Apple iPhone 7 is on sale in India in less than a month from its US release date.
While this might give an indication that Apple is interested in capturing the attention of premium phone buyers in the world’s second-largest smartphone market, the phone is at least 20 percent more expensive in India.
Apple iPhone 7 Review
Similar design as iPhone 6
Annual upgrade of performance and battery
Brand new home button with Taptic Engine
Brand new Cameras
Impressive screen
Stereo speakers
Water-resistant
iOS 10 offers long-overdue features
No headphone jack
Lacks dual SIM support
Expensive compared to competition
Siri is still inaccurate for Indian accents compared to Google’s voice recognition
The 32 GB iPhone 7 retails for $649 in USA while the same model sells for Rs 60,000 here. Flipkart is already giving a cashback of Rs 10,000 for Citibank credit card users and if you trade in your old iPhones, you could get as much as Rs 24,500 off on iPhone 7.
The price is the elephant in the room when it comes to iPhone 7 and while it is expensive, it packs in the latest and greatest from Cupertino.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple’s latest iPhone is the greatest phone in the world of smartphones. Let me put this in no mild terms, the iPhone 7 is not revolutionary in any way possible.
Apple might be doing a dozen new things, but almost all these features, except the Taptic Engine and the redesigned home button, can be found on some or the other Android smartphone.
In many ways, iPhone 7 is the least original phone from Apple. It also is a testimony to the incredible innovation that Android phone makers have been making in their flagship phones.
In the Indian context, it becomes extremely difficult to fathom how a Rs 60,000 phone does not have a feature most sought after by Indian consumers in every price segment, the need for Dual 4G VoLTE SIM Card support.
I have tried to reason this with all possible technical know-how and have failed to offer a reasonable explanation to hapless potential buyers among friends and family. The only reason I can come up with unfortunately is that,
Apple doesn’t care about consumers in India and other Asian markets where dual SIM is a commonplace feature even among premium phones.
God help you if you have an existing connection from Vodafone, Airtel or Idea, and want to use a Reliance Jio 4G SIM. If you want an iPhone 7, you’ll be forced to buy another phone just to be able to use your second SIM. It just does not make sense. This is 2016.
The camera performance on iPhone 7 is one area where the upgrade is perceivable and welcome.
While the rear camera resolution is unchanged at 12 megapixels, the extra lens elements, optical image stabilisation in both models and wider aperture result in beautiful, crisp images and videos.
The dual-lens camera setup on iPhone 7 Plus offers a cool 2X optical zoom and the software blur feature that a new beta ‘Portrait’ will brings looks interesting too.
Apple is going to have to do something drastically different next year as it celebrates the 10th anniversary of the iconic iPhone. Till then, I’m going to sit this one out.
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