IPHONE 7: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW
It’s official: Apple has announced the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, finally confirming months of rumours and speculation.
Today, Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The new handsets are direct sequels to last year's iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, and feature a new A10 chip, improved cameras, and stereo speakers. Oh, and they're both water-resistant – huzzah!
Here’s a quick rundown of the iPhone 7 specs:
- 4.7-inch screen
- 1,334 x 750 pixel display (326ppi pixel density)
- Dimensions: 183.3 x 67.1 x 7.1mm
- Weight: 138g
- A10 Fusion (64-bit, quad-core CPU, six-core GPU)
- 32/128/256GB storage
- 12-megapixel main camera (OIS, f/1.8)
- 7-megapixel secondary camera
- Stereo speakers
- Fingerprint scanner
- IP67 water-resistant
- iOS 10 software
- Colours: Jet Black, Black, Silver, Gold, Rose Gold
And here are the iPhone 7 Plus specs:
- 5.5-inch screen
- 1,920 x 1,080 pixel display (401ppi pixel density)
- Dimensions: 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3mm
- Weight: 188g
- A10 Fusion (64-bit, quad-core CPU, six-core GPU
- 32/128/256GB storage
- 12-megapixel main camera (OIS, f/1.8, dual-lens)
- 7-megapixel secondary camera
- Stereo speakers
- Fingerprint scanner
- IP67 water-resistant
- iOS 10 software
- Colours: Jet Black, Black, Silver, Gold, Rose Gold
The iPhone 7 release date is 16 September, but you can pre-order from 9 September. Prices for the iPhone 7 start at £599/$649, and the iPhone 7 Plus at £719/$769.
IPHONE 7 A10 PROCESSOR: APPLE’S MOST POWERFUL CHIP EVER
Both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus feature Apple’s new system-on-a-chip, the A10 Fusion. It’s a 64-bit, quad-core processor that Apple promises is 40% faster than the A9, and twice as fast as the A8. Whoosh!
Two of the A10 Fusion’s cores are high performance, and will handle the most demanding tasks. There are also two high-efficiency cores that run at a fifth of the power, which are used for more menial tasks. To manage this process, Apple has designed a new performance controller that decides which cores to use when.
Apple's new iPhone 7 in 'Rose Gold'
Apple also says that the graphical performance of the A10 Fusion is 50% better than that of the A9, and three times as fast as the A8. That’s thanks to a six-core GPU that uses two-thirds of the A9’s power and a half of the A8’s power. Apparently, the A10 Fusion is 240 times faster than the original iPhone processor.
It’s rumoured to have been built by Taiwan’s TSMC, although it isn't clear whether it was manufactured on a 16nm process, or a more efficient 14nm process like the Snapdragon 820 that features in the Samsung Galaxy S7.
IPHONE 7 DISPLAY: A NEW RETINA HD DISPLAY
Apple has also improved the displays on its new handsets, which feature a new Retina HD display. The display is 25% brighter than last year's model, and offers a newly wide colour gamut that achieves "cinema P3 standard colours". Apple also boasted of "end-to-end" colour management, and the return of the integrated 3D Touch layer that debuted on last year's iPhone 6S.
IPHONE 7 STORAGE: NEWER, BIGGER OPTIONS
Apple has finally ditched the 16GB base storage variant, which is sure to please media-hungry and app-hungry users. Instead, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus start at 32GB, just like the rival Galaxy S7. Apple has also added a new storage tier – 256GB. The maximum iPhone storage is now higher than some MacBook models. Hallelujah.
So to recap, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are both available in 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB.
IPHONE 7 SOFTWARE: IOS 10, FINALLY!
As expected, Apple’s new iOS 10 software will debut on the iPhone 7.
Apple's iOS 10 is launching on the iPhone 7
The software is much smarter than last year’s iOS 9, and features a more powerful lockscreen with notifications and advanced widgets. The new OS will also make better use of 3D Touch, with many functions accessible without having to enter a given app. Siri will also be far more powerful thanks to the (long-awaited) addition of third-party app support, and a new Home app will provide better support for smart home technology.
You can read more about iOS 10 here.
IPHONE 7 DESIGN: IT'S BASICALLY THE SAME
The iPhone 7 has changed very little compared to the iPhone 6S. For a quick rundown, here's what Jony Ive, chief design officer at Apple, had to say:
"An aluminium body and form sheet of glass describe a singular shape, one made with very few, very precisely engineered parts. Our obsession remains to continuously simplify and improve. From sculpting the camera housing directly out of the aluminium body to embedding the antenna within the enclosure, essentially making it disappear, each refinement serves to bring absolute unity and efficiency to the design."
There is one other design change, mind...
IPHONE 7 WATER-RESISTANCE: SPLASH AWAY, FRIENDS
The new iPhone 7 is water- and dust-resistant. Specifically, it's IP67-certified, which is better than any previous iPhone... ever.
