Sept. 16 was iPhone 7 launch day. We’ve got the new Plus model in the office and we’re going to be unboxing it for you. And a quick look at some of the best new features that business users care about.
Well we have to start with the elephant in the room. Or, I guess with the headphone jack, which is not in the room. Or at least not on the iPhone 7. The last analogue port on your smartphone has been cut for the sake of saving a few millimeters of space. Apple includes new Lightning cable ear pods in the box. And if you’re just not ready to embrace the digital world, there’s an adapter to connect a regular pair of headphones.
I’ll tell you, I would lose this thing in about five seconds flat.
So keep the new headphone situation in mind. If you rely on a wired headset to conduct a lot of calls, you might want to pick up an extra adapter. If you’ve already got a favourite Bluetooth headset for taking calls and rocking tunes, you can still use that too.
If you find you’re always begging your IT director to replace your smartphone after some unfortunate accident, you’ll be happy to hear the iPhone 7 is more dust and water resistant. The IP67 rating means this should survive being submerged up to one meter for up to 30 minutes. But Apple cautions against charging a wet iPhone. Plus, water damage isn’t covered under warranty. So maybe don’t put it to the test – leave that to us.
To make it waterproof, Apple has removed the mechanical home button. Instead there’s a pressure-sensitive home button that makes use of what it calls a taptic feedback engine. That means it can tell the difference between you tapping it or a full press. Plus, it can send you vibrations through this button as notifications. How this gets applied isn’t totally clear just yet.
The other big headline feature on the iPhone 7 of course is the camera. Apple has switched to a two-lens system here. That gives it some tricks that can approximate photo effects you’d normally only be able to pull off with a DSLR. Also, the flash is adaptive to surrounding light conditions.
Business users that care about performance will appreciate the hardware updates here. The A10 cpu on board is Apple’s fastest yet with 3.3 billion transistors. And the battery life is better than previous models too.