Apple took the wraps off its latest hardware lineup today, closing the book on months of leaks, dummy units, and supply chain chatter with an event at the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park. The keynote marked John Ternus’s first turn on stage as Apple’s CEO, following Tim Cook’s move to executive chairman after 15 years running the company.
For his first keynote after taking charge just a week ago, Ternus made sure to make viewers aware of how deeply Apple Intelligence is threaded throughout the Apple ecosystem.
And there was plenty to weave it through. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max arrived with a new Burgundy finish replacing last year’s divisive Cosmic Orange, massive battery gains, and a camera system that finally delivers on manual controls and a variable aperture. To outdo the iPhone Pro’s turn into a pocket-sized DSLR, Ternus dropped one of Apple’s most exciting product announcements in years: the iPhone Duo.
Now that the keynote has wrapped, here’s a rundown of everything Apple announced, how it stacks up, and what’s worth knowing before you decide whether to upgrade.
iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max
Credit: Apple
Apple’s Pro smartphone lineup gets what the company describes as its “most advanced camera system yet,” built around a 48-megapixel Fusion Main camera with variable aperture — a first for iPhone. Six “laser-cut blades” automatically adjust across four aperture settings to manage depth of field and lighting, while a new sensor is designed to improve low-light shooting and group-photo detail.
A new “Pro controls” interface lets photographers manually adjust aperture, shutter speed, and white balance, and check exposure with an onscreen histogram; an API also lets external developers access the aperture range. The phones also introduce Apple Reference Image, a feature that captures signed sensor data processed through Apple’s Private Cloud Compute to create an unalterable reference photo alongside the main image. In plainer terms, it’s basically a digital negative that confirms what was in the original shot vs. the edited one.
Both phones run on the new A20 Pro chip, built on a 2-nanometer process with a 6-core CPU, 7-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine that Apple says doubles the AI processing power of the previous A19 Pro. The Dynamic Island has also been redesigned to display up to three Live Activities at once.
Battery life sees a notable jump, particularly on the Pro Max, which Apple says can deliver up to 45 hours of video playback in eSIM-only configuration, which is the largest battery-life increase in iPhone history, according to the company. The phones also introduce Apple’s next-generation C2 cellular modem, which the company says delivers faster uploads than its predecessor while using 15 percent less power.
iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max come in black, silver, glacier, and a “dangerously chic” burgundy. Rest in peace, Cosmic Orange. Both phones are also getting a $100 price hike with the 18 Pro and Pro Max starting at $1,199 and $1,299, respectively.
Pre-orders begin Sept. 12, with availability starting Sept. 18.
iPhone Duo arrives: Price, release date revealed
Credit: Apple
It’s been awhile since Apple launched a phone that genuinely excited the growing audience of tech skeptics. To wrap the keynote, Ternus introduced iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable phone. Ternus and company are very confident about Duo, taking shots at the likes of Samsung and Motorola, contrasting it with their foldables as “two phones stuck together.”
When opened, the Duo has a 7.6-inch inner display and, according to Apple, is the thinnest iPhone ever made; when closed, a 5.4-inch outer display offers 90 percent of the iPhone 18 Pro’s screen area. Both screens share the same aspect ratio, so content scales consistently between them, and a nano-texture finish is designed to cut glare and minimize the visibility of the fold crease.
Folded, it’s about the size of a passport, with rounded corners and a continuous frame that genuinely looks unexpectedly cool in person.
iPhone Duo runs on the same A20 Pro chip as the Pro models and includes dual batteries that Apple says work together to deliver up to 44 hours of video playback using the outer display alone. The folding form factor enables several camera-specific features, including Smart Take, which uses on-device AI to automatically capture a photo when it detects subjects posing, and Duo FaceTime, which lets a nearby person join a video call through the outer display and camera.
iPhone Duo can be anything. Even a delightful bedside clock.
Credit: Apple
iOS 27 has been adapted specifically for the device, moving controls to the side of the screen to preserve vertical space and introducing Split View, which allows two apps to run side by side on an iPhone for the first time.
iPhone Duo is available in Star White and Night Sky finishes, starting at $1,999. Pre-orders open Oct. 16, and ship on Oct. 23.
Mashable Light Speed
AirPods 5 improves ANC, sound quality
The 5th-gen AirPods are here with Active Noise Cancellation, with the company saying the feature removes up to 50 percent more external noise than AirPods 4 with ANC. A new multiport acoustic architecture and an updated Adaptive EQ are designed to improve sound quality, while Apple Intelligence-powered Live Translation lets wearers hear conversations translated into their preferred language.
