0 iPhone 7 release date announced: Preorders start Friday, release on September 16

By Gadget News | At 1:32 PM | Label : smartphones | 0 Comments

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There’s nothing quite like the buildup to an Apple event, especially when new iPhones are set to be unveiled. We’ve seen months of non-stop rumors, leaks and speculation wash over the web ahead of today’s big event, but now all of the rumors have finally been put to bed. Apple’s new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have been unveiled, and we were right on the money when we said that Apple’s new iPhones for 2016 would be its most exciting iPhones ever.

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are faster, more powerful, sleeker and better equipped than any other iPhone Apple has ever built, and now we finally know when they’ll be available to purchase.

As has been the case in other recent years, nearly all of the well-sourced reports we saw ahead of Wednesday’s big event ended up panning out. Apple’s new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus feature designs that are strikingly similar to Apple’s 2014 and 2015 iPhones, but with some minor refinements like a new antenna design. Of course the real story is inside the phones, where you’ll find upgraded guts, much more power and two different new rear cameras that both look impressive.

If you’re an Apple fan, you’re already sold. The only question that remains is when you can finally get your hands on one.

In line with rumors, Apple announced on Wednesday during its big September event that the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be made available for preorder beginning Friday, September 9th. The phones will then be released next week on September 16th.

Apple’s new iPhones come with either 32GB, 128GB or 256GB of storage, but pricing will remain the same at $649, $749 and $849 for the iPhone 7 or $769, $869 and $969 for the iPhone 7 Plus. Jet Black will only be available on 128GB and 256GB models of both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

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0 Apple explains in detail why it killed the 3.5mm headphone jack

By Gadget News | At 12:31 PM | Label : smartphones | 0 Comments

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Image Source: Apple

One of the bigger talking points surrounding the iPhone 7 centers on, of all things, a feature that Apple removed. We’re of course talking about the conspicuous absence of the tried and true 3.5mm headphone jack. While Apple has historically never been one to shy away from abandoning legacy technologies, the 3.5mm headphone jack is another matter entirely.

The headphone jack as we know it today has been around and in-use for decades on end. It’s practically universal across a whole range of varied devices and, to top it all of, it’s exceedingly durable reliable. Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack as part of an underlying push towards wireless, therefore, will likely be a topic of heated debate for months to come.

DON’T MISS: The 12 best new features of Apple’s iPhone 7

Yesterday, Phil Schiller said that Apple was abandoning the headphone jack because it was the only company “courageous” enough to make such a drastic and bold decision. In short order, Schiller’s hyperbolic quip became a point of laughter across the web. But late on Tuesday, Apple executives Phil Schiller, Greg Joswiak and Dan Riccio (Apple’s senior VP of hardware engineering) sat down with Buzzfeed whereupon they explained more candidly why Apple believes we should put the 3.5mm headphone jack behind us.

As far as Riccio is concerned, it’s a matter of wasted space. What’s more, removing the headphone jack now gives Apple the opportunity to get more creative underneath the hood.

“It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone,” Riccio explained. “It was fighting for space with camera technologies and processors and battery life. And frankly, when there’s a better, modern solution available, it’s crazy to keep it around.”

Specifically, Riccio relayed that the size of the audio jack became a frustrating nuisance when trying to incorporate the respective camera systems inside of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. What’s more, removing the headphone jack enabled Apple to increase the size of the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 battery by 14%, ultimately providing users with an extra two hours of battery life. And last but not least, Riccio explained that removing the 3.5mm jack finally helped Apple deliver a more water-resistant iPhone.

All that said, Joswiak believes that there’s really no convincing reason to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack up and running.

“The audio connector is more than 100 years old,” Joswiak said. “It had its last big innovation about 50 years ago. You know what that was? They made it smaller. It hasn’t been touched since then. It’s a dinosaur. It’s time to move on.”

Schiller, meanwhile, said that the transition over to wireless is “inevitable.”

“You’ve got to do it at some point,” Schiller added. “Sooner or later the headphone jack is going away. There are just too many reasons aligned against it sticking around any longer. There’s a little bit of pain in every transition, but we can’t let that stop us from making it. If we did, we’d never make any progress at all.”

