Reports emerging this week suggest that the iPhone 7 will experience a striking new color. The next generation smartphone will reportedly ship with a light pink aluminum option. It seems likely that Apple is attempting to appeal to female consumers with this decision.
The idea of making a pink iPhone 7 certainly represents something of a departure from the previous Apple policy. The iPhone has always been a very serious looking device, with existing color options including Silver, Gold and Space Grey.
Pink iPhone 7 meshes with iPhone 6c concept
But there is increasing speculation that Apple will release a 4-inch iPhone 6c before the year is out, possibly in the early months of 2016. This smaller and more affordable version of the iPhone is presumed to offer a colorful variant to the standard iPhone design. So the notion of a pink iPhone 7 model is consistent with this ethos.
Interestingly, it is also suggested that Apple has decided to develop the pink version of the iPhone 7 instead of another color that was widely mooted. It has been suggested frequently in the media that Apple was working on a rose gold version of the iPhone 7, but reports now suggest that this has been scrapped in favor of a faint aluminum pink variation. This is perhaps surprising, as the rose gold variant of the iPhone would seemingly match the existing Apple Watch variant.
But this looks to be a pretty solid piece of information, as it has been reported by the Wall Street Journal, with the information seemingly having been gleaned from sources close to the Apple supply chain. With the UK release date for the iPhone having already been inadvertently revealed by Vodafone, in what was a rather unfortunate online leak, the future direction of the iconic smartphone series is already taking shape in the public eye.
Force Touch
There are also increasingly strong suggestions that Apple will include its Force Touch technology when the iPhone 7 is released, and that this will indeed form a major part of the smartphone’s capabilities. The Wall Street Journal also reported this week that the iPhone 7 will resemble a giant button, with the Force Touch technology enabling consumers to convey different requirements and features to the smartphone via differing degrees of pressing.
This now looks to be an absolute certainty, as the infamous industry insider, Ming-Chi Kuo, of KGI Securities, has stated explicitly that the Force Touch screen will be clickable in the next generation iPhone 7. It will be interesting to see what functionality Apple includes with a Force Touch-based iPhone 7, but it will certainly be capable of interacting with content in a variety of sophisticated ways.
Apple will certainly be looking for excellent results from the iPhone 7, as the corporation was forced to field some lukewarm sales information this week. This is hardly a disaster for the corporation, and some might suggest that it is about time that Apple experienced something other than outstanding news.
Apple Watch Sales disappoint
But the performance of its smartwatch, the Apple Watch, has seemingly been less encouraging than the consumer electronics giant would have desired. A Slice Intelligence survey this week suggested that the number of Apple Watch sales had plummeted to below 5,000 units per day. This is around 15 percent of the daily sales that the smartwatch was achieving when it first went to market.
The smartwatch niche was always likely to be a challenging marketplace for Apple, and the somewhat low-key release that the Apple Watch was afforded was perhaps an acknowledgement of this fact. But the report has also indicated that the Apple Watch now represents 90 percent of the smartwatch market, so there is certainly potential for the smartwatch to perform superbly in the future.
iPhone 7 to include sapphire glass
Aside from the pink nature of the new iPhone 7, it has also been strongly suggested by Kuo that the sapphire glass display linked with the iPhone 6 will finally emerge when the iPhone 7 is released. This more durable glass technology was expected to emerge in the previous iPhone generation, but it seems as if it will finally come to fruition when the iPhone 7 is released.
The material is already utilized in the Apple Watch series, and Apple also already uses sapphire glass to protect the protruding camera module in the existing iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. It had previously been reported that Apple had bough up industrial quantities of sapphire glass, and it now seems that it will utilize some of this quotient when the iPhone 7 hits the stores.
Camera upgrade
It has also been suggested that the camera in the iPhone 7 will be significantly upgraded. This has apparently been a major focus of Apple in this iPhone generation, after the iconic smartphone range has fallen behind its competitors somewhat, at least in terms of specifications.
Thus, Apple will bump up the existing 8-megapixel rear-facing camera to 12-megapixels in the next generation iPhone 7. There is also likely to be support for 4K video recording, which will raise hopes in some quarters of Apple embracing 4K resolution in the display of the device. However, given the timeframe involved this seems unlikely, and apple will instead probably increases the resolution of the iPhone 6 smartphone to full HD, possibly producing a quad HD phablet version.
Apple to manufacture 90 million units
And Apple is certainly preparing for the iPhone 7 to be a massive success. This is pretty much certain considering the performance of previous iPhone generations, but Apple is apparently expecting the iPhone 7 to exceed even the outstanding sales of the iPhone 6. Reports this week have suggested that Apple will increase production of the smartphone to 90 million units of the iPhone 7 by the end of 2015. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ collectively shipped between 70 and 80 million units during their initial production, so this could be the biggest ever smartphone release of the consumer electronics giant.
With a striking pink variant, some outstanding new specs, and Force Touch and sapphire glass both to be included, this will definitely be a smartphone competitor worth waiting for.