In the early hours of Thursday morning, Apple will unveil iPhone 7.

There are few devices as personal as (ahem) a smartphone. They store our health data, our memories, our friends’ details and promote our lives through social media. There can be no doubts of the amazing speed of our adoption. In the nine years since Steve Jobs walked on stage to announce the most popular product in history, the iPhone has delivered Apple sales of almost $1 trillion.

Now, with the announcement of iPhone 7 only days away, pundits and analysts will be looking for the next series of innovations from the Cupertino giant.

 

Speculative render with no headphone jack or home button, but includes a smart connector. iPhone 8, perhaps?

 

No headphone jack.

Yep. You read that correctly. In the never-ending pursuit of thinness, iPhone will no longer accept the standard 3.5mm input that is known all over the world.

This move has infuriated people across the web, but taken in isolation it really does make sense. The 3.5mm jack is 40-year-old technology, and analogue technology at that. Apple’s lightening port is capable of delivering increasingly sophisticated headphones superior sound through digital signal.

The bad news is the problem of what to do when you want to charge your phone and listen to music (Bluetooth wireless, perhaps?). Regardless, you can guarantee we'll also see a new range of Beats headphones announced. The good news is that it will allow for…

 

 

A waterproof phone.

Following in the footsteps of Samsung, it’s looking as though iPhone 7 will be pretty resistant to water. Gone will be panicked moments as you dunk your saturated device into a jar of rice in the desperate hope it comes back to life. Most rumours point to the iPhone being able to survive at least 30 seconds in up to a metre of water.

 

Speculative render by AppleArab.com

 

New colours

There are late rumours of a black gloss iPhone as a fifth colour in the range. Certainly that would be a nice match to the sleek glass finish of the front of the current version, but we can’t help but wonder what sort of metal could stand up to scratches and nicks.

 

 

Memories of the ‘chamfered’ edges of iPhone 5 are still fresh for many owners. How this is avoided will be interesting. Perhaps, instead, we’ll get a deep blue phone as was rumoured a few months ago.

 

Click-less home button

This is a step towards 2017’s all-new iPhone that may do away with the home button altogether. This year, improved pressure sensitive haptics will mimic the click of the home button similar to the touchpad in the 12” Macbooks (a solution also used for ‘Force Touch’ in the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus).

 

 

So, when can I get it?

Pre-orders will likely start this Friday (9 September) for launch on Friday 16 September. Following the stellar success of iPhone 6 two years ago and with a huge makeover rumoured for next year’s 10^th anniversary edition, it will be interesting to see how many people coming off contract this month will line up for the stop-gap iPhone 7 edition.