All the same, Apple does appear to understand that the transition will be slow and tedious for many. To that end, Apple thankfully has plans to include a 3.5mm to Lightning adapter for free inside of every iPhone 7 box. At the very least, this should help smooth over the transition away from the 3.5mm jack.

Make sure to check out the full Buzzfeed interview via the source link below as the trio of Apple executives go into even more detail regarding the design of the iPhone 7. The piece is well worth checking out in its entirety.

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0 With the A10 Fusion chip, the iPhone 7 Plus blows away every other Apple device

By Gadget News | At 11:30 AM | Label : smartphones | 0 Comments

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Image Source: Apple Inc.

Although the iPhone 7 Plus might not look like much of an upgrade over the iPhone 6s Plus from the outside, it’s what’s on the inside that really counts. The first purported benchmark of the iPhone 7 Plus appeared on Geekbench this morning, and it looks like the A10 Fusion chip is everything it was cracked up to be.

DON’T MISS: The Jet Black iPhone 7 is amazing until you read the fine print

The iPhone 7 Plus received a single-core score of 3233 and a multi-core score of 5363. To put that into perspective, the iPhone 6s Plus only manages to achieve scores of 2407 and 4046, respectively, while even the A9X-powered iPad Pro tops out at a 3009 single-core score and a 4881 multi-core score.

Not only is the iPhone 7 Plus faster than any iPhone Apple has ever developer, it’s also noticeably more powerful than the top-of-the-line iPad.

As MacRumors points out, the A10 Fusion chip runs at 2.23 GHz, but considering that rumors suggested it could run at 2.4 to 2.45 GHz, there’s a chance it’s underclocked. That said, the iPad Pro runs at 2.2 GHz and the iPhone 6s Plus runs at 1.8 GHz, so the iPhone 7 Plus would beat both regardless.

In the press release for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Apple claims that the A10 Fusion is “the most powerful chip ever in a smartphone,” featuring “two high-performance cores that run up to two times faster than iPhone 6.” Looking back, the iPhone 6 single-core score was 1471 and the multi-core score was 2479, so now we have definitive proof that Apple was telling the truth.

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0 Confirmed: Apple is making only one, very dumb change to the iPhone this year

By Gadget News | At 10:29 PM | Label : smartphones | 0 Comments

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Image Source: iPhone 7 concept

Rumors about the iPhone 7 and headphone jacks have been circulating for months, but as we get closer to September, we’re getting a much better idea of what the next iPhone will look like. The latest report comes from CNBC, and it’s not promising any world-changing upgrades — quite the opposite, in fact.

According to simultaneous reports from CNBC, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, Apple will only be making “subtle changes” to the iPhone this fall, but the big change that everyone will notice is the removal of the headphone jack.

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Apple to break w/ pattern of overhauling iPhone every 2 yrs; will make only subtle changes this fall, including headphone jack removal -DJ

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) June 21, 2016

Apple's new iPhone in fall will have current 4.7, 5.5 in. screens; Apple expects bigger changes for 2017 iPhone, on product's 10th anniv.-DJ

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) June 21, 2016

The reports are more or less in line with other things we’ve heard about the iPhone 7, and the fact that three major outlets published them simultaneously reeks of a pre-planted Apple PR story. In other words, this is Apple working months in advance to limit expectations for the next iPhone, as well as prepare our souls for the loss of the headphone jack.

The headphone rumor has been around for months now, and is equal parts believable and contentious. Apple is famous for killing off standards and ports before the general population thinks they’re ready (see: Macbook Air and the DVD drive), but this would be a bold move even for the free-thinking designers in Cupertino.

On the plus side, killing the 3.5mm jack saves space, cost, and could potentially lead to better audio quality. A large part of audio quality is the amplifier, and moving the amp into the headphones themselves — what would happen with Lightning-powered headphones — would give headphone manufacturers far more options.

On the down side, there are more pairs of headphones with 3.5mm jacks than there are cockroaches on this planet, and forcing everyone to carry around an adapter for headphones — which, I guarantee, you will lose with 30 seconds — will probably cause rioting on the streets.

