MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. Sales of the long-awaited iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus smartphones have officially started in Russia. New Apple smartphones are on sale in retail networks of Russian cellphone operators (MTS, Megafon and Vimpelcom) as well as networks of large Russian retailers of electronics and home appliances.

Apple presented iPhone 7 smartphone in San Francisco on September 7.

The new iPhone is available in two versions - iPhone 7 with a 4.7-inch display and iPhone 7 Plus with a 5.5-inch display. iPhone 7 Plus features a 12-megapixel camera and, unlike iPhone 7, a 12-megapixel telephoto camera that together provide two-time optical zoom and up to 10 times digital. Front camera has the resolution of 7-megapixel. In the "younger" iPhone 7 second lens will be missing.

iPhone 7 is available in five colors - gold, silver, pink and gold, as well as two completely new - a dark matte black and glossy black.

As for the memory of the new device Apple decided to give up variants with 16 and 64 gigabytes. The new devices will have three options 32, 128 and 256 gigabytes of memory.

In the US, the new smartphone went on sale on September 16.

Russia is one of the first countries where the iPhone goes on sale after the US.

In Russia, according to the websites of mobile operators and retailers, iPhone 7 with a storage capacity of 32 GB worth in the region of 56-57,000 rubles ($895), with 128 GB - about 65,000 rubles ($1,020), with 256 GB - 74-75,000 rubles $1,177).

iPhone 7 Plus with 32GB memory - about 68,000 rubles ($1,067), with 128 GB - about 77,000 rubles ($1,209), with 256 GB - 86-87,000 rubles ($1,366).

Seventh is more desirable than sixth

Online stores in Russia start selling iPhone 7 at 0.00 a.m. local time on Friday, September 23.

Judging by the amount of pre-orders (it was announced a few days earlier), consumers are very interested in the new smartphones.

"We see the growing interest among customers in the new products from Apple, in comparison with the last year," Julia Dorokhina, a representative with Megafon operator, told TASS.

Megafon starts sales in the two big cities of Russia - Moscow and St. Petersburg.

VimpelCom (brand Beeline) starts sales in 16 Russian cities at once: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Voronezh and Vladivostok.

"We see that there is much more buzz than before", VimpelCom’s representative Anna Aybasheva told TASS. She attributes the popularity of the new model to such features as variety of colors and bigger memory.

According to MTS to "early results suggest that the demand for the seventh model of Apple gadget is four times higher than during the iPhone 6s release."

The operator starts the sales of new gadgets in almost all cities with the population of over one million people (Moscow, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Perm, St. Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Samara, Volgograd, Ufa, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Omsk).

In addition, sales start in cities such as Krasnodar, Tambov, Stavropol, Orenburg, Khabarovsk, Novorossiysk, Novokuznetsk, Penza, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Togliatti, Kaluga, Bryansk, Saratov, Perm, Barnaul, Izhevsk, Tver, Sochi, Krasnoyarsk, Yaroslavl. In total MTS starts sales in 35 cities.

No connector for headphones

The new devices lack the traditional 3.5-millimeter connector for headphones. iPhone 7 comes with EarPods with Lightning connector and a 3.5 mm headphone jack adaptor.

Apple also presented wireless headphones, AirPods.

The new iPhone has the A10 Fusion chip, which is believed to be the most powerful chip in the history of mobile phones.