Apple Event 2016 Recap – iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus & Apple Watch 2

Apple, today in a dedicated event in San Fransisco, announced a series of products. The event that was kicked off by Tim Cook’s carpool karaoke singing few songs. Later on stage, Apple also announced that there are now 17 million paid subscribers on Apple Music, company’s own music streaming service. It is also available on Android Play Store and has more than 10 million downloads. Talking about the App Store, Apple mentioned that it now has 140 billion plus downloads with 5,00,000 Games now in their database. Up next, “Father of Mario” who speaks of course in Japanese for a long time & finally announces the Mario for iOS. If you are a proud Android user, by the year end, you too can play the Mario game on your smartphone.

Coming to the product launch, the new Apple Watch will be showcased first, but before that, the company is talking about the new features of WatchOS3. They showed the new Messaging app, Breathe app, Stickers (especially the New Mario stickers) and 911 feature. Following this Niantic founder who had launched the Pokemon Go game comes on the stage that has reportedly downloaded more than 500 million times. You can now play the game with your Apple Watch, hatch eggs while you walk without the need of your smartphone. It would be available later this year but also think of the battery life which will be greatly affected by Pokemon Go.

Next Apple announces the Apple Watch Series 2 which is not just splash-proof but is swim-proof with water resistance upto 50 meters. It looks similar to the first gen Apple Watch, but there are many improvements on the hardware side. Apple has retooled the speaker in a way that the water gets ejected in case if it enters the watch. It is 50 percent faster with the new GPU and a second-gen chip with a dual-core processor. The new watch is brighter with 1,000 nits display along with a built-in GPS for distance tracking. There is also another variant called Apple Watch Nike Plus which was designed in partnership with Nike. The Apple Watch 2 & the Nike Plus variant costs $369 while the original model would be available at $269.

[quote align=’right’] Why remove the headphone jack? Courage, said Apple exec Phillip Schiller [/quote]Next up, Apple showcased the iOS 10 which is currently in public beta. It comes with Siri support for third-party apps, redesigned maps and a Homekit app to control smart things. And finally, the boring presentation turned into something interesting when we saw the iPhone in the background. Apple has got a manufacturing process for these new phones especially for the Jet Black variant of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. They announce the two new colors “Jet Black” & “Black” replacing the Space Gray. The new iPhones will be available in total five colors including Gold, Silver & Rose Gold. The home button is now redesigned which can be customised for different input based on the different pressure applied; this is similar to the force touch trackpad on the Mac.

Comparison: Dual Cameras on iPhone 7 Plus vs Huawei P9 vs LG V20

Both the new phones are IP67 water resistant standard, which means they are now water and dust resistant. Both the phones feature OIS with f/1.8 aperture & the sensor is 60% faster. A few camera samples from professional photographers were shown who captured them with the new iPhones which look stunning. On the front, there’s an upgraded  7MP FaceTime HD Camera. On the rear of iPhone 7 Plus is the dual camera sensors (wide-angle & telephoto) with 12MP resolution. Apart from the optical zoom of 2x and the iPhone 7 Plus camera can zoom 10x using the software configuration. According to Apple, the new iPhone 7 Plus camera depth-of-field feature should be comparable to the DSLR.

Finally in 2016, Apple came with stereo speaker for their new iPhones which boast 2x the volume output than last year’s models. Apple is killing the 3.5 mm earphone jack & justifies that with 900 million lightning connected devices announcing new Lightning headphones out that come bundled within the box. If you have one of the best earphones or headsets with 3.5mm audio port, that too can be used with the iPhone 7 & 7 Plus as the company is offering 3.5mm to a lightning port adapter. Apple also introduces AirPods that looks like the regular earphones without the cables with a runtime of 5 hours of listening & a charging case to increase runtime additionally upto 24 hours.

Must Read: Apple iPhone 7 vs iPhone 7 Plus – What to Buy?

Apple Mac is coming to more countries, and as we had reported earlier, they announce FeliCa, a technology similar to NFC in Japan. The New iPhone comes with A10 Fusion chip which is a 64-bit quad-core processor that’s battery efficient, 50% better graphics than A9 & 3X faster than the A8 processor. Referring to the Battery life, the iPhone 7 offers two years better battery life than iPhone 6S whereas the iPhone 7 Plus gives one hour extra battery life compared to the iPhone 6S Plus. From now on, there will be 16GB iPhones, the iPhone 7 & 7 Plus will be available in 32GB, 128GB & the 256GB storage variants.

The pricing of iPhone 7 starts at $649 while the plus starts from $769 with the pre-orders beginning from September 9th. The phones will be available from September 16th & is launching in 28 countries initially followed by 30 in the following week. Talking about India, the iPhone’s would launch on October 7th which is exactly a month later, and the pricing starts from Rs. 60,000 onwards & the Airpods would cost you Rs 15,400 only.

Apple iPhone 7 & 7 Plus Prices in the U.S, China, India, UK, UAE, Australia, Europe & Canada