Here Are the Details of the iPhone 7 and the Second-Generation Apple Watch. Do You Want to Upgrade?

The hardware that most exceeded expectations may be the AirPods.

At 1 a.m. today, Apple held its iPhone 7 launch event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in downtown San Francisco. In two hours it announced two new pieces of hardware — the iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch Series 2 — plus a range of accessories.

As the star of the day, the iPhone 7 took up most of the event. Apple listed 10 new selling points, but measured against its own two-year cycle of big updates, this is the iPhone upgrade with the least change to the outside of the phone.

The iPhone 7 continues the 6 and the 6s; what matters is the camera, the new colors, and the port that got cut

The "new design" and the new colors

The iPhone 7 still comes in two sizes, 4.7 and 5.5 inches, and it carries over the basic shape of the last generation. From the front it is all but indistinguishable from the 6s.

The changes are on the back. Below are the black iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

The details have changed, mostly on the back. The two white antenna lines are gone, leaving only the section along the top. And because the camera has been upgraded, the round cutout in the upper-left corner is bigger. The bad news: on both the iPhone 7 and the 7 Plus, the camera still sticks out.

The new iPhone comes in five colors. Jet Black and black are added, space gray is dropped, and silver, gold and rose gold stay.

Jet Black is probably the most appealing of the new colors. The surface is a glossy paint, close to the finish of a piano, and the Apple logo on the back has turned black too. What makes it especially striking is that you can barely see the antenna lines on the body.

The other, plain black is quieter — the same matte finish as the rest of the iPhones, and harder to smudge with fingerprints.

The iPhone 7 is now water-resistant

The new design seals the iPhone 7's shell more tightly, and the phone now carries an IP67 water-resistance rating. That standard means protection at the level of everyday life: getting caught in the rain or dropping the phone in water should no longer be a disaster.

Photography is the main selling point of the iPhone 7 line

The camera was the biggest selling point of today's iPhone, and it took up the longest stretch of the iPhone segment. In the past the two models differed only in size; this time they have completely different camera setups. The iPhone 7's camera is still 12 megapixels, but it now has optical image stabilization.

That is a tiny electric motor that adjusts the lens when your hand shakes, so the picture stays in focus. Apple introduced it two years ago and has used it in two generations of Plus models.

The new camera also has a new image sensor, which Apple says is 60% faster; a bigger lens that takes in 50% more light; and a flash that goes from two LEDs to four.

Apple also designed its own image processing chip for the first time, and "artificial intelligence" showed up again in this part of the presentation. Apple says the chip uses machine learning to enhance photos automatically — think of it as retouching that happens on its own.

The long-rumored dual camera arrives on the iPhone 7 Plus: a wide-angle lens and a telephoto lens.

The new camera app has a zoom button. At 1x it shoots through the wide-angle lens; zoom in and it switches to the second lens, up to 2x with no loss of quality.

Past 2x, Apple brings in algorithms to do the enlarging — up to 10x for photos and 6x for video. You can imagine that 10x will not look as good as a shot from a DSLR, but from the on-stage demo it is still far better than the 6s.

With the two cameras working together, the iPhone can produce something like the effect of a light-field camera: stacking photos taken at several focal points to blur the background more convincingly.

A few other camera details: the front-facing selfie camera goes from 5 megapixels to 7 and can stabilize images on its own. The iPhone can now also export photos in RAW, the way a DSLR does, which keeps every detail of the image and makes editing afterwards easier.

The Home button no longer has to be "pressed"

The other thing Apple called a revolution is the Home button. It is no longer a physical button in the strict sense, and you can no longer push it down.

That does not mean it gives you nothing back. Like the trackpad on the 12-inch MacBook, it is part of one solid body, but it vibrates to create the feeling of a press.

The change goes with a new way of unlocking in iOS. In the new system, the unlock gesture is no longer "swipe right, then enter your passcode" but a long press that reads your fingerprint.

Two speakers

With the headphone jack gone, the space went to new speakers. There are two of them, at the top and at the bottom, which doubles the volume and adds stereo sound.

A faster processor, longer battery life

The hardware updates also reach the main processor. With the A10, it goes from two cores to four — two high-performance, two low-power. To show that this is "the most powerful smartphone chip," Apple brought a game studio on stage to demo a showy mobile game.

