The iPhone 7 is clad in an aluminium body alongside a layer of glass and needless to say with the iPhone 7 we see a minor departure from the usual iPhone design as opposed to the 6 and the 6s. Unlike its immediate predecessor the iPhone 7 also comes finished in an optional glossy black finish. The home button has been the quintessential input method when it comes to the iPhone right from the beginning but with the iPhone 7, the home button is no more a mechanical key. The non-mechanical key has been reengineered to become a force sensitive solid state input alongside the taptic engine. The home screen button can now be used for quick actions and can also open up to new features with the Taptic Engine API.
The display on the iPhone 7 and the 7Plus have been updated to make room for 25% increase in brightness, wide color gamut, color management, and 3D Touch. The iPhone 7 comes with a 4.7-inch Retina HD display while the iPhone 7 Plus retains the 5.5-inch Retina HD display. As expected Apple has also made a slew of changes on the imaging front, now iPhone 7 and the 7 Plus both will come with Optical Image Stabilization, f1.8 apertures, new six-elements lens all packed along with a 12-Megapixel sensor that Apple claims is 60 percent faster and 30 percent more energy efficient. In order to make the photos captured in artificial light better, Apple has added a TrueTone flash laced with four LEDs and a flicker sensor. Apple is also touting the new image processor which will use the “machine learning” to deduce the screen conditions and automatically set the focus exposure and color. That said, the iPhone 7 Plus will now feature two camera sensors at the rear, one a wide-angle sensor and another a Telephoto. Dual camera setup is expected to help in creating an optical zoom feature on the iPhone.
iPhone 7 also comes with a few improvements on the Live Photos front, first of all, users will now be able to edit live photos which include the option to crop and filter. On a related note, iOS 10 also supports RAW and wide color in the apps. Now moving on, the front camera on the iPhone 7 has been updated to a 7-Megapixel sensor with auto image stabilization. The Optical zoom feature works from 1X -5X after which it is a software zoom. Also, the dual cameras create a depth map to explicitly detect the subjects of a photo and blur the background. Apple has also taken due care of the audio and for the very first time iPhone 7 comes with stereo speakers placed at each vertical end of the phone. Now coming to yet another heartbreaking change, as rumoured earlier Apple has ditched the 3.5mm audio jack for the lightning connector. Well, the consolation is that Apple still includes an adapter dongle which in turn accommodates the 3.5mm jack. Another accessory is the wireless earpods called the AirPods which will come in a case and last for 5 hours on a single charge. Thankfully, there is no hoopla including pairing, connecting or resetting the connection. The battery and the charger are built inside the case and will automatically pair once removed from the case. It comes with the new Apple W1 Chip which is dedicated to handling audio and wireless connection and the infrared sensors will detect when they are in your ear. Powering the new iPhones is the latest chip from Apple called the A10 Fusion. Stating the claims, the new chip is reportedly 40x faster than the A9 in the 6S and comes with two high-performance cores. The two high-efficiency cores operate at 1/5 the usual power and naturally, are much more frugal on the battery. On the graphics front, iPhone 7 and 7 Plus come equipped with a new GPU that ensures 50 percent faster performance than the A9. International roaming shouldn’t be a problem since both the devices support 25 LTE bands. Apple claims to have achieved the longest battery life ever in an iPhone with the updated battery that will last “two-hours” more than the iPhone 6s. Now for the pricing, iPhone 7 will start retailing from $649 for the 32GB variant while the iPhone 7 Plus starts at $769 for the 32GB variant, Apple has also doubled its entry-level storage across its entire iPhone lineup, which is a great news indeed. The iPhone 7 will be offered in storages up to 256GB. The preorders start from September 9th whereas the devices will start shipping from September 16th. If you are interested in the wireless AirPods it can be yours at $169.
