Apple held its iPhone event tonight, and introduced the iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch Series 2. The iPhone’s most interesting feature can only be found on the iPhone 7 Plus: a dual camera setup, consisting of a wide-angle and telephoto lens. Thanks to some software magic, Apple claims this camera can produce the kind of bokeh effect normally reserved for more expensive, dedicated cameras.
And yes: the iPhone 7 is ditching the 3.5mm jack in favour of lightning headphones, a dongle, or Apple’s brand new AirPods – ugly wireless earbuds with a battery life of “up to” 5 hours, a hefty price tag, and the opportunity to live that Bluetooth headset lifestyle.
Other iPhone 7 tidbits: stereo speakers (that warrants a finally, right?), a new home button which isn’t really a button but a little trackpad with a Taptic Engine (like Apple’s new trackpads – you won’t notice a difference, because the Taptic Engine is legitimately magic), and a few new colour options.
The new Apple Watch – the Series 2 – looks the same, but has a dual-core processor now, better waterproofing, and built-in GPS. Apple is also selling a version of the old Apple Watch equipped with the new processor, which they call the Series 1. The ‘old’ Apple Watch will remain on sale as well, but at a reduced price.
For the rest, the event wasn’t all that exciting. I think the camera on the iPhone 7 Plus will be quite amazing, but for the rest both the new iPhone and the new Apple Watch are spec bumps – and there’s nothing wrong with that, since we’ve reached the point where there’s not much more you can do with a slab of glass. Apple also made a huge deal of a new infinite runner game for iOS, but other than the fact it’s got Nintendo’s Mario in it, I don’t see how we need another infinite runner on mobile to compete with the other 20972194 we already have.
Rests me to say that Apple also announced that macOS Sierra will be released on 20 September and iOS 10 on 13 September.
That’s all. That’s all the innovation we got today.
Sad.
Boy, we sure are jaded.
You want some innovation? Look at the A10 CPU.
2 “fast/hot” cores, and 2 “slow” cores.
Add to that the scheduling chutzpah within the kernel to manage “am I hot or not” processes and contexts.
The net result is even more battery life squeezed out of this thing, on a phone that is TWICE as fast as the current release.
This is not some glossy paint, there’s some serious engineering and systems design and integration going on here that none of us will ever see or feel save for the battery bar seems longer than normal.
Apple continues to push the state of the art in production mobile devices.
The competitors all have 8 cores and are just as fast as the A10 despite being released six months ago.
Apple have been technology “followers” for the past 3-4 years. None of their mobile phones are anywhere near state of the art. The A10 will merely bring the iPhone 7 performance (temporarily) up to the level of existing models like the Huawei P9 (April 2016) and Galaxy S7 (March 2016).
The iPhone 7 will probably be totally outclassed (again) when the competitors latest flagships are released early next year.
Edited 2016-09-08 03:09 UTC
The number of Cores are not everything, nor is the CPU clock speed.
Didn’t recent tests show that the Galaxy S7 was slower than the 2015 iPhone?
Ok, I suppose it matters those who care more about that (my cpu is bigger than your Cpu????) than how the thing works.
This is all irrelevant to me as I don’t feel the need for all this speed and the latest shiny-shiny.
I’ve just bought an iPhone 5S from a Pawn shop for £75.00. That will do me for a couple of years. I only got that because of pressure from my grandkids who want to keep in touch with me via iMessage. I flatly refuse to go on Facebook etc. I have my ‘boring old fart’ reputation to keep up you know
It will take competitors 3-4 years to get A10 single core perf. If they’re lucky. S7 is 2x slower.
Apple fanbois were using the same argument back in the 90s when they would quote some obscure and irrelevant benchmark where PowerPC outperformed Intel hardware.
Overall the S7 is as fast as the A10. That is they only “benchmark” that matters. The competition will probably be way ahead long before the next iPhone update in late 2018.
The evidence seems to say the opposite. The year old iPhone 6s running on the A10 seems as fast as the new Samsung Galaxy S7 and easily beats the Galaxy S7 edge and the Note 7 based on real world tests.
https://youtu.be/4tjEhbmY5Vk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10UBsSo6O4I
https://youtu.be/3-61FFoJFy0
I would say – based on the evidence of real world use scenarios – that Apple’s chip line is at least a year ahead and quite a bit faster than the anything from Samsung. It looks like Apple’s unique degree of product integration (from silicon to software) pays off – which is hardly surprising.
