Apple on Wednesday unveiled the next generation smartphones- iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus at an event in San Francisco.
Now the pertinent question arises-what are the dimensions of the 7 as compared to the iPhone 6s models, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus? How do they compare in terms of GB, processor speed, camera, and other features?
Here we take a quick look at important changes made by Apple in its latest smartphones.
Headphone Jack is no more
Unlike its predecessor, iPhone 7 has done away with headphone jack. Now Users will have two options-either they can use wireless Bluetooth headphones called AirPods to listen to music, or purchase wired headphones that can be plugged into the Lightning port (currently used for charging).
Design
The iPhone 7 has a close resemblance with the iPhone 6S in terms of design but a few subtle changes have been brought in, the almost-disappeared antenna lines, the new, solid-state Home button, the move from space grey to plain black. A glossy jet black colour has also been introduced, and as mentioned earlier, with removal of the headphone jack, the iPhone 7 has become water and dust resistant.
The iPhone 7 is also stereo, cleverly utilizing the earpiece speaker for a second stereo speaker. Apple says it's twice as loud as the iPhone 6s.
Camera improvements especially in iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 7’s front-facing camera is a welcome change over the iPhone 6. Even as the 12MP sensor in iPhone 7 doesn't look great on paper it's a genuinely good smartphone camera.
The iPhone 6S left the megapixel race and focused on better quality. While the iPhone 6 has a 1.2-megapixel Face Time camera, the iPhone 7 has a 7-megapixel sensor with auto image stabilisation for superior selfies.
The iPhone 6S has a retina display, and it delivers 1,334 x 720 pixels at 326ppi. More interestingly, the iPhone 7 Plus adds a second 12-megapixel telephoto lens that has optical zoom at two times and up to 10x digital zoom for getting closer to your subject.
Unfortunately, Apple decided to keep the optical image stabilization for the larger and more expensive iPhone 6S Plus. The iPhone 7 gets optical stabilization this time, and its aperture is improved to f/1.8 for better low light performance.
Better Battery life
Users can be assured that the iPhone 7 will have a better battery life than its predecessor. Apple has claimed that users can expect an extra two hours of daily use from the iPhone 7 compared to the iPhone 6S.
The iPhone 7 is much faster
The iPhone 7 comes with latest A10 processor as it is well known that Apple designs its own SoCs (System on a Chip). The new chip has four cores in total, and two cores that are high-performance cores. It's designed to be 40 percent faster than the A9 chip in the iPhone 6S, and twice as fast as the A8.
Apple claims A10's performance will be 40% better than the A9 processor, and that the processor is more energy efficient too. These run at just one fifth of the power of the high-performance counterparts. These run at just one fifth of the power of the high-performance counterparts.
It’s particularly useful when web browsing with lots of tabs. More RAM means more tabs can stay open in the background, rather than reloading when you open them.
Software
The Apple iPhone 7 comes embedded with latest iOS 10, which was announced last year. The tech giant gave a glimpse into its features back then, including a revamp of messages. The iPhone 6S and the iPhone 6 will both see an update to iOS 10 when it launches with the new device so the bulk of the user experience will be the same.
Summary
As with all succeeding smartphones, the iPhone 7 improves on its predecessors in several areas but it remains short of a major overhaul except the removal of the headphone jack and antenna bands for a more seamless design. Hardware has also seen an improvement and there have been enhancements in the camera and battery departments too.
