As of today, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are available for purchase in India ahead of the country's gift-giving season. As CNBC reported, the new handsets cost more than the average Indian citizen earns in six months due to local import taxes which jack up retail price of the entry-level $649 32GB iPhone 7 to as high as $900, or a whopping $1.382 for the flagship 256GB iPhone 7 Plus model.
Repair wizards over at iFixit along with their pals at Creative Electron gave Apple’s new $9 iPhone 7 Lightning headphone adapter a thorough X-ray treatment. The analysis has revealed a surprising amount of circuitry inside of the dongle.
Most notably, it packs in a pretty unique integrated circuit that's most likely a built-in digital-to-analog (DAC) converter. There’s actually a lot going on in the diminutive adapter aside from the DAC, writes iFixit, including things like an integrated amplifier and an analog-to-digital-converter (ADC).
“We’re surprised how much electronics Apple was able to include inside this little cable,” said Creative Electron, which builds X-ray inspection systems for electronics.
Coverage of YouTuber JerryRigEverything's scratch test of the iPhone 7's iSight camera lens wasn't lost on Apple. In the video, the device's camera lens is shown attracting scratch marks at a level six on the Mohs scale of hardness. That's quite surprising given both the official iPhone stats webpage and Apple's marketing boss Phil Schiller insist all current iPhones use sapphire for camera lens protection.
Now, pure sapphire crystal should sustain scratches up to a level nine, so it's odd that the iPhone 7's camera lens would scratch more easily than it should. As it turns out, the sapphire “issue” was serious enough to warrant an official statement from Apple.
Apple on Tuesday issued the second beta for iOS 10.1. Registered developers can grab the new software via the over-the-air update mechanism in the iOS Settings app, or via Apple’s online developer portal.
By far the most significant change in iOS 10.1 is the addition of Portrait camera mode— an iPhone 7 Plus-exclusive software feature that creates a ‘bokeh’ effect, which Apple demonstrated at last month's event.
As you may know, Apple's marketing boss Phil Schiller recently insisted that rumors of the iPhone 7's Home button and camera lens not being covered in pure sapphire were false. However, YouTuber JerryRigEverything has found that these parts do leave scratch marks at a level six on the Mohs scale of hardness, which is odd given that pure sapphire crystal should sustain scratches up to a level nine.
Apple on its website states that all of the iPhones it currently sells offer sapphire protection for the Touch ID sensor and iSight camera, which doesn't explain why these parts appear to scratch more easily than they should.
Could Apple be using a sapphire/glass hybrid or even a normal tempered glass rather than a 100 percent sapphire crystal? That's what JerryRigEverything set out to find in a comprehensive scratch test video of the iPhone SE/6/6s/7 series.
As confirmed by various news reports, authorized resellers and local Apple websites around the world, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be expanding in additional markets beginning October 7. The handsets will be available for purchase in India and Ukraine starting October 7.
A week later, on October 14, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will arrive in Macao, Macedonia, Malaysia, Montenegro, South Africa and Turkey.
Apple's much improved Messages app in iOS 10 is more expressive than ever, especially with nicely done animations that take over the entire screen.
One of the fullscreen effects in Messages, a bunch of balloons that fly up from the bottom of the screen, is the central theme of a new iPhone 7 commercial that Apple posted on its YouTube channel today.
The 30-second commercial wraps up with the message, “The all-new iPhone 7, with expressive messages. Practically magic.”
iOS 10 provides new APIs allowing third-party photography apps to capture and edit raw image data in the DNG format, and Lightroom for iPhone and Lightroom for iPad are among first apps to implement photo capture in the highest possible RAW quality. Earlier this week, Adobe released updates to Lightroom for iOS to help users take advantage of the new iPhone 7 camera’s raw shooting capabilities, including support for the iPhone 7 Plus's dual-lens camera.
Developer Snowman pushed a nice little update to Alto's Adventure, its award winning endless snowboard odyssey for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, which implements rich haptic feedback for users with iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus devices. Apple allows developers to create custom vibrations on the iPhone 7's improved Taptic Engine via a Taptic API.
Snowman is among the first developers to have implemented Taptic feedback.
Want to learn how to perform DIY repairs of the iPhone 7/Plus? Look no further than iFixit, the world's top authority when it comes to repairing consumer electronics devices like smartphones, tablets, game consoles, computers and so forth. Today, the site published a series of repair guides with detailed instructions on replacing the iPhone 7/Plus display, battery and the Taptic Engine.
Unbelievably, some of the techies I spoke to believe that maybe, somehow, the 3.5mm headphone jack will make a comeback in the next year's iPhone. That ship has sailed, of course, but that's not stopping pranksters and jokers on YouTube from milking the headphone jack meme for all it's worth, like a video titled “Secret Hack To Get Headphone Jack on the iPhone 7” from YouTuber TechRax.
In it, TechRax suggests that users drill a hole in their brand spanking new iPhone 7 in order to access a supposedly hidden headphone jack inside the device.
Unfazed by analyst reports predicting lower iPhone 7 sales this year versus the iPhone 6s in 2015, Apple is now reportedly increasing part and component orders for the handset, touch panel makers told Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes. Component orders for the holiday quarter are said to be 20-30 percent higher, according to Taiwan-based touch panel makers TPK Holding and General Interface Solution.