By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)
As we get closer to Apple’s fall event which usually takes place in September, the rumors that the iPhone 7 may do away with the headphone mini jack doesn’t seem to be going away. And now we have alleged leaked images of a mockup of the iPhone 7 Plus, which shows that Apple may be going wireless with their earbuds afterall. But it also throws weight behind the notion that Apple may be doubling up on its rear facing cameras, and that could help mobile filmmakers.
We are now officially in the “tick” phase of the “tick-tock” development cycle for the iPhone, and that usually means a complete design change, while the tock is refining software and getting more performance out of the hardware (the ‘S’ series).
If the rumors prove accurate, and lately they have, the 10th generation of the iPhone platform seems to be going outside of the box with the removal of the headphone mini jack. Now this could mean that Apple may have developed wireless earbuds (believed to be called “Airpods”) which could connect via Bluetooth, or it could mean, as some have suggested, that the next gen earbuds will take advantage of the audio connectors in the USB Lightning connector.
This makes sense to me for two reasons:
1) Apple’s acquisition of Beats has given them a selection of popular wireless headphones that connect via Bluetooth. There are also smaller earbud models out there that can do the same thing. It’s possible that Apple’s manufacturing has managed to make it nearly as cheap to create Bluetooth earbuds now, which would render the use of a headphone jack obsolete. The mockup also shows stereo speakers as a result and that’s what the room is for.
2) If a product line is to continue to evolve with more powerful processors, longer battery life, etc., it becomes necessary to make room. Apple made a radical change to the Lightning connector a few years back, eliminating the iconic 30 pin connector to free up a ton of room for other things in the iPhone design. There’s only so much room in the iPhone, and that room gets smaller and smaller the thinner it gets. So if they could do away with the mini jack, they could free up a lot of real estate inside of the iPhone for future advancements or a larger battery.
Both of these make a lot of sense. But it also means that they’ll have to create some sort of lightning adapter that would enable users with older mini jack headphones to use them with the new models, and I’m betting they’ll cost $29.95, much like the 30 pin-to-lightning adapter did (that would actually be reason #3).
The other more radical design change is the dual rear facing cameras. As we discussed in our article here, going with a dual camera system would enable apple to create de facto depth of field by using a camera lens set at wide angle, and then another camera lens zoomed.
The design is already available in some Android phones and the data taken from both cameras, gives the camera software the ability to gauge distance between the subject and the background, and creates more options pertaining to depth of field. It also provides for more accurate dynamic range.
The impact of this design could be heady for mobile filmmakers, who have to work around the limitations of the camera’s digital only platform. The iPhone’s camera is rock solid and can shoot in 4K, but like most smartphone cameras, it suffers from digital zoom and a lack of options for depth of field. Adding an optical lens is out of the question, especially for Apple, which is obsessed with a thin, streamlined design. So if this new algorithm and dual camera design can mimic the effects of an optical zoom, it could be a godsend to mobile filmmakers.
The last note, according to Unbox Therapy host Lew, is that there is an array of “contact points” on the bottom of the iPhone 7 mockup, which may be a hint at accessories you can add to the next-gen iPhone, or give it the ability to more securely dock for charging, maybe even offering a wireless charge plate. That could be interesting.
According to Forbes, we’ll supposedly know by September 9th what all the hullabaloo is all about, but whatever the iPhone 7 will have, you can bet it will be faster, and hopefully have better battery life. And it will also have iOS 10, which we learned about this past June. Improvements there look promising, and we’ll all get to share the largesse that brings. It’s definitely got to be better than iOS 9, which honestly has been an irritation as far as many are concerned.
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