It’s September, and we all know what that means. Leaves are beginning to fall, fresher’s flu is plaguing the majority of the student population and Apple has released its latest additions to the iPhone family. The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are being tipped as the greatest ever smartphones, surpassing pre-order sales on “that-is-so-last-year’s” immensely popular iPhone 6 despite removing features that many people believe to be integral to the functioning of any mobile phone.
If you can justify to your conscience and your mother – pretty much the same thing anyway – that €779 is reasonable to pay for the 4.7” display on iPhone 7, do not be under any illusions that the unit will be easy to obtain. Apple is turning away customers on a daily basis prompting many to camp outside its stores State side.
This version of the phone is offering buyers five colours to choose from: silver, gold, rose gold, black and jet black. Of course, this will be the noticeable factor that sets it aside as the iPhone hasn’t seen a black variation since the fourth instalment. We will all easily be able to spot the people who have the sleek new design, luckily enough for those of us who are cynical in our jealousy. The device comes in at 138 grams and has a camera of 12 mega-pixels which will hopefully get you past eleven likes on Instagram quicker than ever before.
This phone may currently be the most sought after on the market, but there have been many changes to the classic iPhone formula. RIP to all headphone users as the company chooses to omit the beloved and practical headphone jack. You can use those Beats you got at Christmas on your Gameboy from the nineties but not this new iPhone. Instead, you must fork out an additional €159 to use what the company has dubbed ‘Airpods’ – wireless, chargeable earphones with a battery life of five hours and which will more than likely miraculously disappear from your sight within minutes of purchase. However, the company has not totally ignored the fact that almost everybody has some variation of traditional earphones and has decided to include a headphone jack adapter in the packaging of the iPhone 7.
Another change that users will recognise immediately is the alteration to the traditional home button. The satisfactory click that we’ve been experiencing for years has been scrapped and replaced with a pressure sensitive sensor. This sensor has three recognised levels of touch, with each one carrying out a different function. The downside? This sensor needs skin contact. When you’re walking to college on a cold December’s morning for a 9am lecture you will be forced to take off your gloves to even exit an application or your fingers will be rendered obsolete.
The Plus edition packs all that the regular edition does and more. A 5.5” retina HD display and not one, but two cameras for your selfies cause the price to rise to €919. Reportedly both versions have a two hour longer battery life than their respective 6s and 6s Plus counterparts and can remain submerged in up to one metre of water for 30 minutes at a time. This is guaranteed to introduce a whole new world of iPhone destroying on your YouTube suggestions. So far there have been no stories of either model blowing up, much to the disappointment of Samsung supporters.
There are many features that fans of the iPhone have been asking for for years and have yet to be implemented. The lack of group FaceTime is still a source of frustration for everyday users and the customisation of Siri is limited to American, British and Australian English accents. I’m positive that everyone in Ireland would only love to be smart-talked to by a computerised Donegal accent. We have flight mode installed in every mobile phone around today, and yet not one of them has ‘drunk mode’. I thought Apple would be the first mobile company to stop you from sending that cringe-worthy message to your latest Tinder match in the bathroom of Carbon. They’ve missed out.
So is the new iPhone worth getting? The 7 and 7 Plus both run iOS 10, but every phone since the iPhone 5 will be getting an update for that later this year. The removal of the headphone jack is a questionable decision and do not be surprised if it returns next September and the home button is perhaps problematic. Frankly, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus do not have enough positive changes from their predecessors to warrant the upgrade. But to end a positive note, at least most of us will now be able to afford an iPhone 4.
-By Connell McHugh