After months of anticipation and more leaks than the average kitchen sieve, you’d think Apple’s latest September 7 launch event wouldn’t be particularly impressive. As it turns out, the event that launched the new iPhones and the second-gen Apple Watch was glitzy and extremely eventful, and having spent some time with the new hardware, here are some of my first impressions of all the latest bling from Cupertino.

iPhone 7/iPhone 7 Plus

The big number jump from the 6/6S to lucky number 7 isn’t as pronounced, visually, as is normally the case between version numbers. Sure, you get two new finishes — matte black and an almost piano-like fingerprint magnet that is the new Jet Black, and the antenna bands have moved around a bit, but it’s a largely familiar look that we’ve seen for the past couple of years.

Under that familiar look are big changes, such as the mechanical Home button being replaced with a pressure sensitive button that vibrates to give you a ‘click’ feedback, but doesn’t actually have any moving parts. Couple that with IP67 rated water resistance, which means the phone can survive brief exposure to water, and you have a phone that’s a whole lot more durable. Storage capacities have doubled too at similar price points from last year (starting Rs 60,000).

Most notably, what’s missing is the near-ubiquitous 3.5mm headphone jack, replaced by Apple’s proprietary Lightning Port headphones or a 3.5mm-to-Lightning adapter (for your existing headphones), both of which are in the box. Or you could cough up Rs 15,400 and pick up a pair of new AirPods — two small wireless earphones that connect to each other and your iPhone for up to five hours of music playback.

The entire affair of using the AirPods is seamless with a hint of “magic” — right from pairing which triggers automatically when you open the carrying-plus-charging case to the infrared sensor which senses when the AirPods are in your ear and switches audio playback away from your phone. Plus, they sound pretty great for wireless headphones their size, but the choice of sticking with the basic design of the current wired EarPods is a bit questionable.

The cameras get a solid boost as well, with the smaller iPhone 7 benefiting from optical image stabilisation that was hitherto the preserve of the bigger sibling, plus an all new, brighter f/1.8 lens and a smarter image processor, not to mention a much-improved 7MP front facing camera.

The 7 Plus gets a dual lens treatment, with one regular field of view wide-angle lens and the other telephoto. One tap in the app or sliding a dial control gets you from 1x to 2x optical zoom, and then onwards up to 10x digital zoom — while the former is lossless and gets great results, the digital zoom is pretty usable too, at a pinch.

Coming later this year is a new capture mode which uses both lenses to get you those blurry background effects you typically associate with digital SLRs. Clearly, while the battery and performance benefits of the new quad-core Apple A10 Fusion chip are better left to a more exhaustive review closer to the October 7 India launch, the new camera alone on the Plus seems to be worth the price of the upgrade.
 
 

Apple Watch Series 2

As with the phones, you’d be forgiven for looking at the second generation Apple Watch and thinking not much has changed. Spoiler alert: it has! The new Series 2 (starting Rs 32,900) has a much brighter screen, noticeable almost instantly when you switch it on. Great for viewing the watch face in harsh lighting. There’s even a ceramic edition which is super-premium and classy but will set you back by Rs 1.10 lakh.

The Series 2 also adds two fitness features that were on my wish list from the day Apple first showed off the Watch. First, the Apple Watch Series 2 gets some much needed water-resistance up till 50m, and coupled with several new swimming workouts, you finally get a watch you don’t need to take off in pool-like environs. Plus the water expulsion feature of the built-in speaker is insanely cool to boot!

Second, and more crucially, the Watch adds GPS so you no longer have to rely on (or have to carry) your iPhone for mapping your position and route on the morning walk. Of course, if you want your watch to scream “I take running seriously!”, there’s the Nike collaboration in the Apple Watch Nike+ edition which gets you a Series 2 watch with a perforated sports band, albeit one with adequate levels of Nike flair, and an accompanying app to encourage/nag you to get up and move.