Sadly, because this is Android, there’s no way to make blanket statements like that. American Samsung phones are laden with endless amounts of crapware not shipped on international versions, and American Galaxy phones have crappier processors compared to the international versions.
Because when I do the same test on my iPhone 6S and Nexus 6P, stuff opens equally fast.
These tests show that the iPhone 6s can’t even compete with $200 phones let alone flagships. The S7 is up to 10x as fast as the iPhone 6s in some tests. [Note smaller is faster for some of the benchmarks.]
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/mobile-phone/fastest-phone-b…
Single core performance isn’t some obscure and irrelevant benchmark. While a thread can move across cores, typically an application will be using a single core for most of its work. The main UI thread being the most important here. For certain tasks having better multi-core performance is important, but for the vast majority of common tasks on mobile devices, it’s single core that matters.
Of course, ultimately it’s the real world performance that matters, not benchmarks. It’s odd to say that Apple “fanbois” talk about hardware performance and obscure benchmarks when it’s Android fans who are usually talking about specs. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “my Android phone cost less than your iPhone and it has double the RAM” etc., from oddly aggressive people. Of course these people are usually uninformed and don’t understand how Android needs far more RAM and processor than iOS to be able to perform at the same level.
I always find it funny how people who have bought one device feel compelled to defend their choice to the death over whatever someone else prefers.
Edited 2016-09-08 14:27 UTC
I don’t give a rat’s left buttock if someone’s Android phone has double the RAM/CPU/whatever of my iPhone. All I have to do is check the battery percentage remaining. Odd how those aggressive specpushers go silent when they’ve got 20% battery left and I have 70% (comparing the Galaxy S7 to my iPhone 6S Plus). Real world use is what I care about, and all the specs in the world don’t do me one bit of good if my battery needs charged before lunchtime.
So why do these “real world” benchmarks all show the iPhone 6s being totally humiliated by much cheaper Android models? In some benchmarks the S7 is 10x as fast an iPhone 6s.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/mobile-phone/fastest-phone-b…
People confuse a snappy GUI with fast performance. By that measure the ancient Motorola Macs were arguably faster than a modern i7 running Windows 10.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Your own link shows the iPhones being far, far better in those benchmarks. Which one do you think shows the S7 being 10x faster? Of all the benchmarks in your link, the only one that shows the S7 being faster is the multi-core one. All the others show the iPhone pretty far ahead. The Jetstream one is just embarrassing for the S7. The FPS ones are not much better. Pretty grim reading for S7 owners. Did you send the wrong link?
Sure, no doubt it’s a wonderful device… but I expected more from Apple than just a good iPhone.
The most profitable company on Earth only has to offer the same phone with a new cpu and Mario?!? That’s all they got? Bummer. We want some disruption, something controversial to make apple haters go mad!!
Today even McDonald’s is more revolutionary than Apple.
Apple released two new case colours. How much more innovation do you need?
Edited 2016-09-08 05:35 UTC
Seriously people expect innovation every fucking year??
They haven’t had any real innovation since the original iPhone in 2007. Every “new” feature (NFC, waterproofing,dual cameras etc etc.) has already been introduced by other manufacturers.
Wow, that’s probably the most honest I’ve ever seen an iFanboi be about their motivations: mindless, infantile “us vs them” spite, driving pathetically-obvious attempts to get a rise out of “the other side”. Oh, and you even included the “haters” label, like you’re some kind of tween girl lashing out at critics of Twilight – that’s truly adorable.
http://ifixit.org/blog/8309/iphone-6-plus-gray-flicker-touch-death/
Such art, many state, wow…
Wow that is really exciting and innovative and never seen before at all. Oh wait, Samsung had 4 fast and 4 slow cores starting with the galaxy S5 (exynos version) (no idea if they were first)
I wont say Apple is doomed because they are finansially doing fine and are making ok products, but i REALLY miss Steve Jobs, especially his ability to say no. The only really great decision they have made after he died that i can think of is to offer larger phones.
They used to be number one with design, which i think was especially clear with the iPhone 4, but now i think they are standing still and i find the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge design to be superior to Apples (although samsung needs someone to say no too for sure) Especially the large bezel at the sides looks dated in the iPhone 7.
Same with their laptops, they used to be far ahead with design, but again are kinda standing still. The large bezel around the display makes them look old when side by side with something like the Dell XPS 13 (not claiming the dell is a better laptop, only talking about looks)
A pet peeve of mine which is still a problem on their new laptops (as far as i can tell from pictures), is the annoyingly sharp corners in the indentation used for opening the display, which at least for me means that after about an hours use of the keyboard, the skin on my wrists starts getting annoyed by brushing against those edges.
Maybe you’re being sarcastic but otherwise: such features have been available for years. For example tegra 3 from 2011 had 4 fast cores and 1 slow.
A10 is an ARM CPU. ARM introduced this concept in 2011 and called it big.LITTLE. It has been in literally billions of “production mobile devices”.
You are right in saying that Apple is leading in CPU/GPU’s on mobile though. Their performance is topnotch, as it should be in the topnotch phones.
But Apple is not leading the state of the art. Almost all of their components are bought from others and especially their screentechnology is always far behind others. The iPhone 7 is now the 3rd generation of “big phone” from them that will have a 1334-by-750-pixel resolution at 326 ppi while others are having double that resolution (or even 4K). No wonder that Apple has good battery and performance scores, their phones don’t have to work so hard.
Also…IPS, not OLED.
Again, their screens are not bad at all, but surely not state of the art! Apple is very good at looking what others are doing, integrating the best ideas into their next product lines…claim fame…profit
They could put a notification LED on it? This is currently the only thing keeping me from buying an iPhone. I know a lot of people don’t care about it, but it is absolutely perplexing to me why they haven’t added one of these. It couldn’t be to sell Apple watches, since the iPhone has been out since 2007. So, why then?
And anyone who says ‘use the camera flash’ or ‘buy an Apple watch’ is getting stabbed in the eye
Does it also have ultrapixels?
No. But it has a Rose Gold option.
IF they want to act with courage, they should pay the billions in back taxes they owe.
A-F******-Men.
And Ireland, I’m looking at you, also ashamed.
Aside: Can we have Country-specific block-chain Currency protocols written and open-sourced by the individual Government and with an immediate transaction tax directed to the national exchequers wallet hard-coded into the protocol already please. ?
In the modern age of computer, network, and encryption, there should be no “trusting” of corporations, lawyers or accountants on this tax thing — just digitise and harden the s*** out of it.
I would have looked up if they dumped the lightning port for a standard USB. But I guess I better keep dreaming. Yawn.
… you want to play music while the phone is connected to the charger? Another dongle maybe?
Bluetooth.
Wired connections are legacy – Apple will be pushing Bluetooth hard next year. Expect a lot more Bluetooth headphones from third parties over the next year.
Edited 2016-09-08 10:43 UTC
You can buy BT headphones, a gazillion of them, many of them well below ~$150. Yet, even if they’ve come a long way regarding music quality, you still have to look hard to find really good ones. I don’t think Apple pushing it again won’t make a really big difference. Their – and others’ – BT earplugs are good enough to use in a car or during workout, otherwise them pushing it is not a good enough reason to drop good wired ones for BT, or to drop existing BT ones for Apple’s versions (esp. at this price). Also, battery life (both phone and plugs) and play time (although 5-6 hours should be good enough for a regular day) are still an issue.
bluetooth doest have enough synced stereo bandwidth for music.
you need to be able to push 1000k/sec to each speaker with no latency between them to get them to even sound close to wired speakers.
bluetooth is crap for music, sorry apple, no way those earbuds sound good, even at $160.
None of your argument matters one jot. You and other audiophiles are what, .0000001% of the population?
What’s a shame here is that Apple aren’t pushing any real improvements to Bluetooth that could make it sound excellent. Instead we get run-of-the-mill Bluetooth earbuds. They could have done something really awesome with this opportunity, and instead they focused on new iPhone colors.
you’re the blind telling me i can’t see, and it’s not important.
thanks.
any other opportunities for you push for degradation and low quality over the real thing?
everyone cares about audio quality. it affects our quality of life and sanity.. the ones you call “audiophiles” are just smart enough to explain it in words.
do you call people who avoid fast food every day “foodophiles” ?
Actually, I’m not pushing for it. Quite the contrary. But your argument doesn’t matter in the context which you were trying to make it, since the general population doesn’t care. You can rage, I can rage (though I’ve stopped since it does no good) at the loss of music quality, but in the end what does it get us? High blood pressure, a more empty wallet, a more limited selection and… for what? For so-called quality we’d never get from on-the-go gear anyway? We’re not talking about equipment to drive thousand-dollar speakers. We’re talking about phones which, you yourself state in another post by the way, suck for music anyway no matter what the connection type. So what does it matter if it’s 3.5, Lightning, Bluetooth or whatever if it is, according to you, always going to suck anyway?
