As we inch closer to the debut of the new iPhone, reports with info about Apple’s new smartphone will look like continue to trickle out.
It’s said that Apple’s iPhone 7 will only have “subtle changes” over the iPhone 6s. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the iPhone 7 will keep the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and Apple is also expected to break its pattern of overhauling the design of its new iPhone every two years, suggesting that the iPhone 7 will look largely similar to the iPhone 6s.
The one major change that’s rumored to be coming with the iPhone 7 is the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack. That’ll leave the Lightning port as the charging port and headphone jack, a move that’ll let Apple make the iPhone 7 more water resistant and thinner. It’s said that Apple will make the iPhone 7 one millimeter thinner than the iPhone 6s, which is 7.1mm thick.
For most of the iPhone’s life, Apple has followed a pattern of launching a new design with each non-S model phone and then reusing that design with the S model. That pattern would suggest that we’ll see a new design with this year’s iPhone 7, but many rumors have suggested that that won’t be the case. Instead, Apple is widely expected to ditch the iPhone’s 3.5mm headphone jack, something that we’ve already seen from some Android manufacturers. If that change happens, the move will likely face quite a bit of backlash from consumers that won’t be able to plug their regular headphones into the iPhone 7. It’ll be interesting to see what Apple does about that, whether that’s offering a 3.5mm-to-Lightning adapter in the iPhone 7 box or something else.
Today’s report also claims to shed some light on the 2017 iPhone. It’s said that that model — which will be the 10th anniversary iPhone — will bring “bigger design changes.” Those could include an edge-to-edge OLED screen and the elimination of the iPhone’s physical home button, with Apple instead building the fingerprint reader into the phone’s display.
