We had to deal with annoying rumors for over a year now but all that struggle has finally paid off as the Apple’s new iPhones have finally arrived.
Not surprisingly, Apple has gone for two versions of its flagship smartphone. One is your regular iPhone 7 and the other is iPhone 7 Plus.
The two iPhone 7’s can’t be called exact twins but there is enough similarity between the two that both of them are practically glass and aluminum reflections of what Apple has shown us before with its iPhone series.
The good news is that even though the iPhone 7 isn’t all that revolutionary when compared to the previous models of iPhone, the new iPhone 7 offers enough tweaks which warrants, at the very least, some amount of attention if not an outright buy.
The iPhone 7 is the first iPhone model in which Apple has stuck with the old design for more than two years.
In other words, the iPhone 7 looks pretty much like the previous models of iPhone because it has almost the same exterior design. But Apple has placed a big bet on smaller, less noticeable, changes.
Not only that but Apple has also improved and completely removed some core features of the iPhone that brought so much success to the company in the last decade or so.
For starters, the new iPhone 7 has a glossy back and has a vastly improved processor which, the company hopes, will enable users to get work done quickly and without interruptions.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into the new 2016 iPhone 7.
Is The Design Any Good?
Well, let’s just say that the new design is pretty traditional. Jony Ive, who is the Chief Design Officer at Apple, mesmerized the audience with a brilliant introductory video for the new iPhone 7.
The presentation focused on the new and improved gloss finish along with the completely redesigned camera housing.
After Jony had his say, the stage was given to Phil Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple, who then explained to the audience, in detail, all new the changes the company made to the new iPhone 7, live on stage.
As far as the color of the new iPhone was concerned, Schiller essentially confirmed what everyone else already suspected from the start.
Apple indeed kicked out the space Grey color in favor of Black for its new iPhone 7.
Other design changes included Apple’s completely redesigned home button which by the looks of it, wasn’t an actual button anymore.
The Home button, before iPhone 7, was iPhone’s sole physical button which was used for navigation. It looks like Apple’s patience with the home button finally ran out after seven years of the same home button.
Schiller, in his presentation, also said that the new button was more reliable and robust which would give consumers more customization options.
It was also revealed that the Apple used a new generation taptic engine for the iPhone 7’s home button which meant that the button was now Force Touch sensitive.
The new iPhone, now, can make use of advanced technology to provide a special feedback for different applications such as messages, ringtones, and notifications.
However, Apple was much less open about how the company managed to make all this work. Of course, industry insiders will manage to find out one way or the other and that too, sooner rather than later.
And perhaps this is the time we should mention that Apple introduced another unique feature. That “unique” feature hasn’t been given a name but, we have been told, that the new feature would make the new iPhone 7 toilet proof.
In other words, your Apple iPhone 7 is now water resistance. Be careful though, water resistant doesn’t necessarily mean water proof.
Apple said that the company re-engineered the iPhone’s casing because of which the new iPhone 7 can endure most cases where the smartphone might be dropped in a water body.
Whether this “much-needed” feature would become the reason for iPhone 7’s success or not, will be known in the next couple of months. But what is for sure is that a water resistant smartphone is always better than a non-water resistant smartphone.
People who have the habit of dropping their smartphones on a regular basis will certainly appreciate this “cutting-edge” feature.
What About The Camera?
After the physical design, Apple’s focus remained, heavily, on the iPhone 7’s new camera design for the remainder of the event.
Apple revealed that the company had remade the two camera system for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
It was announced that now, each iPhone would come with an optical image stabilization software and an f/1.8 aperture lens.
In other words, the new iPhone 7 will be able to take much better images in low-light conditions. At least that is what we are hoping.
Apple also told the audience that the company had made some significant changes to the flash to enable the new iPhone take brighter images.
Thanks to the new camera technology, iPhone 7 will be able to capture subtler tones. The improved image processor would allow users to edit their photos with much more precision than before.
The new iPhone 7 comes with the brand new iOS 10 and the new operating system will allow users to capture RAW photos.
The primary camera (that is the front-facing one) has a 7-megapixels sensor which is a significant improvement over the 5-megapixels sensor that was installed on the iPhone 6S.
Schiller also shed some light on the much speculated dual camera system on the new iPhone 7 Plus.
It was revealed that the dual camera system had two lenses. One was a normal lens and the other was a telephoto lens.
Schiller also told the gathering that the new camera system could build a zoom feature right into the new iPhone.
