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Why You Will Be Disappointed With The New iPhone

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Apple is expected to reveal the new iPhone family on September 9th (see this week's Apple Loop) with the handset hitting the retail shelves a week or so later. The best advice I can give you about these new smartphone is... get ready to be disappointed.

This doesn't mean that I think the iPhone 7 family of smartphones will be failures, that Apple is doomed and that Tim Cook is going to bring down the entire edifice of Apple thanks to the crumbling future of the iPhone. I'm expecting the new iPhones to be strong and competent... but no more than that.

Strong and competent pretty much guarantees that existing consumers will likely upgrade from two- and three-year old smartphones such as the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 6. That guarantees Apple a certain level of sales and income over the next three months; that should allow Tim Cook to announce that iPhone sales are climbing again after two quarters of falling shipments; and that should also bring in a number of new users to the family and hook them into Apple's cloud services.

What it won't do is satisfy the voices that are rightly pointing out that Apple is delivering little more than a minimum viable upgrade and keeping 'the good stuff' for next year's tenth anniversary smartphone, the (presumptively named) iPhone 8.

This year's iPhones will pick up the usual Moore's Law derived increase in terms of processing power, memory access speeds, graphical capabilities and operations per second - but those changes should be seen as nothing more than the small bind to sit at the 'flagship smartphones' table. Adding a capacitive home button is cute, but it can't sell the iPhone as new and innovative. The same argument can be made for the second proprietary expansion port in the smart connector, the arrival of dual speakers, and a new blue option. As for the dual-camera lens on the larger models, rival manufacturers revealed this technology some six months ago at MWC in Barcelona.

In between these cute changes, I am intrigued to see just how well Tim Cook can sell the removal of the 3.5 mm headphone jack as a positive benefit given the years of pushback this choice has seen. If consumers consider this feature a naked grab for cash, then it's going to be one of the toughest sells in Apple's history since the U2 iPod.

Thanks to the usual sources the current innovations of curved displays and shaped glass, wireless charging, water- and dust-proof phones and vivid OLED displays are all expected to debut on next year's iPhone. For many these features are becoming the defaults they look for, and Apple is not only failing to deliver these elements in 2016, but also looking to bluff its omission with bigger specification numbers and answering questions about headphones that are not being asked.

Apple's saving grace might be that Samsung has pulled back from some of the innovative ideas that were expected to be in the Galaxy Note 7 phablet - that device did not fully deliver on the promises powering the summer rumor mill. If it had, then the iPhone 7 would have been presented with a stiffer marketing challenge. Right now Samsung's shortcomings mean that even an Apple device delivering a competent update should be enough for it to stay on top of the competition.

But that doesn't mean the final package from Cupertino won't be a disappointment to everyone expecting to redefine the smartphone market once more with its too-thin slice of silicon glass dreams.

Now watch what we know about the iPhone 7:

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