Credit: Apple
The standard AirPods 5 are priced at $129, while a version with a wireless charging case, longer battery life, and on-stem volume control is priced at $149.
Both are available for pre-order now and will ship on Sept. 18.
Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Apple Watch Series 12 add new health features
Credit: Apple
Apple refreshed both ends of its watch lineup, the Series 12 and Ultra 4, around a shared new Health Sensing System that the company says provides the most accurate heart rate sensing of any wearable.
Powered by the new S11 chip in both models, the watches measure heart rate every 5 seconds throughout the day, while heart rate variability is now measured every 5 minutes. Both watches also introduce a “readiness” feature that combines recent activity, training load, vitals, and sleep data into a daily 0-10 score paired with one of four recommendations: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It.
The S11 chip also enables a new Audio Intelligence suite on both watches, built on Apple Intelligence and Private Cloud Compute. It includes Sound Recognition, which alerts deaf or hard-of-hearing users to sounds like sirens, alarms or doorbells; Live Rewind, which replays the previous 15 seconds of conversation as a text snippet with a double press of the Digital Crown; Siri Recap, which generates summaries, not transcripts, of conversations; and Shazam-based music identification.
Apple says that the audio conversations on your watch are processed on-device and deleted immediately afterward. The company also stated that summaries don’t identify who’s speaking and that users must opt in to each feature individually.
With watchOS 27, both models also gain access to Siri AI through a new Siri app and a dedicated Siri Modular watch face. Where the two models diverge is on ruggedness, battery life, and design.
The Ultra 4 comes in a neat titanium finish.
Credit: Apple
Apple Watch Ultra 4, aimed at athletes and outdoor use, offers up to 50 hours of everyday battery life and up to 84 hours in Low Power Mode, with a Max Extended Workout mode that can track outdoor activity for up to 45 hours; it comes in natural and black titanium, starting at $799.
Apple Watch Series 12 delivers 24 hours of everyday battery life, with a 25 percent boost to 10 hours during outdoor workouts, and comes in 42mm and 46mm sizes across aluminum, titanium, and a new ceramic option, starting at $399.
Both watches can be pre-ordered right now and will ship on Sept. 18.
Redesigned Health App
Credit: Apple
Apple is also updating its Health app, arriving later this year on iPhone, with a new Insights tab that summarizes daily health data and a Longevity tab that introduces “Health Age,” a metric that estimates how a user’s health indicators compare with their chronological age.
The app will let users schedule lab tests covering more than 50 biomarkers for $119 at Quest Diagnostics locations across the U.S., and will add at-home movement assessments that use the iPhone camera and vision-based AI models to evaluate flexibility, strength, and balance.
The Health app is also adding support for logging perimenopause and menopause within Cycle Tracking, along with notifications for users 40 and older who show cycle patterns suggestive of perimenopause.
Siri AI features arrive soon
Credit: Apple
It’s finally here. After two long years since it was announced (which is an eternity in gen-AI development and scaling), Apple’s revamped Apple Intelligence Siri will be released with iOS 27 this month.
Similar to other AI-powered digital assistants, Siri AI is framed as a personal chatbot and assistant that draws on personal context, i.e., your messages, emails, photos, and other on-device information to answer questions, take action based on what’s on a user’s screen, and carry out tasks in third-party apps. It is rolling out in beta with iOS 27 across iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone Duo, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5.
Much of what Siri AI can do on iOS 27 was covered at its reveal at Apple’s WWDC event back in June. The short rundown of Siri AI capabilities on iPhone is onscreen awareness and a camera-integrated mode that can answer questions about what a user is looking at.
On iPhone Duo, an all-new Siri app preserves conversation history synced through iCloud. On Apple Watch, Siri AI is accessible through a new Siri app and a dedicated Siri Modular watch face. On AirPods, users can respond to Siri hands-free using head gestures.
Apple said the assistant relies on on-device processing and its Private Cloud Compute system to handle more complex requests while keeping personal data encrypted and inaccessible to Apple.
Apple Intelligence, which underpins Siri AI along with features like Live Translation and the Health app’s insights, becomes available with iOS 27 on Sept. 14 for supported devices set to one of 16 supported languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Korean, among others.
Follow our Apple event live blog to catch up on the latest news and announcements from the “Surprise and Shine” keynote, with live updates from Apple Park.
See what our readers guessed would happen at today’s Apple event in our Big Guessing Game
