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Spoiler alert: KGI Securities' Ming-chi Kuo, who has been predicting Apple hardware details with a high degree of accuracy for years, issued a new research note over the weekend with some information about the new iPhone days before Apple is set to reveal it.
Read next: Our iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review
None of the supposed iPhone 7 announcements, specs, or features would be particularly shocking in and of themselves, but together they give a solid overview of what Apple is likely to have in store. Kuo's detailed note, cited by AppleInsider, MacRumors, and 9to5Mac, certainly sees the analyst putting his cards on the table.
Here's what he expects to see at Wednesday's event:
- Five color options. The current rose gold, gold, and silver models will remain, but space gray will be replaced by a "dark black" option and a separate "piano black" model with a glossy finish. Kuo says that supply may be limited on the piano black iPhone, with Apple possibly restricting it to higher storage tiers at first.
- Those storage tiers will get a boost, according to Kuo: the base model will jump to 32GB, as earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal, and will be joined by 128GB and 256GB variants.
- The iPhone 7 Plus will have 3GB of RAM, apparently to aid the performance of its dual-lens camera system, while the smaller 7 model will stay at 2GB.
- The dual-lens camera system will be comprised of a wide-angle camera and a telephoto camera, both with 12-megapixel sensors. The combination is said to offer optical zoom-like functionality as well as "light field camera applications," which sounds like Lytro-style refocusing after the photo has been taken.
- The phone will feature IPX7 water resistance on par with the Apple Watch, though it's not clear if Apple would advertise such a thing. The previously reported move away from a clicking home button is said to help with this.
- No headphone jack, as you may or may not have come to terms with by now. Kuo says Apple will put EarPod headphones with a Lightning connector in the box alongside a Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter. As for what Apple will do with the space formerly occupied by the jack? It'll be taken up by a new sensor to improve the iPhone's 3D Touch experience.
- Apple's new A10 processor could be clocked at up to 2.4 or 2.45GHz, a major jump over the A9's 1.85GHz, though power concerns could drive the final clock down a little. It will be manufactured by TSMC.
- The device is said to have the same wider color gamut as seen in the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, which will work particularly well for photos taken with the new camera. It's not clear whether it will use the iPad Pro's True Tone technology, which matches the display's temperature to ambient light.
- Speaking of True Tone, the camera's flash will have four LEDs — two warm, two cool.
- The earpiece receiver will be a legitimate speaker in its own right, working with the regular speaker to provide stereo sound when the phone is held in landscape.
- The proximity sensor will switch to laser technology.
- FeliCa NFC support for the Japanese market, which would be the biggest news for me out of the entire list.
So, there you have it — a long list of features that may or may not come to pass. The good news is we only have to wait until Wednesday to find out; The Verge will be live on the ground in San Francisco to let you know what happens as soon as it happens.