But aside from the headphone news, there’s more important details from this report. Apple has been churning out serious updates to its phone, every 24 months, for the last nine years. That’s a breakneck pace of innovation that had to end sometime, and this year might be it. Signs are pointing to the 2017 iPhone being a much more major upgrade: all-glass design, OLED screen, maybe no physical touch button.

That’s a lot to accomplish. There’s a good chance that Apple tried to make all those upgrades for this year’s phone, but ran into technological and manufacturing hurdles. (It’s not easy to spew out millions of extra OLED screens overnight.) Looking at it that way, the iPhone 7 is really more of a stop-gap, a temporary upgrade before the big, 10-year-anniversary iPhone lands next year.

Plus, it gives us all an extra 12 months to come to terms with the loss of our headphone jacks.

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0 HTC’s LG Nexus 5X successor will not kill the headphone jack

By Gadget News | At 9:28 PM | Label : smartphones | 0 Comments

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There’s much ado about a certain headphone jack these days. The iPhone 7 is expected to ditch the standard 3.5mm port, just like Motorola’s 2016 flagship devices that were announced a few weeks ago. But not all phones will stop supporting the audio standard, and at least one of the two upcoming HTC-made Nexus devices is rumored to have a headphone jack. In fact, a new leak gives us a preview of the rumored hardware of the smaller 2016 HTC Nexus handset.

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A trusted source shared with Android Police the supposed specs of the HTC Sailfish, which is the codename of the 5-inch Nexus handset made by the Taiwanese handset maker this year. HTC is rumored to have partnered with Google to launch two distinct Nexus devices this year, likely the successors of the LG Nexus 5X and the Huawei 6P.

The HTC Sailfish will reportedly feature a 5-inch Full HD AMOLED display, 64-bit 2.0GHz quad-core processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 12-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel front camera, Bluetooth 4.2, rear fingerprint reader, USB-C port, at least one speaker on the bottom, and the headphone jack on top.

It’s not clear at this time what type of mobile processor the HTC Nexus will get, whether the phone will have any other storage versions, or whether it’ll have dual speakers on the bottom. But the headphone jack is explicitly mentioned.

Information regarding pricing and release dates has not been leaked, and there are no images available for the handset. The specs for the HTC Marlin Nexus handset have not leaked.

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0 Former Apple PR boss celebrates iPhone’s anniversary with video of pissed off Steve Jobs moments

By Gadget News | At 8:27 PM | Label : smartphones | 0 Comments

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Nine years ago today, Apple released the original iPhone and forever changed the way the world uses and enjoys technology. While iPhone launches today still attract crowds and long lines at certain Apple retail locations, nothing can compare with the spectacle and excitement that surrounded the launch of the original.

In light of the iPhone’s ninth anniversary, former Apple PR head Natalie Kerris directs us to this video supercut featuring clips of Steve Jobs losing his cool in public. As the video description reads: “Steve Jobs is known for his tantrums and thunderous personalty… in private. In front of a large public he usually looks enjoyable and composed. But sometimes he lets the cat out … just a little.”

DON’T MISS: The iPhone 7 nightmare

Now to be fair, the video is more of a showcase of Jobs playfully being frustrated at various moments, either because a product demo isn’t going as smoothly as he wants or because he’s waxing poetic about a topic he can’t help but feel passionate about.

All that aside, why not kick back and take a stroll down memory lane with some of these now-ancient clips of Jobs being Jobs.

And while we’re on the topic, it’s worth pointing out this excerpt from timeless and still-fascinating investigative piece Wired did on the iPhone’s development back in 2010. In the passage below, Jobs is furious that AT&T CEO Ralph De la Vega in late 08 preemptively announced that tethering would be coming to the iPhone.

Even though Apple had been pushing for tethering, Jobs was furious that De la Vega would make such a momentous announcement before a deal was in place — and without consulting Apple. He even ended a high-level meeting days later with a rant about it. Jobs “was absolutely livid,” a witness says. “He paced around the room for five minutes talking about what an incredibly stupid company AT&T was and how frustrating it was to do business with them. Then, when he was done, he said, ‘I’m going to go call Ralph and yell at him.’”

Classic Jobs.

And while we’re on the topic, let’s lighten the mood with this absurd clip of Jobs (being played by Ashton Kutcher) yelling at Bill Gates.

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