Guide to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus

Unsure whether to splash the cash on one of Apple’s latest handsets? Caitlin McGarry’s guide will help you decide

Apple’s annual iPhone event was jampacked with information, but between the lingering look at the new jet black finish and all the business about AirPods, you may have missed some important details about the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. But we’ve got you covered. Here’s everything you may have missed during Apple marketing VP Phil Schiller’s presentation, plus some facts he didn’t mention, in case you’re thinking of upgrading to a 7 but can’t quite decide.

The basics Price

Prices for the iPhone 7 starts at £599 for a 32GB base model and the 7 Plus starts at £719. Apple has phased out the 16GB storage option for all but the iPhone SE. Both models offer 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB of storage.

Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program (tinyurl.com/jucybp9) gives you the option to buy an unlocked iPhone 7 or 7 Plus

with AppleCare+ through your carrier of choice for £33.45 per month and up. (Prices vary based on country, iPhone model, and storage size.) The upgrade program also lets you trade in your iPhone next year for the latest model.

Colours

The new iPhones come in silver, gold, and rose gold, plus two brand new colours: black and jet black. The former is an anodized matte finish, while the jet version is a high-gloss, inky black. Apple showed off the jet black model’s engineering process in a Jony Ive-narrated video during the iPhone launch event. The new finish was crafted from bead-blasted aluminium that then goes through a nine-step anodization and polishing process. The finished product is so glossy that you can’t tell the difference between the glass display and the aluminium body. The down side: The jet black is also more prone to fingerprint

smudges and scratches, so you might want to snag a case for that model.

The big changes

From a distance, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus don’t look all that different from the 6 or 6s models – same design, same shape, same size. But up close and under the hood, the 7 and 7 Plus are radically different from their 4.7- and 5.5in predecessors. Let’s start with the most talked about feature (or the lack thereof ).

Apple kills the 3.5mm headphone jack

Yes. The audio jack, a staple of consumer electronics devices for decades, is no more – at least when it comes to iPhones. Apple sacrificed the port to free up space for a larger camera system, bigger battery, and Taptic Engine for providing feedback in response to the redesigned Force Touch Home button.

How to listen to audio

Apple is including a pair of Lightning EarPods with every new iPhone, so you can still plug into an iPhone port for private listening sessions – just not the port you were used to. You won’t be able to listen to the new Lightning EarPods and charge your phone with a Lightning cable simultaneously, if that’s a problem you run into regularly. Third-party adaptors will appear to fill the gap – Belkin has announced a £34 Lightning Audio + Charge RockStar that splits the iPhone’s Lightning port into two, one for charging and one for your Lightning EarPods.

Apple must have anticipated outraged responses to the eliminated audio jack, because it’s also bundling a Lightning-to-headphone jack adaptor with every iPhone. (You can buy an adaptor separately for £9.) Your expensive wired headphones will still work, now you’ll just need an extra dongle.

Lightning EarPods and adaptors are just interim solutions, though. Apple envisions a world in which all audio is enjoyed wirelessly, which is why the company created a new set of Bluetooth headphones called AirPods. Those will retail for £159 when they debut in October.

Cameras

Every year, Apple makes the iPhone’s camera a little bit better. This year, both iPhone models are getting a huge camera overhaul. The A10 Fusion chip built into both the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus features a new image signal processor that uses machine learning to make your photos look amazing.

Both new iPhones have 12Mp rear-facing iSight cameras and 7Mp front-facing FaceTime HD cameras (a bump up from the 5Mp FaceTime camera in the 6s models). The 4.7in model gains optical image stabilization, a huge improvement over the digital image stabilization in the 6s. Last year, only the 6s Plus offered OIS. The new sensor corrects any shakiness and reduces blur for up to three times longer exposure from the 6s.

Both the 7 and 7 Plus have an ƒ/1.8 aperture that allows up to 50 percent more light than the 6s, and a six-element lens that will shoot better low light images. A quad-LED True Tone flash

is 50 percent brighter than the 6s, and a new sensor compensates for flickering lights. Both the front-facing and iSight cameras use wide colour capture for brighter, more detailed shots.

The 5.5in model has the same wide-angle lens that the 4.7in phone does, but right next to it is a 12Mp telephoto lens with ƒ/2.8 aperture that can capture zoomed-in details without losing image quality. The telephoto lens gives you 2x optical zoom, and 10x digital zoom for photos (6x for video).

In a software update coming later this year, the 7 Plus will gain a depth-of-field feature called Portrait, which uses both cameras to sharpen the subject of your image while softening the background (an effect called bokeh). The new feature will be accessible in the iOS Camera app – just tap the new Portrait option – and you can see the effect as a live preview in the app before you start shooting.

Waterproof

Not waterproof, exactly, but water-resistant. That’s partly why Apple took out the headphone jack – and to make room for things like the supersized camera system, the stereo speaker on the bottom, and the new Taptic Engine, which I’ll get to in a minute. The iPhone 7 is rated IP67, which means it can withstand about 1 metre of water for up to 30 minutes. That means an accidental bath in the toilet or swimming pool no longer requires an emergency time-out in a bag of rice (oh, come on, you know you’ve tried it). It’s also resistant to dust, which should please desert-dwellers and outdoors types.

Speaker

You know when you’re watching a video in landscape mode but sound is only coming from one side of your phone? Apple fixed that. Now you’ll get a stereo effect thanks to speakers at the bottom and top of the phone. Apple says the sound experience is 2x louder than the iPhone 6s, with an increased dynamic range.

Force Touch

The iPhone 7 Home button redesign may turn out to be the new model’s sleeper hit feature. Why? It’s now a solid state, pressure-sensitive button instead of a mechanical one. That could mean fewer Home button failures, which means fewer repairs.

The Home button belies an internal feature, the new Taptic Engine, which responds with physical feedback – vibration at varying levels of intensity that you can customise – when you perform a function on your phone. Apple is opening up

the Taptic Engine to developers with an API, so imagine what the possibilities could be for games and other apps.

Battery life

One of the benefits in removing the headphone jack is a bigger battery. Apple says the iPhone 7 lasts up to two hours longer than the 6s and the 7 Plus lasts up to one more longer than the 6s Plus. Some of the gains could be from the more efficient four-core A10 Fusion processor rather than just a higher-capacity battery, but as long as we can squeeze out more time between charges, that’s what really matters.

Cases

Unfortunately, the 7 Plus’s dual lenses make 6s Plus cases incompatible. And while the 4.7in iPhone 7 is the same size as last year’s 6s, the camera is much larger, so the chances of your old case fitting this phone aren’t great. It’s possible a bumper-style case would fit, but for the most part you’ll want a new case for your new iPhone 7.