Iphone 7

Apple revealed the iPhone 7 on 7th September 2016.

There were few surprises. As expected, the phone was an iteration on the previous iPhone 6/6s, though with tidier antenna lines and camera bump. The only significant design change was two new colors, in the form of a high-gloss Jet Black and a matte black simply known as … Black.

Also as expected, Apple removed the 3.5mm headphone socket in favor of Lightning and wireless headphones – though with an adapter in the box for existing 3.5mm headphones. The company justified the move on the basis that it had better uses for the space, notably the haptic motor for a new touch-sensitive Home key to aid waterproofing, and a better camera, especially in the iPhone 7 Plus. More notably, it announced a new W1 wireless chip for instant, painless pairing with compatible headphones, the pairing propagating across all your devices via iCloud.

The headline new feature was, as predicted, reserved for the iPhone 7 Plus. The dual-camera system provides 2x optical zoom, and uses a combination of parallax effect and machine-learning to separate the foreground from the background to simulate shallow depth of field.