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Apple Launches the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus; Feature Water-Resistance, Lack Headphone Jack (www.bgr.in)
Apple on Wednesday unveiled its new flagship smartphones: the iPhone 7, and the iPhone 7 Plus. Both the iPhones look similar to the last year's iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, but offer a range of new features. Chief among those features are water and dust resistance, stereo speakers, improved cameras (the iPhone 7 Plus has a pair of 12MP cameras that are able to take SLR-quality images. It offers bokeh capability). And yes, the new iPhones indeed lack the headphone jack. "it's the best iPhone we have ever created," Apple CEO Tim Cook said. The home button is getting taptic feedback, similar to that of the MacBook.
So why is Apple removing the headphone jack? Apple's SVP Phil Schiller said, "courage."The company also announced AirPods wireless earphones. A pair of these will be priced at $169. The iPhones will go on sales starting September 16 in several regions including the United States In places like India, however, it will be available starting October 7.
So why is Apple removing the headphone jack? Apple's SVP Phil Schiller said, "courage."The company also announced AirPods wireless earphones. A pair of these will be priced at $169. The iPhones will go on sales starting September 16 in several regions including the United States In places like India, however, it will be available starting October 7.
Yay, you can no longer listen to headphones at your desk and have your phone charging. Listen all day at the office, phone is dead for the walk home. GREAT Idea.
Bokeh is a function of the lens diameter relative to the subject distance (and distance of other objects from the focal plane). For a given scene, cannot be created any other way other than a physically bigger lens. You know the penumbra during an eclipse (the area experiencing a partial eclipse during a solar eclipse)? That corresponds to bokeh. There is nothing you can do on the ground to enlarge this area. It is purely a function of geometry. (Mathematically, it's the point distribution function of the lens.)
You can fake it in software. I've been saying for over a decade that two small lenses with some lateral separation should allow an algorithm to estimate distance and blur the parts of the picture outside the focal plane appropriately to simulate bokeh. But it's not real bokeh, it's a digital manipulation.
the iPhone 7 Plus has a pair of 12MP cameras that are able to take SLR-quality images
Don't lie to me.
It has a tiny little sensor that assuming has perfect glass is just providing false magnification as the lens is a f/1.8 with a pixel edge size of about 1.2um (assuming the same size sensor as in the Apple iPhone 5S) but the diameter of the airy disk would be 3.7um. So the smallest item resolvable would fill about a 3x3 grid. Granted software can get rid of some of that but it isn't going to magically make it deliver results like a full frame SLR with good lenses.
While it is probably a better camera than most other cellphones (seriously these cameras are shit) don't say it holds a candle to an older full frame DSLR or even my 40+ year old film SLR that has some really nice lenses with good film.
Time to offend someone
The existing earpods have a habit of falling from my ears - and now they're not even going to be attached to some wires? Great.
That that is an absolute lie, total BS. A bulky 3.5mm jack is 0.5cc. Assuming the previous life of their 1715mA/3.7V battery was 14 hours, they are now adding another 245mA/3.7V worth of battery to it, to get those 2 additional hours. That translates to an energy density of around 6.4 MJ/L, about three times what the best LiPo batteries can give. Not a chance.
If it lasts longer, it's not from a bigger battery, it's from more efficient components elsewhere. They're feeding you a line and you're swallowing it.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
From my point of view, it's a poor implementation. Essentially most people will now have to carry two items around with them - a phone and a dongle - rather than just the one, or else not be able to hook the phone up to a standard audio system.
I also wish we'd wait for an agreed standard. Lightning is essentially a Apple-only standard. Lightning headsets will only ever work with Apple devices, we need a good common digital standard.
What I would do, if I had a million dollars, is produce an iPhone 7 case with the 3.5mm adapter built in. I'd also add USB (with charging available) just for completeness. Everyone buys cases for their phones anyway, and that'd resolve the entire problem so nobody has to carry around multiple adapters.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"DSLR" is marketing. Regardless of the number of pixels (oh, look, shiny!), without the light collection abilities of the large glass which can be put on a DSLR, and the photon collection abilities which come with the larger pixel sensors which DSLRs have, a phone will never come close.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You can definitely make a tiny sensor array with higher technical resolution than traditional ISO 400 print film grain... maybe even ISO 100. The catch is, you'll have to light up the scene to retina-searing brightness levels like a color movie set from the 1930s, because your effective f-stop will be insanely high and/or your dynamic range will be unacceptably low & have too much random noise.
Big lenses and/or large-format film/sensors allow you to capture more photons and take pictures with less light.
I find the non-technical people I know use 3.5mm jacks to hook up their phones to car stereos. They don't like Bluetooth, it's fiddly and awkward and, if it's not your car, means you have to figure out how to pair with that model. 3.5mm "just works".
First off, let's remember we're talking about setting a standard. Android phones already come with a "just works" digital hookup for headphones, and speakers, and 5.1 speakers, and whatever else you want - it's called a USB port.
There's a difference between Apple going first saying "Let's make a standard" and Apple going first and saying "Here's our proprietary way to do this." It certainly won't drive Android makers to encourage the use of the USB audio, because Apple's showing no signs of being prepared to adopt USB. And without universal adoption, you're just going to end up with a Betamax/VHS set of competing headphones, if Android phone makers went in that direction.
They won't, of course, they'll just carry on with the 3.5mm jack, for better or worse. I'm not a fan of 3.5mm - especially the hacky version we use today where slight voltage changes are used to signal "Play/pause/hangup/skip next track", and would like to see USB take off as a replacement. But, no, I don't see it taking off if the industry is split.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.