It was explained that when the camera app is running on the new smartphone, a new button can perform 2X zoom almost instantly with the help of nothing but a single tap.
The situation changes if one wants to zoom further than 2X as the zoom feature, then, depends on software.
Needless to say, that the telephoto lens enables the new iPhone to capture images that are much clearer when compared to previous iPhones, when zoomed in.
There is also a bit of AI involved in the new iPhone’s camera system as it was revealed that the dual camera lenses could make use of machine learning in order to create a depth map of sorts.
If users select the “portrait” mode in the new camera application then the smartphone will immediately show the depth effect. That too in real time.
Of course, no one got to test the new AI feature but the image results that were shown by Schiller looked remarkably impressive.
The new iPhone 7, just like the iPhone 6S, can record videos in 4K resolution at 30fps. This essentially debunks the rumors which suggested that Apple might go for a 60fps video regarding instead of the regular 30.
iPhone 7 Specifications
As far as specs go, Apple has stuck with the trusty LCD Retina display. But as with all latest Apple products, the company has made sure that the new LCD display is much brighter than before.
Schiller also addressed the most, pre-launch, talked about feature of all time for any smartphone: the iPhone 7’s audio.
But Schiller cleverly tried to cloak the imminent bad news by, first, talking about the iPhone 7’s “new and improved” stereo speakers.
Shortly afterwards, he showed off the Lightning-only Apple EarPods.
If you’re still scratching your head then yes, the 3.5mm headphone jack is no more.
But Apple made sure that everyone knew the new deal. Schiller stated that there were over 900 million devices that were connected through Lightning ports. He used the example of JBL at the start.
Not is all lost though. Apple also revealed that the new iPhone 7 would come with an audio jack adaptor.
Schiller also said that the reason to move away from the headphone jacks came down to one word. That word was revealed to be courage, but frankly, who cares as long as one can afford to buy the new iPhone 7.
Schiller further added that it was very important that Apple smartphones were packed with the latest technologies. He said that there were a lot of features that fought for space inside the company’s new smartphone device.
He finished off by saying that maintaining an ancient analog connector did not make sense as far as the new iPhone 7 was concerned.
Apple also spoke about how the company’s vision for audio would be wireless. To realize that future Apple has given us Apple AirPods.
Apple’s new earphones will have a rather long battery life of 5 hours from a single complete charge.
The iPhone will be able to recognize the new AirPods right out of the box. All that is required from the user’s side is a simple tap on the “connect” message.
Schiller explained that it was possible because of the new chip called W1. Apple’s AirPods were revealed to be customizable as one could set up one pod to answer calls (or interact with Siri) and the other to intelligently route the sound to the other pod when required.
Moreover, Apple will make AirPods available for purchase sometime in October. They will cost users around $160.
Just for clarity’s sake: you won’t get AirPods in iPhone 7’s box.
Towards the end of the presentation, Schiller talked about the new A10 Fusion chip.
The iPhone 7 will ship with a 64-bit quad-core processor. And since two of those cores will be high-performance cores, the iPhone 7 will be able to run 40 percent faster than iPhone 6S.
Not only that, the iPhone 7 will run twice as fast as the older iPhone 6.
And just for fun, the new iPhone 7 will be 120 times faster than the iPhone that was released in 2007.
So what about the rest of the cores?
Well, the other two cores will be high-efficiency cores. These cores will handle lightweight applications which will save iPhone 7’s battery life.
For what it’s worth, the new iPhone’s graphic chip was also revealed to be 50 percent faster when compared to iPhone 6S’s.
Schiller also told the audience that users would be able to get LTE browsing for 12 and 13 hours on the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus respectively.
Those figures are about 2 hours higher than what one could get from iPhone 6S.
But enough with the numbers game. Let’s just hope that these powerful specs will enable the new iPhone 7 to perform significantly better out in the real world as well.
iPhone 7 Price
The new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will cost you the same amount of money that the iPhone 6S did. In other words, you can get yourself an iPhone 7 and 7 Plus for $650 and $770 respectively.
You should also know that Apple has doubled the amount of storage for each of its new iPhone models.
So you won’t be able to buy an iPhone with less than 32GB of storage (or more than 256GB).
It was also announced that iPhone 6S would also receive the double storage upgrade.
You can order your new iPhone starting from September 9th. The new devices will start shipping on September 16th and the new operating system, iOS 10, will arrive on all devices on September 13.
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