Keep thinking that. The world doesn’t give a twatlick. You have your Pogostick Player or whatever it’s called, right? Enjoy it. Don’t bother with the rest of us. We’ll be fine with our ghetto resampling.
Edited 2016-09-08 18:35 UTC
In reality, that’s simply untrue. Most wired headphones are crap compared to my Sennheiser Momentums, for mechanical reasons: the drivers and enclosures just happen to be really, really bad.
Of course you can get better sound for the money with wired headphones. But most people don’t do that.
If wired connections are legacy, then this brand new phone uses legacy charging!
Also, their brandnew MacBook-line (the one with that one USB-C port for everything) still has….a headphone jack!
So no, headphone jacks are not legacy, they are common sense. Removing the headphone jack is not done for users but to help their Beats-department sell more. Nothing stops them from promoting wireless while still having headphone jacks, that would be a user-friendly choice. Removing the headphone jack was an Apple-bankaccount-friendly choice.
(You can have stereo-speakers, a large battery, bluetooth, waterproofing and a headphone jack all in one device from plenty of other manufacturers)
I do have to point out that those other manufacturers are like as not to head down this same route. After all, Motorola beat Apple to the punch already on this one.
It doesn’t make sense to me, however, to keep the 3.5 jack on everything else and yet remove it from the iPhone. Quite user-unfriendly, given that we’ll have an incompatibility between peripherals in Apple’s own product line. Are they going to add a lightning port to their laptops? Remove the headphone jack from the iP(a/o)d line? Some weird combination of both?
Maybe you have to see it that way:
The iPhone 7 is the FIRST Apple product without a headphone jack!
If Apple doesn’t reconsider this move the next MacBook will probably have two USB connectors and no headphone jack.
Who knows, maybe the next MacBook Pro, MacBook Air will come without a headphone jack as well.
And don’t forget the next version of the iPads…
Disclaimer: With the statement above I neither confirm nor deny that I like Apple’s decision on the headphone jack
Just getting the dongle is going to be cheaper than replacing the rest of your audio stuff though.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/8/12852098/belkin-apple-iphone-7-plu…
nej_simon,
It was nice that lighting cables were reversible when micro-usb was not, but I don’t think proprietary lightning ports will have a place in the future as reversible USB-c becomes more popular. After Apple has sold the these proprietary accessories and collected the royalties, they’ll want to change it up again.
Edited 2016-09-08 20:37 UTC
hederson101,
I did bluetooth in the day, but I absolutely hated it. The quality and range were poor and charging it separately was so annoying. The reason I gave it a shot was because I had the choice between a standard bluetooth accessory and a proprietary wired one – I didn’t buy a proprietary accessory because I didn’t want to contemplate having to throw it away when I changed phones.
While I expect (or at least hope) that bluetooth quality has gotten better, the benefits of not having wires are overshadowed by the cons of not having power. I have similar gripes about wireless keyboards and mice.
Edited 2016-09-08 20:57 UTC
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12827772/iphone-7-plus-photos-vide…
(DISCLAIMER: I haven’t used either of them.)
Makes sense. In a laptop you have all the extra mass and volume to provide stability. You can’t do the same in a small densely packed phone.
I called the headphone jack demise 27 months ago.
They probably put an even cheaper DAC in the new phone.
I think this helps the DAP scene – people start to realize that iPhone (or any phone) isn’t for serious music listening and start to research the other devices.
Once people hear a Fiio, A&K, PonoPlayer, HiFiMan, etc… any device purpose built for hi-res music playback – they don’t want to go back to their phones. It puts them back into perspective as a jack of all trades, master of none.
Edited 2016-09-08 12:46 UTC
Although I agree with you regarding the quality of the dedicated devices, I’m using a Fiio DAC on my desktop for the last few years, I really don’t see people starting to use dedicated audio devices either connected to the phone or independent. People just can’t be bothered, will simply accept the lower sound quality for the comfort. Just like it happened with the cameras.
some people can be bothered to care about quality.
not everyone drives a kia.
not everyone plays a generic guitar.
not everyone buys the cheapest item all the time.
i actually do often times buy a cheaper item, but as far as my music, i’ve stopped that horrible trend.
i get far more emotional satisfaction out of the complete music as made by the artists, not the 10% versions they rent people now.
