Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus Officially Released; Pre-orders, Price Details, Features, Specs Revealed
Water Resistance, Dual Lens Camera, No Headphone Jack, New Home Button, and Much More
The long wait is over. After spending a lot of time in the rumor mill, the new iPhone 7 lineup has finally arrived as Apple announced the new range of smartphones earlier today.
Design, Build and Display
There's really not much of a leap in terms of design and build here. Almost the same form factor as the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus is used, but with a more polished glass and aluminum body, along with a little subtler antenna band location. The IP67 certification of both the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus make them water and dust resistant.
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Two new colors are added to the lineup, a plain black and a jet black option. The usual gold, silver, and rose gold variants comes back. Both devices also sport stereo speakers, which now boasts up to twice the volume and audio quality as compared to their previous iterations.
Another drastic change comes to the iconic Home button. Being clickable in nature since the first iPhone generation, the new Home button is now somewhat flush with the body and can now be interacted with through pressure sensitivity. It produces haptic feedback, much like the MacBook force touch trackpad.
As for the display, both iPhone models sport the same Retina display as the previous generation. The 4.7-inch display of the iPhone 7 and the 5.5-inch screen of the iPhone 7 Plus use the IPS LCD technology, with 3D touch capabilities. The display is now also 25 percent brighter and has a wider color gamut than the 6S lineup.
As per the negatively-received rumors for so long, the headphone jack is indeed gone. However, Apple is packaging new EarPod headphones with Lightning cable out of the box. They will also include a 3.5mm to Lightning adapter.
Performance
On paper, the internal specs of every iPhone iteration seems a bit underwhelming as compared to its Android competitors. However, do take note that Apple boasts the efficiency of their processors, along with maximum software optimization, so handling light to heavy tasks is a breeze.
The new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are equipped with the new generation A10 Fusion chip. It packs a quad-core CPU with about 3.3 billion transistors. These consist of two high-performance cores and balanced by two power-saving ones. They are said to run 40 percent faster than the A9.
The new GPU is a hexa-core processor, which is 50 percent faster than the predecessor. It also draws just about 66 percent of power upon usage. The 2GB of RAM present on both devices seems to be a step back, but it's actually enough to manage tasks and store them on memory. The new storage options are now doubled, with the base model being at 32GB, topping out at 256GB. No expandable storage here, as per Apple tradition.
As said above, we cannot talk about iPhone's performance based on hardware alone. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will be coming with the new iOS 10. This OS has already been launched earlier this year, with public betas already being released. This version brings new productivity and efficiency tools to the Apple system, with deeper integration among apps and devices.
The battery life of the iPhone 7 is said to last at least two hours more than the iPhone 6S. Likewise, the iPhone 7 Plus is equipped to last at least an hour more than the iPhone 6S Plus.
Camera
The iPhone 7 comes with an improved 12-megapixel rear camera. It has an f/1.8 aperture on a 6-element lens. It features the same Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) technology as the previous version, as well as the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS).
The back camera is now 60 percent faster and 30 percent more efficient than the previous sensor. It now has a quad-LED setup for flash. The same video recording capabilities of up to 4K with various features are also available here. The front-facing camera has an upgraded 7-megapixel sensor, capable of capturing 1080p videos.
We now go to the iPhone 7 Plus that comes with a dual camera setup. The two 12-megapixel sensors at the back offers the same elements, PDAF, and OIS technologies. However, the first 28mm lens offers a wide-angle view with an aperture of f/1.8. The second one offers a 58mm telephoto perspective that comes with an f/2.8 aperture. The same FaceTime camera upgrade also appears here.
Price and Availability
Pricing for the base 32GB model of the iPhone 7 comes at $649, going up with the 128GB and 256 models. The iPhone 7 Plus then also comes with the same storage options, starting at $769. Pre-orders will start on September 9, with official availability being at September 16.
