INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

iPhone 7 To Be Boring Despite Waterproof, Dustproof Rumors Persisting

By Oliver VanDervoort
Published on: 04:32 PST, Apr 25, 2016

The iPhone 7 is going to be quite boring when compared to other releases of the long-running Apple handset, according to reports coming from insiders. These insiders believe there just aren’t going to be enough new features included in the iPhone 7 to get consumers’ motors running. However, there are going to be enough new features, according to recent rumors, that some people will likely be willing to shell out hundreds of dollars to get it.

BGR has talked to one insider the website calls “reputable,” and this insider believes the release of the iPhone 7 could hurt Apple’s bottom line. The direst of predictions has the Cupertino company selling fewer handsets than it did in 2014. KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has been known to be quite accurate with his sales predictions when it comes to Apple devices. Kuo believes there’s a very good chance the iPhone 7 could see sales hovering around 190 million. That would fall three million short of the units sold two years ago. The analyst believes a best-case scenario would see Apple selling somewhere in the neighborhood of 205 million handsets.

It should be pointed out both of those predictions are well below what Wall Street has pegged as the most likely numbers. Analysts there believe the company will sell between 210 million and 230 million units.

If that news wasn’t bad enough, Kuo believes Apple will be the only company to see handset shipments decline this year among the big firms. That means Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo will all see net increases while the iPhone 7 will drag down its maker into a decline in year-over-year sales. All of this means the analyst believes the newest handset doesn’t have enough “attractive selling points” without going into detail on just what that means. Because the device has not been officially unveiled and likely won’t be for a few more months, we can only guess at what the selling points are going to be for the iPhone 7.

So what selling points are going to be front and center? One persisting rumor is that of a touch-sensitive home button. The biggest rumor that has been repeated a number of times, according to Macrumors, is that the iPhone 7 will be entirely waterproof. This is a feature Apple users have been looking for over the last few years. The iPhone 6s is said to be remarkably water resistant but not entirely waterproof. Along with being unable to be broken when it gets wet, the phone is also reportedly dustproof. While both of those features are things users have been anxiously awaiting, they are hardly things that are going to rope in new users. This is likely why sales projections have been so much lower than in the past.

Those same rumors have been less consistent on just what the home button is going to look like on the newest handset. Apple has been looking at doing away with the button altogether over the last few generations of the iPhone, but the iPhone 7 might finally be the generation it pulls the trigger. The separate home button has been a staple of the device since the original iPhone, so it would certainly be a change for loyal Apple customers.

Other reports claim the integrated home button isn’t going to be a feature until next year alongside the iPhone 8. So far, Barclays has been the most strident in that assertion, but other outlets haven’t been so sure. If that company is accurate, Apple will also be skipping the iPhone 7 and going straight to the Apple iPhone 8 with a ton of new features included in that generation.

[Image via Leszek Kobusinski/Shutterstock]

Share this article: iPhone 7 To Be Boring Despite Waterproof, Dustproof Rumors Persisting
iphone
More from Inquisitr