iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S Plus rumors, specs, news and release date

Apple's annual iPhone launch event has become something you can organise your calendar around, like Christmas or school holidays. 

It always takes place every September and this year is no different, with Apple head honcho Tim Cook taking to the stage next week to introduce the year's new iPhones - the 2017 iPhone launch date is 12 September. 

We've already heard plenty of rumour from the secretive Apple supply chain, suggesting that this year's event - ten years after the first iPhone launched - is going to be special in more ways than one.

Right now there's a lot of confusion about what Apple has planned for September: specifically regarding how many iPhones we might see, and what they might be called. We'll explain all below. 

How many new iPhones will there be? 

Firstly, we should be getting an iPhone 7S and 7S Plus. We were totally confident about the name of these two devices until early September, but the latest rumors are definitely pointing towards these handsets being still based on the iPhone 7 but instead called the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. That's after 9to5Mac talked to case manufacturers out at IFA 2017. 

But as well as the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus (or iPhone 8 and 8 Plus) it looks like, we'll also get a special edition iPhone to commemorate a decade of the iPhone. 

That sort of makes sense if you think about it - if Apple wants to celebrate ten years since the first iPhone with a humdinger of a device, it's likely to cost a lot of money, and it won't want to leave the mainsteam iPhone user out in the cold - especially if they're expecting an 'S' handset to replace their iPhone 6S after a 24-month contract. 

The completely new handset will have a different name and will probably be called the iPhone X or iPhone Edition.

If you want to read more about this other new handset then check out everything you need to know about iPhone Edition or iPhone X.

In this feature though, we're going to be looking at the forthcoming 7S iPhone. 

Last year: iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus

Hey remember September 2016? Crazy times, right? The iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus were launched after months of build-up, and the general consensus was that Apple had another hit on its hands, even if most of the upgrades were minor ones.

A lot of the discussion at the time focused around what Apple had taken away - namely that 3.5mm audio jack - but a year on the move doesn't seem quite as controversial as it did originally, even if very few phones have followed that lead. 

Compared with the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus had similar designs but extra dust and water resistance, better displays, and faster internal components. The iPhone 7 Plus also introduced a dual-lens camera to an iPhone for the first time.

What upgrades will the iPhone 7S and the iPhone 7S Plus bring? 

Firstly, you can pretty much guarantee the usual improvements in phone speed and graphics performance.

We'd expect the iPhone 7S to have Apple's new A11 chip with the M11 co-processor as well as potentially more memory - maybe 4GB as opposed to the 2GB in the iPhone 7 and 3GB in the iPhone 7 Plus. 

We'd have said it was unlikely the iPhone 7S will have different memory sizes than the 32GB, 128GB and 256GB available with the current flagship iPhone. 

However, expect a bit of movement with older handsets. Maybe the iPhone 6S to get a smaller option than 32GB - 16GB - and for the iPhone 6 to be discontinued. 

We may not get a camera upgrade - the camera inside the iPhone 7 is 12MP. A lot of flagship devices have 12 megapixel cameras, so Apple may not feel it needs to bring this up a notch. However, there are bound to be some - even if minor - camera tweaks. In Samsung's Galaxy Note 8, both cameras have optical image stabilisation (OIS). In the iPhone 7 Plus, only the wide-angle lens has it, not the telephoto. So surely that's one upgrade that we'll see come to the 7S Plus.  

Some rumours have said the display technology will switch to OLED from LCD, and that the resolution of both the iPhone 7S and the iPhone 7S Plus will get a bump (they're certainly due one). Take the former rumor with a pinch of salt, but it is possible the resolution might change. To be fair, the former rumour is probably about the iPhone 8 - as is the rumour that Apple is preparing to shrink down the iPhone bezels, following the path set by LG and Samsung. Again, expect pretty much the same shell as the older iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, maybe with a millimetre or two shaved off. 

We've also heard talk of True Tone displays, so the colours change depending on the ambient conditions, and we can certainly believe that's on the way - especially as it's already built into the iPad Pro line-up.

Some rumours suggest that the the Touch ID button will be moved to the back. This is highly unlikely and expect the iPhone 7S to retain the same design as the iPhone 7. 

So you might want to start saving - it sounds like there are going to be some very impressive iPhones on sale later this months, taking Apple's iconic handset line-up to even greater heights.

Source: iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S Plus rumors, specs, news and release date