Apple unveiled its latest iPhone, and it had plenty to say. Here a few of the important updates.
It does not have a headphone jack:
Wave goodbye to the 3.5mm stereo headphone jack; say hello to wireless and lightning connectors. Apple was widely rumoured to be ditching the old fashioned headphone jack in favour of using the lightning connector for audio, and it turned out that rumour was true. The good news is Apple will be putting an adapter in the box along with a set of EarPods with the new connector, so you can carry on using your regular headphones – as long as you do not lose the adapter. It is not the prettiest of solutions though, and we get the impression that we are all being steered in another direction: wireless headphones.
It’s a home button, but not as we know it:
Remember when the iPod used to have a click wheel? That soon went by the wayside. It seems as if the iPhone’s Home button is going the same way. No longer a physical button to click, the iPhone 7’s Home button is pressure sensitive and gives haptic feedback. It is going to take a bit of getting used to, but we may soon discuss the old Home button with the same level of nostalgia we give the click wheel – as long as no one forces us to go back there, we’ll do just fine.
The camera has been improved:
The iPhone 7 got a bumped up camera – a 12 megapixel sensor – and optical image stabilisation. But the iPhone 7 Plus has the real step up in technology. The bigger handset has the dual camera system that combines a 56mm telephoto and a wide angle lens in one. That means you can use optical zoom to get a bit closer at the touch of a button. Up to 2x zoom is optical; anything above that is digital. There will be more to come later with a software update that will brings depth of field to portraits shot on the iPhone 7 Plus.
It has stereo speakers:
The new iPhone 7 takes a bit of inspiration from the iPad pro in that it packs in some extra sound equipment: one speaker in the traditional place, beside the Lightning connector, the other at the top, using the earpiece. Stereo speakers mean better sound, but let’s not get too carried away. They’re still phone speakers after all.
Wave goodbye to 16GB
We’ve felt the 16GB version of the iPhone was on the way out for a while, taking over from the 8GB version as the one with too little storage space but cheap enough to justify keeping it around as “entry level” model. Now Apple has decided to ditch the smallest capacity and make 32GB the smallest iPhone 7 storage option. You can also get it in 128GB and 256GB.
No more Space Gray:
Instead, you get a choice of silver, gold, rose gold and black for the 32GB, 128GB and 256GB version, and a glossy black for 128GB and 256GB. So long, Space Gray, it was nice knowing you.
The launch date:
The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will go on sale on September 16th, although preorders will start on September 9th. Ireland is among the first group of countries to get the new phones.
