Java 7: New Features

Java 7, also known as Dolphin, will be available starting 28 July 2011.
Additional features for Java 7 include:
Support for dynamically typed language – Extensions to Java SE API, the Java language and the JVM to support dynamically-typed language implementation at performance levels similar to the Java language.
Language changes -Strings are in Switch statements
Try using resources statements
Improved type inference for generic instances creation – “Diamond”.
Invocation of the varargs method simplified
Better integral literals
Improved exception handling (multi-catch)

Concurrency and Collection utilities – A lightweight framework fork/join, flexible and reusable syncronization barriers, transfer queues and concurrent linked double-ended queuing systems, as well as thread-local pseudorandom number generators.
New I/O APIs on the Java Platform – A new file I/O library will enhance platform independence and support metadata and symbolic links. The new packages are java.nio.file and java.nio.file.attribute
Library-level support for Elliptic curve cryptography algorithm.
An XRender pipeline – A new Java2D graphics pipeline based on the X11 XRender extension. This extension allows for access to many of the functions of modern GPUs.
New platform APIs for graphics features originally released in Java 6u10.
Gervill sound synthesizer: To get rid of the old, proprietary, and encumbered sound synthesizer, we will instead use Gervill, which was created as a proposal to the Audio Synthesis Engine Project.
Update the XMLStack – Upgrade the components to the most current stable versions of the XMLStack: JAXP 1.4 and JAXB 2.2a.

Some features, such as Java and VM Support for Modular Programming, Annotation for Java Types, language support for Collections, Project Lambda and swing application Framework, modularization have been moved to JAVA 8.