Today Apple held its annual, and much anticipated, press event where they unveiled the iPhone 7. A few other products were highlighted today as well. The event covered all the new features included in the iPhone 7 –there had been a lot of speculation up until this point about what to expect from the new generation of the iPhone and now all of the rumors have been addressed. The iPhone 7 has finally arrived.
This year, the event kicked off in a unique way. Recently, Apple bought a Carpool Karaoke TV series for Apple Music. This resulted in a press event that started with Apple CEO Tim Cook doing a little Carpool Karaoke with James Cordon and Pharrell. Once the opening ceremonies were over, the focus shifted to the iPhone 7.
So, what’s new? Well, the iPhone 7 is not a huge shift from the iPhone 6S, but it does have a few key upgrades. Apple’s new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are both water and dust resistant. This may not sound overly impressive, but previously the iPhone wasn’t really water resistant at all. So, this is an upgrade. The cameras are improved on both phones as well. The iPhone 7 Plus has two side-by-side12-megapixel cameras –a wide angle and a telephoto. This gives users 2x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom. All though this wasn’t ready for the launch, these two cameras will be able to work at the same time to give a shallow depth-of-field effect. The two cameras are on the iPhone 7 Plus only – the iPhone 7 will still have just one camera on the back.
The cameras have improved for both phones though. They both have an optical image stabilizer, new lens’ and a 12 megapixel sensor. The flash has four LEDs and can detect the flickers of artificial lighting to better compensate.
In my opinion, all great improvements on an already great product. Call me an Apple follower all you like. There are some additional changes beyond the cameras as well. The “Home” button has changed. It is now force sensitive –meaning that instead of knowing that you pressed the button because it clicked, it will vibrate. The color options have changed as well, there are more black options (in addition to the already existing color options): a high gloss jet black finish and a matte black.
So, when can you get them? They’ll be available September 16th. The phones will start at a price tag of $649.
What’s also making buzz is what will no longer be included on the iPhone. The option for a 16GB phone is out. The options now are 32GB, 128GB or 256GB of storage. That’s not the only thing they’re getting rid of. No more headphone jack. This was a big head turner that people have been talking about a lot over the last few weeks. Now that the headphone port has been removed, wired headphones will now connect over the Lightning port instead.
To help ease this transition, Apple has made an adapter that it will include with all iPhone 7 and 7 Pluses. They are also introducing AirPods. These are wireless headphones that come with a white case for charging. This case gives them up to five hours of listening time per charge. They also include: infrared sensors to detect when they’re in your ears, microphones and one-tap Siri access. The price tag? $159 and they are set to come out in late October.
There were more products and updates that were unrolled in the event that we’ll talk about in the near future. Today, our focus was on the main event. So, what are your thoughts? Was it predictable? Were you happy with the new iPhone 7? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? And the biggest question of all –will you be buying one? Comment below!