Sadly, ins0mniac is right. Yes, _SOME_ people care about audio quality, but absolute majority don’t give a rat’s ass about sound. All that most people care about is convenience and to be stylish. And what is more “stylish” than listening to music from your iPhone…
Both Sampling Theorem and blind testing demonstrate that high bitrate music players are complete BS.
Blind tests show that “audiophiles” can’t even tell the difference between speakers connected with Monster Cable and coat hanger wire.
That’s bullshit. Difference between music from phone and music from high-end DAP is enormous and you don’t even have to be audiophile to notice it. Even totally audio-illiterate people notice the difference, just most of then don’t care. Like, “Oh, that’s so nice, my music sounds so great from your player, incredible!” and them go back to their phones and cheap earphones. So you can now stop trying to be a smart-ass saying there’s no difference… Simply because those same blind tests prove you wrong.
I agree about the wire, though. But only if that coat-hanger wire is thick enough.
Edited 2016-09-09 06:00 UTC
The problem is due to cheap earbuds not “inferior” DACs or low bitrate encoding
Xiph.org has a detailed technical explanation why high bitrate 24/192 sound is actually inferior to low bitrate sound.
The bandwidth requirements for high fidelity music is so low that even 0.5mm diameter wire is complete overkill.
If those earbuds are as uncomfortable as the ones Apple has been shipping forever, I don’t see them selling well at all. Especially at that price point.
The older earbuds were uncomfortable, but I actually like the earpods that came out a few years ago and that Apple have been shipping since. They’re darn comfortable for my ears, and they actually sound good for $30 buds. Everyone’s ears are different of course, and I could see how if your ear isn’t quite the right size or shape, they could be uncomfortable in the extreme.
You’re not seeing it in the typical Apple user mindset: by being more expensive, they’re clearly better… at being conspicuous consumption status symbols. Which, incidentally, will also make them much more effective “mug me” signs.
phones aren’t for music. they just aren’t.
they grew out of the iPod, which wasn’t great for quality music playback either, but it was the new thing and it was super convenient. i had several loaded up with thousands of mp3 files, I thought it was pretty cool.
But over the years i noticed less and less people cared, ADHD and a general lack of concentration seemed to take off, and music as a whole got worse and worse. People are more anti-social overall and far more accepting of bootlegging, and/or ripping off the artists they claim to love.
Now it’s 2016, almost no good bands exist, almost no good live performers exist, people push buttons on laptops and young people scream like that took major talent. it’s sad.
I blame mp3 and the iPod for lowering our standards so much.
I call it the Great Audio Downgrade, and it’s been going on for much of my adult life.
Sad fact is that our parents and often grandparents had better stereo systems than we do. It’s tech going backwards.
Since I believe music is ultimately human’s greatest art form, I consider it a travesty.
The “no one can tell the difference” people are the real problem. You can’t blame commercial interests for trying to sell us less for more. You can expect people to know and care about the difference between 10% and the real thing.
If they bought their fast food and got 1/10 a burger and 4 french fries they’d notice. But if the most beautiful and emotional art form ever made comes to them as 10% some of them insist it’s the same thing as 100%.
Edited 2016-09-08 15:51 UTC
I don’t usually use the phone/tablet to listen to music but I use them to view YouTube videos or play games or even watch movies and I use headphones to not disturb people around me and to aisle myself.
I agree 100%!!
iPhone 6 + Chord Mojo + Senn HD800 = Musical Nirvana.
One pocket camera would be enough, if they made the lens a natural-view focal length.
Now with two focal lengths to choose from, will people stop using the super-wide-angle lens for up-close self portraits? God I hope so.
The Samsung Galaxy Player had stereo speakers… in 2010. Maybe the iPhone 8 will add an FM receiver too?
Removing the headphone jack is such a huge f’ing mistake. Typical Apple move. “We know better than you”, and “Fashion before function”.
Except that Motorola did this before Apple did, yet I don’t hear anyone bashing the decision on the Moto Z for some reason.
If you think the 3.5 removal is a mistake, fair point. In fact, I agree 100%. But let’s point the finger at all instances of the mistake and not just one, ok?
With the kind of sales volumes that Moto has, it is not going make a difference. With Apple, it is a different story.
Hope this trend dies a natural death and not pick up just because the cool iKids are doing it.
It turns out Apple wasn’t first with the dual lens thing. Huawei beat them to it.
Edited 2016-09-08 18:42 UTC
http://appleplugs.com/
That looped animation though:
http://appleplugs.com/img/animation-1.gif