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iPhone 7 goes on sale but Apple warns that supply constraints mean actually buying one will be tough

The traditional queues were still there this year – but it was only worth it if you’d pre-booked your time

Friday 16 September 2016 10:02 BST

People queue outside the Apple Store to buy the new iPhone 7 smartphone on the day of its release at Covent Garden in London on September 16, 2016. Apple's iPhone 7 launch generated trademark queues and brisk sales today that defied gloomy expectations (JACK TAYLOR/AFP/Getty Images)

Apple’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus have gone on sale, greeted as ever by queues out the door to pick them up. And its headline feature, water resistance, was shown off by torrential downpours outside the stores.

Long queues outside the Apple Store have become a fixture of the release cycle, and snake around the shops every year. But this year demand was so far ahead of supply that Apple asked people to book their slots to pick a phone up online – meaning that getting to the queue early didn’t mean that you’d necessarily be able to get your hands on a phone.

Indeed, Apple told customers that they should only come along if they’d reserved a slot or ordered their phone online for pickup in store.

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

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1/10The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

New lock screen

This might be the first thing you notice, and it’s probably the most significant change to your daily routine. The old slide-to-unlock lock screen is gone; in its place is one you press the home button to unlock. You can try that out in practice just by locking your phone and waking it up. All you really need to know is that you press the home button to do everything, but if you’d like to find out more you can read our full write-up

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Huge changes to Messages

You can try these out straight away, though not all of them will work with people who haven’t yet upgraded to iOS 10 themselves. The first things to have a go with are Apple’s own improvements to the app. You can find those by clicking the little arrow that’s appeared next to the field where you write messages – which will bring up options for sending drawings, heartbeats or pictures. But by far the biggest change is the introduction of apps to Messages. You get on that by clicking the little icon that looks like the App Store – in there, you’ll find a host of different apps including ones for finding gifs and others for sending people money

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Useful notifications

Notifications have got much more rich (and also much bigger). Now, when they pop up on your lock screen you can hard or long press to interact with them, and if apps are properly made for iOS 10 then you’ll even be able to see a mini version of them as you do. The best app to try this out with at the moment is the Messages app, when someone sends you a text. But integration should be coming to most apps soon, when you’ll get a proper chance to try them all out

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Useful 3D Touch

And that same theme runs into the home screen, when you’re on it. If you hard press on an app icon with 3D Touch, you’ll get a mini version of it that you can interact with. That means that you can see who you’ve got emails from, for instance, or click to on Music to start some of your recently played albums. Each of those things can be added as a widget to the lock screen, making them even quicker to view

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Apple Maps redesign

Apple’s controversial but hugely improved mapping has received perhaps the biggest renovation in iOS 10. The design is very different, and as are the features that are included. It now gives you the opportunity to have your routes change as you move along, and to zoom in and out while you’r eon your journey. And it’ll let you schedule stop-offs, finding coffee or petrol while you’re on your journey. But the biggest change is just how you find where you’re going. Using the search bar at the bottom will bring up a range of suggestions – including things pulled out of your mail and other apps, which the phone thinks that you’re likely to be heading to

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Apple Music redesign

When Apple Music came out last year, it was interesting and exciting but also a little confusing. Thankfully that’s been scrapped this year – and in its place comes a far easier to use design. Gone are the different confusing sections like "New" and "Connect", with their features being folded into other parts of the app. In its place is an app that is like the rest of iOS 10 – slightly less packed with information, but with that information far more organised

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Deleting apps

There’s never been a finally more heartfelt and true than this one: You can finally delete the stock apps that you don’t use from your home screen. So, for example, you can get rid of the Stocks app that you never use to check how the markets are doing; you can get rid of the Tips app that you never use to see how to use your phone. It’s done as you’d expect to delete it. Just tap and hold on the relevant app and click the cross in the corner. Some of the apps aren’t actually deleted, but all of them can be recovered through the App Store all the same. Just search for the app that you want to get back and it’ll look like you’re downloading it, but actually it’ll just appear back on your phone

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Changes to Photos

Photos has become far more clever, using artificial intelligence to search out the things you want to find. So now, for example, you can search for Tree and see all the trees you’ve photographed; you can tell it who people are and have it find pictures of them; and it’ll arrange special automatic memories of nice days out you’ve had. You can try all those by heading into the Photos app. Initially it might be less full than you’d expect, because the calculations have to be done on your phone; they’ll be done overnight on the first day you plug it in

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Cleverer Siri

Apple is finally letting other apps have Siri talk to them, and them talk back. So you can ask for a ride to somewhere, for instance, and Siri will be able to ask Uber for a car; or you can ask to send someone money and it’ll sort that out for you. Apps are just being updated to make this work correctly, but you should be able to try it out in apps like Uber from the beginning

The 10 biggest changes in iOS 10

Better keyboard

This might not be the kind of thing that you’d want to try out straight away. But it’s the sort of thing that will gradually improve your life, quietly and slowly – which is actually a great representative for how iOS 10 feels. The new keyboard can read your messages, so that it knows what people are asking. And it can then raid information to give up what people are asking for, quickly. So, for instance, if someone asks for your email, it’ll just pop up in the suggestions box. No typing for you – you’ll be able to send it straight away

Apple has seen huge demand for the iPhone 7, though for the first time ever it won’t say how many people have actually bought it. That is because doing so usually reflects how many phones are available rather than how many people want them, it said – because stores always sell out, the number actually refers to how many phones Apple managed to make.

This year, supply of some of those phones is already quite low. The new, glossy Jet Black colour is in very limited supply, and so has the iPhone 7 Plus.

As such, people looking to buy the phone now are likely to have to wait for days or weeks for it actually to arrive. The people in the queue had mostly booked their slots when the phone became available for pre-order, last week.

A sneak-peek at the new iPhone 7 Plus

The new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were launched at an event in San Francisco last week. The headline features include a much improved camera, speedier processor, better battery life and the new, hard to get colours – but probably the most controversial is the removal of the headphone jack.

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