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Like a wheel of cheese down Cooper’s Hill, it seems the iPhone rumour mill never stops rolling on. No sooner has Apple pulled the covers off its latest piece of palm candy than the next raft of predictions, leaks and loopy concepts hits the internet.
So it is with the iPhone 7. Barring a break with longstanding tradition, the Cupertino company isn’t set to reveal its next smartphone until September – but that hasn’t staunched a stream of revelations about everything that number seven has in store.
It is, of course, worth bearing in mind that quirky mockups don’t always reflect reality, but when seeking clues about this – or any – iPhone model, where better to look than the patents that have been filed and tech that’s been developed. With around 8 months until we see what Jony Ive and co. have been cooking up in California, we do have a good idea of some of the biggest and most fundamental changes set to grace the iPhone 7.
Rumours of a multi-model line-up abound, giving no hope of knowing with what moniker Apple will choose to adorn its newest handsets. Names and numbers aside, though, here are nine upgrades that you could well see on the iPhone 7.
9. More Memory To Play With
Apple has aggressively marketed memory options across its entire hardware range for many years – and that doesn’t look set to change with the iPhone 7.
Despite desperate calls from some camps for the addition of expandable memory, as more and more manufacturers fix capacities in favour of cloud storage, it seems unlikely that Apple will cram in a microSD card slot any time soon.
Instead, many expect Apple to drop the 16GB option from its lineup in favour of 64GB and upwards. Presently, the 16GB model is the most reasonably-priced iPhone offering – but also the least sensible: it might be a ton cheaper than its more spacious sibling, but its storage fills up quicker than a toddler on a Christmas Day treats binge.
The lower price-point iPhone presently serves the purpose of offering a high-end product for a slightly-less-than-extortionate price, whilst pushing those wanting more into the higher price brackets of 64-and-more models.
But, with many apps having doubled in size since Apple upped its limits and the media needs of the masses growing by the day, many believe the manufacturer will ditch the 16GB iPhone, instead adding a 256GB range-topper for those truly in need of space to save.
With a phone of such size on offer, it would seem absurd for Apple to continue offering a 16GB model concurrently. That said, Apple has been known to offer tech of truly useless capacities before – here’s looking at you, 8GB iPhone 5c…
8. iOSX
Not so much is known about what Apple will do with its next major software upgrade – only that it’s coming, and it should be big.
It might not launch at exactly the same time as the iPhone 7 – depending on Apple’s strategy – but the two are sure to form part of a higher plan.
IOS updates 8 and 9 were all about improving the substantive functionality of iDevices across the board, building on the visual overhaul offered by iOS7. Will the 10th iteration of Apple’s iSoftware change the look of things again? It seems unlikely, particularly as MacBook software becomes ever more homologous with the iPhone platform.
What, then, is there to expect from iOS 10? For one thing, it could be iOS X. Whether Apple will take the numeral route remains to be seen, not least given the potential for confusion with its existing Mac interface – unless, of course, that’s exactly what it wants: rumours have been swirling for a while about the potential of a single system across all Apple hardware, Windows 10-like.
In terms of functional improvements, expect Siri to receive yet another power boost, alongside better 3D Touch integration, a bigger push for Apple News, and refinements to the notification and control centre experience.
Could iOS 10 be the one to finally giver users customisation options? That one’s in the lap of the gods.
7. A Chip With Six Cores
Apple reckons its A9 chip is 70% faster than the A8 that appeared in the iPhone 6. What does the A10 have in store? You can be sure its something similar, and a whole lot more.
The Cupertino manufacturer is famously shady about the on-paper specs of its in-phone hardware, largely because, on stats alone, Apple devices pale in comparison to competition from the likes of Samsung. Why? Because Apple favours creating a complete package of hardware and software, attuned to one another in order to run at surprising speed.
Still, thanks to well-doers happy to tear open iPhones with surprisingly regularity, we know that the A9 is a dual-core, 1.8GHz thinker. Sounds slow, but you only need to use 6s for a few minutes to find that it’s not.
Will the A10 follow suit? Well, there are plenty of murmurings pointing towards different manufacturers for Apple’s next chip – but the take home info is that it’ll be a whole lot faster, and likely to pack more cores. Make that four more, to be exact – meaning six-core smarts in the iPhone 7.
It increasingly seems like Apple will also look to utilise the 10nm process – whoever makes the chips – for the A10, meaning thinner, more efficient processors, for a supremely speedy iPhone 7.
6. All Metal And Slim
Bendgate might have been banished by the addition of an essentially unbendable 7000 series aluminium chassis to the iPhone 6s Plus, but the continued existence of rubberised exterior elements still spoil the aesthetic for many owners.
The dark-grey bands on the iPhone are there to aid antenna reception, but do little to endear it to lovers of clean lines and smooth sides.
Happily, it’s been reported by a fair few industry insiders that Apple might be ditching the different materials in favour of an all-metal exterior.
