In case you missed it, Apple’s Special Event last week was a 2+ hour marathon of new features. The news many of us care or complain about is the new iPhone 7. There has been a TON of confusion over its release and some of the changes Apple made to the new model. Don’t worry we are going to clear it all up.
People are railing all over the internet about the loss of the analog headphone port. But really? It’s not that bad. The Internet should be more concerned that our selfies are going to start getting more accurate as the front-facing camera improves.
Here are our top 5 iPhone 7 notes from the Keynote for your quick reference when conversing with your anti-Apple, anti-technology, or just under-informed friends and family.
1. New Colors: Jet Black and Black.
Apple dropped Space Gray and added 2 new shades (finishes, really) of black to its existing line-up of of gold, rose gold, and silver. Jet Black is a gloriously high gloss finish to show off all your fingerprints. Black is matte black that practically absorbs light. Don’t drop this one in the dark!
2. Camera upgrades: IS, lens awesomeness and higher quality selfies.
The rear camera now has a 6 element lens allowing for an f 1.8 and image stabilization to reduce blurring when your shot is shaky. The front-facing camera is now 7 megapixels, up from 5. What that means is we’re all going to start looking our age in our selfies. (Yikes!) The rear flash has been improved too – check out the recording for more details.
3. Water and dust resistant out of the box!
NOT waterproof. Tell your weird uncle to stop saying waterproof. The front of the phone is now all one piece and the home button is solid state with taptic feedback. However, it’s IP67 rated, which means if you drop it in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes, it will be fine. This rating makes no promises about pool water, soda, sea water, or whatever was in the soup, but it gives us klutzes a better chance of saving our phones.
4. Airpods are really, really wireless.
Apple’s new wireless earphones are really wireless. They are ultra low power Bluetooth and Apple has simplified the pairing and re-connection so that they might not actually frustrate us. They tout 5 hours of listening time and come with a cute case that doubles as a battery to keep them charged up for 24 hours of listening.
However, these things have no wires at all. I was the kind of kid who needed a string connecting her mittens – I definitely need something connecting my earphones to each other otherwise I’m going to lose one down a storm grate or somewhere equally horrible.
Also? They have a rather questionable aesthetic presentation. Do you wear earrings? Can you imagine wearing these and long earrings? Tangling them in long or curly hair?
5. They took away the analog headphone jack. NO!!!!
First, this does not mean you only have to use wireless headphones. Here’s what comes in the box:
– Wired, Lightning headphones that plug into the Lightning port (aka the charging port, $30 to replace)
– Lighting to Analog Adapter that allows you to use a 3.5 mm plug
Second, you CAN charge and listen to music at the same time! Apple’s Lightning dock ($49) offers an additional Lightning port for your headphones.
Here’s a short snippet of Tim Cook and James Corden doing Carpool Karaoke (with special guest Pharrell):
Bonus:
The new chip has 4 cores: 2 high performance, 2 low energy. This should save you battery when you’re just checking email but give you mind- and battery-blowing graphics in entertainment and creative apps. Alas, Pokemon Go will probably be using the high performance cores.
New stereo speakers, left and right when watching a video in landscape that are twice the volume of the speaker on the iPhone 6s… you know, because there are now 2 speakers instead of 1.
They remanufactured a lot of the body and components… even the manufacturing processes for the new Blacks are beautiful.
You can watch the keynote yourself on Apple’s site.
Share this if you’re excited about the iPhone 7!