You can also pre-order the cheaper Series 1, which should ship on September 16.
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The new iPhones arrive on September 16th and will replace the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus as the company’s flagship options. The iPhone 7 has finally been revealed, and – surprise, surprise – there’s no headphone jack in sight.
There’s still no cellular support, so you’re tethered to your iPhone, but at least the built-in Global Positioning System is gradually helping it find some freedom. You don’t have a Lightning-cable pair of headphones yet?
That was the answer Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of worldwide marketing, offered on stage Wednesday when announcing the elimination of the headphone jack.
Earlier this week, Apple took the stage and announced a slew of new products and dates including a new Apple Watch, the iOS 10 release date for iPhone and iPad, and the brand new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. He adds, “It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone”. The phone is slightly faster, the battery will last a little longer (a claimed 2 hours extra) and the camera slightly better. “And frankly, when there’s a better, modern solution available, it’s insane to keep it around”.
The flagship devices with boosted memory capacity will be sold at roughly the same price as the models they replace, starting at US$649 for the iPhone 7 for United States customers, with deliveries in 25 countries beginning September 16. Further, removing the 3.5mm jack has also helped Apple deliver a more water-resistant iPhone, Riccio explained. But Apple isn’t about to be left out of its own revolution in audio componentry.
Now it’s headsets: spending on wireless headsets overtook wired ones a year ago, says Steven LeBoeuf, founder of Valencell, a developer of biometric sensor technology for wearable devices. You know what that was? It hasn’t been touched since then. You have a pair of headphones that feels the same, but untethered and itching to get lost. But if you carry the AirPods case around, you’ll get additional charges on the go.
What is happening however is that the capabilities of the software that comes with the phone is continually improving and this is going to be more significant in the end. “If we did, we’d never make any progress at all”.
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Physically, the biggest changes are the disappearance of the headphone jack and the replacement of the movable home button with a fixed trackpad-like device with “taptic” feedback. To check out the full Buzzfeed interview of the trio of Apple executives, click on the link here.