HTC arguably did it first, but, then, both HTC and Apple have taken pages out of one another’s playbooks for years (take a look at the HTC One A9 went furthest of all) – and it doesn’t look like there’ll be anything to complain about.
An iPhone that’s aluminium all over is no bad thing. Provided Apple can keep its chips cool – something it achieved with remarkable success on the 6 Plus, and something the efficiency of 10mn-made processors should assist with – it could mean the iPhone 7 is the slickest and slimmest to date.
5. Drop-Proof Bumpers
A tempting prospect that would put paid to smashed screens the world over, there’s been a whole lot of chatter surrounding a patent filed by Apple that involves automatically-deploying bumpers to prevent phone-meets-ground melodrama.
Will it make it into the iPhone 7? Well, Apple is no stranger to patents – the vast majority of which never (or, at least, have yet to) make it into production models. From 3D screens to transparent displays, there’s plenty for the web to get excited about, but no guarantee anything will actually appear.
Still, this one isn’t so left-field as to defy logic or possibility – and would make the iPhone something of a rugged smartphone, without the hefty rubber casings associated with happy-to-be-dropped devices.
The airbag approach might be less realistic – the idea being that a proximity sensor would deploy an air-filled cushion to prevent a wallet-emptying collision with the concrete – but the notion of small pins pushing out of your phone to put valuable airspace between it and the tiles could just work.
Will it happen? On this one, it’s a wait and see.
4. Wireless Charging
It’s nothing new, but, as ever with Apple, it could be about to re-arrive in a sleek and shiny iPhone package: it’s wireless charging, and it could be coming in the iPhone 7.
Apple’s reversible Lightning cable did away with in-the-dark fumbling with chargers, but still meant tethering to the wall. Now, Apple reportedly wants to banish cables altogether by offering longer distance wireless charging.
Samsung, Nokia and fellow phone makers have offered wire-free juicing for a good few years, by means of charging mats and pads. A quick zap of power was as easy as putting your handset down for a few minutes.
Ever the innovator, though, Apple wants to take things one step further and ditch the idea of docks completely. Little in the way of concrete detail is available at present, but you can be sure that Apple will only put it’s name to something skinned in aluminium and up-sold as far as possible.
Whether the tech will arrive on September’s iPhone 7 isn’t clear, but there’s mounting evidence that it will be here very soon – even if that means an early-2017 model.
3. No Headphone Jack
This one has been doing the rounds for a while, and seems more and more likely to be completely true: Apple is killing off the lowly headphones.
On its quest for cable-free convenience, the Cupertino company looks set to ditch the age-old 3.5mm jack on the outer edge of the iPhone 7, in favour of bluetooth buds. On the one hand, this adds a whole lot more convenience, meaning no more tangled leads, truly hands-free usability – if rumours of smart-enabled in-ears are true – and a much sleeker exterior.
It does, though, also mean saying goodbye to your favourite set of analogue cans.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Apple waited so long to ditch the jack, given its penchant for putting user preference second to up-selling options and hardware that, willingly or otherwise, pulls buyers into the Apple ecosystem.
Would Apple go as far as to introduce a unique codec over which it has a monopoly? Hopefully not – otherwise the only bluetooth beats on offer will be courtesy of, well, Beats.
2. Dual Lenses
One snapper not enough? Several sources suggest Apple will be adding dual-lens tech to at least one model of the iPhone 7.
What’s more, reports indicate that, unlike the protruding camera parts on present iPhones, the iPhone 7’s lens tech will sit flush with its rear shell.
Sticking two shooters on the back of a smartphone could serve several purposes – including wider angles and better exposure metering. Better still, it might mean the introduction of re-focussing after the fact and, in a few years, VR-equipped iPhones for at-home holographic videos.
So, whilst an upgrade from the 12MP resolution of the iPhone 6s looks unlikely – given how long it took to add more pixels to the 8MP-res of previous models – buyers could be in for a whopper of a photography experience on the iPhone 7.
1. Hi-Res Screen
Perhaps the most obvious and arguably the easiest upgrade for Apple to introduce, the iPhone 7 should see a sharper screen grace its frontage.
At present, iPhone screens are hardly bad – but, at 326ppi, they lag well behind offerings from the likes of Samsung, LG and Motorola, particularly when it comes to displaying HD content.
Whilst an UltraHD display seems a way off – even if Sony managed to cram a 4K corker onto its Xperia Z5 Premium – it appears increasingly likely that Apple will add at least enough pixels to take the iPhone 7’s resolution up to QHD, matching its price-point competitors.
Will the dimensions change? That seems unlikely, given how static the iPhone lineup has remained in recent years, and the fact that any iPhone 7 Plus model has little room to expand before becoming a baby iPad.
As ever, though, when it comes to pre-launch Apple speculation, several surprises are surely in store.
What do you want to see on Apple’s iPhone 7? Let us know in the comments below.
