Its that time of year again – its iPhone launch time! Today saw the unveiling of the latest (and greatest?) iPhone ever in the form of the iPhone 7. Apple announced that they have sold over 1 Billion iPhones to-date which is just insane but there you have it! I have to say that for the better part of the last 5 years or so its been a ritual of sorts for me to wait excitedly for the live stream to start and see what new ‘things’ Apple has to launch. The live stream today was surprisingly sharp and smooth with no interruptions as has often been the case in the past so kudos to Apple for getting it right. Obviously, every TechBlogger out there is writing right now about the iPhone 7 and I have an early morning tomorrow at work so these are the things that caught my attention as far as the iPhone 7 is concerned:

• They killed the headphone jack – They did it. They actually did it! This was rumoured to be happening and was finally confirmed tonight. No more 3.5mm jack and instead all new iPhone 7 phones will use their lightning connector for the earphones. This is NOT all bad since Apple will ship the iPhone 7 with a connector for using analogue earphones that we all still own
• Its water, splash and dust resistant – This is so overdue given what Samsung did with the Galaxy S6 awhile ago now. To note, Apple did not show the iPhone 7 being dunked underwater but did indicate you could go into the rain with the iPhone 7 just fine.
• The iPhone 7 plus has 2 back-facing cameras – As seen in many many leaks online, the iPhone 7 plus has 2 cameras. One is a regular camera and the other is a telephoto camera that can go all the way to 10x zoom (using a combination of lenses and software). The iPhone 7 plus uses both cameras concurrently and uses both software and lenses to make this one of the best smartphone cameras in the world as it can even do shallow field of depth shots like a proper DSLR camera!
• The iPhone 7 got a major camera improvement – The new iPhone 7 has one back-facing camera and one front-facing camera as before. However, the back-facing camera has a f1.8 aperture meaning that (finally?) iPhones will work really well in low light conditions. All iPhone 7 models will also have optical stabilisation on this camera which as a 12 megapixel sensor. The front-facing camera has been improved to 7 megapixels.
• Stereo Speakers – The iPhone 7 becomes the first iPhone ever to have stereo speakers. This is massive since it means watching movie or listening to music will never be the same again. It will be better!
• Home Button – The home button on the iPhone 7 got a major upgrade to make it better in every way. Most importantly, the new home button uses the new haptic engine to give amazing feedback on the phone. Its a solid state home button too – just like that in the new Macbook.
• The A10 Fusion Processor – The iPhone 7 has a 4 core new processor called the A10 Fusion which is over 40% faster than that one in the iPhone 6S. In a nutshell, this is (probably?) the most powerful processor ever in a smartphone, according to Apple.
• Battery Life – Has been improved massively due to the use of a 4 core processor that can switch between high level and low level functions between cores. What this means is that you can get between 1 to 2 hours more battery life everyday compared to an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S.
• Retina Display – This has been improved so that colours really pop and is 25% brighter than the display on the iPhone 6S? The remarkable thing is that it actually uses less energy to do so.
• Memory Increased – For the longest time Apple has been making iPhones with only 16GB of memory? This changes massively with the iPhone 7 as the base model will now come with 32GB memory. However, thats not all. The iPhone 7 will have 128GB and 256GB versions as well. I am smiling!
• New Black Finishes – They added the new jet black and the matte black finishes on the iPhone 7. I love the look of the jet black iPhone 7 as seen below and its the one I would buy for sure if I ever get my hands on it.