Apple announced the highly anticipated iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, adding new video and audio features without increasing its price points. The iPhone 7 will start at $649 for the 32 GB model, and the iPhone 7 Plus will start at $769. The company estimates that the iPhone 7 will cost roughly $27 per month for customers on carrier installment plans. Preorders start this Friday and the phone ships next Friday, Sept. 16.
The new iPhones are powered by Apple’s newest processor, the A10 Fusion chip. The A10 is a 64-bit 40 core processor with 3.3 billion transistors. Two cores are devoted to high-performance tasks like video and two are dedicated to energy efficiency. An Apple-designed performance controller makes sure the chip is optimizing for performance or battery life, depending on what the user is doing.
Apple said the iPhone 7 will deliver an average of two more hours of battery life compared to the iPhone 6s. The company predicts that the average user will be able to browse the internet on Wi-Fi for up to 15 hours without recharging, or on LTE for up to 13 hours.
The iPhone 7 has a stereo speaker system, but users who want to keep their music to themselves will need new equipment. The phone does not have a traditional headphone jack, but it does come with an adapter so that analog headphones can be plugged into its lightning port. It also comes with new headphones that plug directly into the lightning port.
AirPods
Starting in October, Apple will sell $159 wireless headphones that it call AirPods. Powered by Apple’s first wireless chip, called the W1, the AirPods will connect automatically to Apple devices. Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of worldwide marketing, said that users will simply place the AirPods beside their iPhone and the phone’s user interface will prompt them to tap to connect.
“No buttons, no switching, no pairing, no unpairing – those are all things of the past,” said Schiller. “It makes no sense to tether ourselves with cables to our mobile devices.”
The W1 chip includes a sensor to make the AirPods “smart” – when the user places them in their ears, music plays. When they are removed from the ears the music stops. A voice accelerometer is designed to recognize the user’s voice and reduce all other noise. Apple said the AirPod batteries will last for up to five hours without a recharge, and that a battery charger is built into the AirPod case.
iPhone improvements
The new iPhones are water and dust resistant, and the antenna is more embedded than in previous iPhones. Apple is emphasizing the sleek design by offering the phone in two shades of black, as well as silver, gold and rose gold.
The iPhone 7 camera comes with a 12 megapixel rear camera with an optical image stabilizer and a five megapixel front-facing camera. The company said its new image signal processor has twice the throughput of previous versions, and performs 100 billion operations in 25 milliseconds every time the user snaps a photo. The iPhone 7 Plus has two 12 megapixel cameras, one with a wide-angle lens and one with a zoom lens.
Apple put its product launch into context today by noting that more than a billion iPhones have been sold to date, making the iPhone “the best selling product of its kind in the world.”