Cook also called the iPhone 7 "the longest-lasting iPhone," good for one to two more hours of use than the iPhone 6s.

iOS 10 ships next week

On the software side, Cook described iOS 10, shown in June, as "the biggest change to iOS." It reaches every iPhone user on September 13. The GM build, the near-final version, is already available; if you have the public beta installed you can check for it in Settings.

32GB at the low end, and 100 yuan more in China

As rumored, the 16GB version is finally gone. The new iPhones start at 32GB, still with three tiers: 32, 128 and 256GB.

The rest of the line was rearranged at the same time, with the iPhone 6 discontinued and pulled from sale. Apart from the iPhone SE, every model now starts at 32GB.

In the US the iPhone 7 costs the same $649 as before, but in China, one of the launch markets, the price is up 100 yuan, starting at 5,388 yuan. We do not yet know why.

The iPhone has lost its headphone jack for good, and Apple wants you on wireless

The Lightning earphones everyone argued about in the rumors did arrive. To save room inside the phone, the iPhone 7 drops the 3.5 mm headphone jack. The way you plug in headphones, something you could do without looking, has been changed.

The earphones that come with the iPhone use a Lightning connector, and there is an adapter in the box.

Asked why, Apple said the change took "courage" — meaning that Apple is willing to rewrite a standard.

Pushing a new standard for the sake of better hardware comes naturally to the company. In the PC era Apple threw out the floppy drive, the optical drive and the Ethernet port. The iPhone is what made the Nano SIM and the Lightning connector common: the standard SIM gave way to the Nano SIM, the 30-pin connector to Lightning.

With the jack gone, Lightning is not your only option. Apple announced a new pair of earphones, the AirPods, which it called "a magical experience."

The AirPods look like EarPods with the cord snipped off, but inside them are a battery and a wireless chip Apple designed, the W1.

The new earphones have no buttons at all; you use them with their case. The case is a charger, and it also handles the connection to the phone. In the demo on stage, you open the lid, hold it near the phone, and the two pair at once.

The earphones also filter noise out of the microphone, and a double tap calls up Siri. In short, they are EarPods with more to them.

They are not cheap, though: 1,288 yuan in China, about what an iPod Touch costs.

News that the headphone jack was going drew criticism well before today. Environmentalists argue that it will make a huge number of old headphones useless and waste resources. For users, it may be a change that is hard to get used to quickly.

Either way, Apple has made up its mind to push a new headphone standard. Apple's online store listed two third-party Lightning headphones before the event, and Beats, a longtime partner, introduced three wireless models at today's launch.

The Apple Watch gets an update, but it is still an iPhone accessory

Two years on, Apple has finally updated the Apple Watch line with the Apple Watch Series 2.

Apple COO Jeff Williams came on stage and said that in 2015 the Apple Watch ranked second in sales among all watch brands, behind only Rolex. Among smartwatch brands it ranked first.

What he left out: in the second quarter of this year, Apple Watch shipments fell to 1.6 million units, down 55% from a year earlier.

Williams then went back over the watchOS 3 features announced at WWDC in June, including the new Dock and full-screen handwriting. Pokémon Go, he said, is coming to watchOS soon.

John Hanke, chief executive of Niantic Labs, which made Pokémon Go, came on next and said the game has been downloaded more than 500 million times since it launched.

Players have walked more than 4.6 billion kilometers between them. The Moon is about 384,000 kilometers from Earth on average, so all that walking adds up to 12,000 trips from here to the Moon.

The on-stage demo of Pokémon Go on the watch said a lot about where the Apple Watch stands.

The watch version only tells you how far away a Pokémon is and what is nearby; to catch one you still have to take out your iPhone. Which is roughly the Apple Watch's position: it remains, basically, an accessory to the iPhone.

The second-generation Apple Watch looks the same — the same rounded square — with one new case material, a ceramic that is four times harder than stainless steel.

The real upgrades this time are inside.

The Apple Watch Series 2 moves to a dual-core processor, 50% faster than the last one. Presenting it, Jeff Williams also made a point of the new GPU, twice as fast as before.

The new screen reaches 1,000 nits, twice as bright as the old one, so you can read the face outdoors in harsh sunlight.

The built-in GPS chip arrived on the Series 2, as expected. Apple used the hiking app ViewRanger to show the watch working on its own: navigation is stored offline, and GPS tells the watch where you are.

The only question is: when do you ever leave the house without your phone?

The Apple Watch Series 2 is water-resistant to 50 meters, and Apple designed a speaker that pushes water out by itself, so you can now swim in it.

QDaily visited Apple's health lab earlier; over the past two years and more, the lab has run 16,000 tests and gathered 17,000 hours of data. All that money and manpower went into one thing — building accurate algorithms for measuring exercise, swimming among them.

The heart-rate sensor from the first Apple Watch carries over to the Series 2.

After the standard upgrades, Jeff Williams brought out Nike president Trevor Edwards to introduce the Apple Watch Nike+, a special edition the two companies designed together — and one that anyone with a fear of clustered holes will find hard to look at.

The Apple Watch Nike+ does everything the Series 2 does, GPS included, so it can track your pace, distance and route when you run without an iPhone.

The band is made of the same fluoroelastomer as the band on the original Apple Watch Sport, punched with rows of molded vent holes.

The Nike+ has its own watch face, which lets you start the running app whenever you want; you can also tell Siri to start a run.

Besides the Nike edition, Apple worked with Hermès on the Apple Watch Hermès, which comes with an Hermès leather band and several watch faces Apple designed for it.

The original Apple Watch got a small update today as well — a new dual-core processor and a lower price. The 38 mm now starts at 2,188 yuan, the 42 mm at 2,488 yuan.

Apple said the Apple Watch Series 2 goes up for pre-order on September 9 and on sale on September 16. Prices vary with case material and size: 2,888 yuan for the 38 mm, 3,188 yuan for the 42 mm.

The ceramic-case Apple Watch Edition starts at 9,588 yuan; the Series 2 with an Hermès band starts at 9,388 yuan.

The Apple Watch Nike+ comes in one combination only, an aluminum case with a sport band, at 2,888 yuan for the 38 mm and 3,188 yuan for the 42 mm.

Apple is looking for more ways to sell phones

Apple's update cycle is changing. That is the signal this year's iPhone 7 sends.

As you know, the iPhone gets a big update every two years. The iPhone 6 changed a great deal from the iPhone 5, while the iPhone 5s in between improved only on the inside and barely changed shape.

The iPhone 7 breaks that rhythm. By the old pattern it should have matched the last generation on performance and changed a lot on the outside; what happened is the reverse.

Taken with earlier reports from the supply chain, Apple's update cycle may be stretching to three years.

Apple has little choice. The longer cycle has to do with the growth the iPhone can no longer find. iPhone sales fell for the first time ever in the first quarter of this year, and kept falling in the second.

At a moment like this, persuading existing owners to upgrade is the best option available. But after the iPhone 6, Apple's first big-screen phone, bought the company a good year, users no longer had much reason to trade up again.

Apple's own earnings reports show that in the first two quarters of this year the company, assuming people replace a phone every two years, overestimated sales of the iPhone 6s and ended up cutting orders to suppliers and clearing inventory.

Apple's target now is the people still carrying small-screen iPhones from the 4 and 5 series.

Cook said early this year that 60% of iPhone users are still on a model older than the 6. Those are the users Apple needs.

The iPhone 7 brings new earphones and a better camera and looks much the same as before — but that hardly dents its appeal to someone still using an iPhone 5.

Besides the new iPhone 7, Apple is also using a cheaper iPhone 6s to pull people into upgrading.

The iPhone 6s is down to 4,588 yuan, 800 less than the iPhone 7. Unlike past price cuts on old models, this one comes with more storage: 32GB and 128GB.

Apple is also bringing the iPhone Upgrade Program, which started in the US, to China and several other countries.

In China it is called Annual Upgrade. Buy AppleCare+ along with an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus and Apple enrolls you automatically. Every year after that you can swap for the newest iPhone at half price. The catch is that AppleCare+ costs 988 yuan a year, every year. Pay that and then buy a phone at half price, and you are not actually better off than if you had simply sold the old iPhone yourself.

In the end, the problem Apple has to solve is the one it always had: how to make people upgrade the iPhone already in their hands. Will this one get you to pay?