That basically means that dunking your phone in the bath is still stupid, but using it in the rain shouldn’t fry the hardware. Still, as is always the case with water-resistance, we recommend thinking of it as a last-resort feature and not something you should try to push to its limits.
IPHONE 7 CAMERA: DUAL-LENS IS A REALITY
The iPhone 7 has been upgraded, finally getting optical image stabilisation. There's also a wider f/1.8 aperture that takes in 50% more light. That's not to mention a new Apple-designed ISP, a six-element lens, True Tone flash (again), and a 12-megapixel image sensor.
“Customers are going to love taking pictures with iPhone 7,” said Phil Schiller, SVP of Worldwide Marketing. “This is the best camera we’ve ever made on any iPhone. It’s also the best camera we’ve had on the front side. There’s a new 7-megapixel FaceTime HD camera. This is up from 5 megapixels."
However, there's no dual-lens system on the standard iPhone 7 – sorry, small-handed folk.
But there is a dual-lens camera on the iPhone 7 Plus; one lens is wide-angle, while the other is telephoto. This allowed Apple to add a new zoom feature, which Schiller described as "remarkable". Check it out:
Schiller also talked about one extra new iPhone 7 Plus camera feature: shallow depth of field. The new camera ISP scans the scene and uses machine learning to create a depth map of an image. This allows the camera to keep the foreground in focus, and applies a blur to the background. To achieve this, you just select the "Portrait" setting, which launches the telephoto lens. You should automatically see the depth effect generated in real-time as you look at your screen.
"It's something that is illustrative of a great camera," explained Schiller. "The quality of that background blur is called bokeh, and the quality of that is something found in great camera systems."
IPHONE 7 SPEAKERS: NOW IN STEREO
Apple has finally moved to a stereo speaker system, putting speakers at the top and bottom of the phone. This should result in better audio in landscape mode, and you'll also get double the loudness of the iPhone 6S. Speaking at the announcement, Schiller added: "They [also] sound better because they have an increased dynamic range."
NO HEADPHONE JACK ON IPHONE 7?!
Yes, it actually happened.
A new feature of the iPhone 7 is that it doesn’t have a headphone jack. The 3.5mm port is gone, which means your bog-standard pair of headphones won’t plug into the device anymore. Explaining the decision, Schiller said:
"The reason to move on, it really comes down to one word: courage. The courage to move on, to do something new, that betters all of us."
Fortunately, there are a bunch of alternatives to the clumsy old headphone jack. For a start, Apple is shipping the new iPhones with Lightning-connector earbuds, plus an adapter to convert old headphones too. What’s more, you can already buy Lightning-friendly headphones from third parties, so all is not lost just yet.
The second alternative is Bluetooth. There are plenty of Bluetooth headphones in the wild, many of which offer seriously impressive audio performance. Apple announced its own wireless Apple AirPods during the keynote, which feature a new W1 chip. So those will work fine too. Plus, there are new wireless Beats that run on that same W1 chip. Cheers, Dre.
The new AirPods will also be coming in "late October" for £159/$159.
IPHONE 7 BATTERY LIFE: LONGEST BATTERY LIFE EVER, APPARENTLY
Apple reckons the iPhone 7 can manage 40 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, and 60 hours for the iPhone 7 Plus. Watching video wirelessly will kill your iPhone 7 after 13 hours; after 14 hours for the iPhone 7 Plus.
We don't yet have the exact battery capacity, however. We'll also have to wait for a review model before we can say anything about battery life for sure. Here are Apple's figures:
NEW IPHONE 7 COLOURS REVEALED
Apple has introduced new colour options with the iPhone 7. There’s the usual Gold, Silver, and Rose Gold, for a start. And now there’s also Black and Jet Black. What happened to Space Grey? No idea, but it’s definitely dead.
Oh, and don't forget that Jet Black is only available on 128GB and 256GB models. It's also the only glossy colour option – the rest are matte.
IPHONE 7 RELEASE DATE AND PRICE
Both new phones will be coming to the UK. The iPhone 7 pre-order date is 9 September, while the iPhone 7 release date is 16 September. The phones will ship in 28 countries at launch, with a further 30 countries getting the handsets a week later.
EE, Three, and Vodafone have all confirmed to TrustedReviews that they will be ranging both new phones. Pricing is as follows:
- iPhone 7 | 32GB | £599 / $649
- iPhone 7 | 128GB | £699 / $749
- iPhone 7 | 256GB | £799 / $849
- iPhone 7 Plus | 32GB | £719 / $769
- iPhone 7 Plus | 128GB | £819 / $869
- iPhone 7 Plus | 256GB | £919 / $969
The iPhone 7 launches around one year after the iPhone 6S, which was Apple’s best-selling phone to date, setting a new first-weekend sales record of 13 million models – that was up from 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units sold in 2014. However, many analysts and bookmakers are expecting the iPhone 7 to under-perform on the shop-floor compared to its predecessor.
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