Apple today announced the iPhone 7, the latest version of its flagship product.
The device is machines from aluminum and features a refreshed design. The home button, which owners use hundreds of times per day, is now a capacitive, force-sensitive button that works with a taptic engine to create an entirely new feedback feel. The enclosures are water and dust resistant. It rates IP67 thanks to new seals and baffles. The camera is all new.
It includes a large-pixel, 12-megapixel sensor with f/1.8 aperture and six-element lens with optical image stabilization. The quad-tone LED flash helps balance skin tones and wide color gamut. An image signal processor makes billions of calculations in a fraction of a second to ensure the best photos. The camera adds stabilization to Live Photo capture, and iOS 10 permits RAW image capture both from the Apple camera app as well as third-party camera apps. The user-facing camera has a 7-megapixel sensor with wide color and image stabilization.
The iPhone 7 Plus adds a second, telephoto 12-megapixel camera. The main camera has an effective focal length of 28mm, and the second has an effective focal length of 56mm for a zoomed-in effect. Apple is calling it 2x optical zoom and, when combined with digital zoom, produces higher quality photos at up to 10x zoom. The 7 Plus also includes a Bokeh effect to create better portraiture. (This feature will be added to the 7 Plus later this year.)
Apple updated the displays, which it says are 25% brighter than last year’s models, offer a wide color gamut, color management, and 3D Touch. For the first time, the iPhone includes stereo speakers that are twice as loud as the 2015 iPhones and have twice the dynamic range. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus remove the headphone jack and rely on just the Lightning port for audio connections. The devices will ship with Lightning earbuds, as well as a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter.
The new iPhones rely on the A10 Fusion processor, which Apple says is 40% faster than last year’s A9 and twice as face as the 2014-era A8. The four-core CPU offers two high-efficiency cores that run at one-fifth the power draw for low-intensity or background tasks. Graphics are improved, too. Apple says battery life better, with the 7 providing two more hours of life per day when compared to the 6s and the 7 Plus providing one more hour when compared to the 6 Plus. The devices include LTE-Advanced for speedy wireless.
The iPhone 7 comes in jet black, black, silver, gold, and rose gold. Pricing for the iPhone 7 is $649 for 32 GB, $749 for 128 GB, or $849 for 256 GB. Pricing for the iPhone 7 Plus is $769 for 32 GB, $869 for 128 GB, or $969 for 256 GB. The iPhone will be available for preorder September 9 and goes on sale September 16.
