it matter how good it is when the battery is dead?”

Techradar said that the battery was better than the iPhone S but the sound quality from the ear phones was rubbish and the fact it was waterproof was really unexciting.

“It's been done already by Sony on the Xperia Z and Samsung on the Galaxy S7, and those phones combined impressive design with the reassurance that you could sling them in a lake and still have a working phone.”

Techradar also said the design was nothing new and the price was too high for what you are getting.

Even when the reviewer is still trying to flog the Apple dream, they are being forced to admit the phone is buggy. Digitrends after finding the earphone buds kept cutting out for no reason said: “Our conclusion: It’s a fantastic phone. Yes, its lack of a headphone jack is frustrating at times, but the water resistance, fast processor, and dual rear cameras with 2x optical zoom make up for it.”

In other words the key feature of the phone is borked but it is still “fantastic.” Apple’s favourite newspaper New York Times review failed to mention anything about the phone other than trying to sell the fact it did not have a wired headphone connection.There is no point reading anything the New York Times says about Apple, you might as well read the Apple web page.