SAN FRANCISCO, 8 September (BelTA - Xinhua) - Apple Inc. announced on Wednesday the upgrade of its flagship product, the smartphone known as iPhone, with new features such as water resistance, double-lens camera, stereo speakers and wireless headphone.
Along with the new iPhone 7, which will be available for pre-order on Friday and for delivery starting a week later, Apple said at an event in San Francisco, northern California, that it had upgraded its smart watch, known as Apple Watch, to be water resistant.
However, away from its description in the initial offering of the watch nearly two years ago, when Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook called the product "a collection," Apple renamed the previous version "Series 1" and the new wearable "Series 2", which includes global positioning system (GPS) function.
Apple Watch, once expected to catch up with the popularity enjoyed by iPhone, has extended its working with luxury brand Hermes and sports brand Nike by highlighting features of the two brand names.
About the iPhone, the new series has a new A10 central processing unit (CPU) chip with 4 cores to run hardware and software operations, improved battery life that is claimed to last two more hours on average than iPhone 6.
Significant changes to the hardware include the elimination of headphone jack; the introduction of AirPod, a wireless headphone with 5 hours of battery life on each charge; the two speakers imbedded to replay stereo sound; and the camera with a wide-angel lens and a telephoto lens to better suit different situations.
Compared with previous Apple events of the kind, the technology company headquartered in Cupertino, south of San Francisco, brought fewer executives onto the stage, and the response seemed to be less enthusiastic off the stage.
Cook, like in the past five years, did speak as a host at the two-hour event on Wednesday, but he and other Apple officials did not mention the company's other products, which include iPad tablet and MacBook notebook and Macintosh desktop computers.
In a video clip shown at the beginning of the event, Cook seemed to be in the passenger seat of a vehicle and on the way to Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, where the event was held, and the driver talked about the security of iPhone 7 and called it the best. Cook agreed. But he did not discussed the topic once within the auditorium.
