Apple iPhone 7 v iPhone 6S series: What's changed?

Apple unveiled the new iPhone 7 series in San Francisco on Wednesday. And now that the device is officially in public domain, many would be curious to know details of the new features it comes with and whether they make it worth an upgrade over their older handsets.

To help you make that decision easily, we have briefly described the key changes in iPhone 7 over the iPhone 6S series.

Design and build quality:

The new iPhone 7 bears almost the same design language as seen in the previous two iPhone series, with minor cosmetic changes. If seen from a distance, many will fail to recognise the new phone from the old.

Dimensions:

Apple iPhone 7 (4.7-inch) - 138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm, weighs 138g

Apple iPhone 7 Plus (5.5-inch) - 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3 mm, weighs 188g

Apple iPhone 6S (4.7-inch) - 138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm, weighs 143g

Apple iPhone 6S Plus (5.5-inch) - 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3 mm, weighs 192g

One discernible change in the iPhone 7 series is that the 3.5mm audio jack has been dropped to add another speaker grille to enhance audio experience with stereo effect. The ditching of the 3.5mm port may cost Apple dearly as there will only one lightning port, leaving iPhone 7 series handicapped.

Though Apple will be packing EarPods with Lightning Connector and a Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter, users still won't be able to listen to music while charging the device. Anticipating a backlash from fans, Apple has launched wireless earphones, dubbed as 'AirPods'. But these will be sold separately.

Many believe that Apple's decision to sell wireless earpods separately, to serve their commercial interest, may result in a loss of sales.

Now, the good part is that the new iPhones series comes with IP67 water-and-dust resistant certification under IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) standards, making it more durable than any previous iteration. Both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus can withstand immersion in water for up to one metre (3.3 feet) for 30 minutes.

Another cosmetic change that one can see in the new iPhone  series is that the awkward white antenna lines, which used to ruin the smooth look at the back of the iPhone 6S series, have been moved to the top and the bottom edges.

Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus also boast Retina HD display with a wide colour gamut for cinema-standard and greater colour saturation as compared to previous models.

Processor, RAM and Storage:

Both the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus models ship with Apple's new 64-bit A10 Fusion quad-core CPU and M10 motion co-processor. Dual-core processors is said to be 40 percent faster than the A9. The other two cores are highly efficient and use 1/5th power to save the battery life of the device. The graphics processor is said to be 50 percent faster than the A9 CPU.

Apple 6S and 6S Plus come shipped with 64-bit 3rd generation Apple A9. It is 70 percent and 90 percent faster in terms of CPU and GPU speeds, as compared to A8, seen in the 2014 based iPhone 6 models. It is backed by M9 co-processor to take some load off the main processor.

For many years, tech critics and Android fans have been ridiculing Apple for selling 16GB-based iPhones, which offered very little space for storing media content and files, as the device's iOS takes the major share of the storage. Well, this year the company finally ditched the 16GB and introduced 32GB as the new base variant, along with 128GB and 256GB models.

Though Apple never discloses RAM capacity, it is believed that the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 house 2GB RAM, the same as iPhone 6S series. Whereas, the bigger 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus is said to feature 3GB RAM.

Camera:

The main highlight of the new iPhone 7 series is its camera hardware. Both the models come with enhanced 12MP camera featuring OIS (Optical Image Stabiliser), Æ’/1.8 aperture, 6-element lens and Quad-LED True Tone flash.

Apple has also included an additional tele-photo lens in iPhone 7 Plus to bring depth of field capability, but this feature will be introduced with software update later this year.

On the front, the iPhone 7 series houses an improved 7MP FaceTime HD camera.

Battery:

The Apple has not revealed the capacity of the battery of iPhone 7 series, but it did confirm that the new devices have longer battery life than any previous iPhone to date.

Value-added features:

While the earlier models had clickable finger-print sensor, the iPhone 7 series will have touch-sensitive capacitive home button with bio-metric sensor, and will come with Force touch feature.

The Force touch trackpad was used on Apple Watch and the recently-released Macs. When the user initiates Force click by pressing on the trackpad, it opens up functions of the apps and system features on the Mac. For instance, if the user Force clicks on an address option on any entry in their contact list, it gives a Maps preview of that location.

Key specifications of Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: