The next time you head into an Apple Store, you should be able to spot a small blue 'hello' sign somewhere, as per reports on social media — and the appearance of these little signs is apparently connected to the launch of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.

As per MacRumors, the signs are there to help customers test out the optical zoom capabilities of the new handsets. Both models offer up to 8x optical zoom, so having something specific to zoom in on is going to be helpful.

While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max have a variable aperture feature on one of their three rear cameras now, the optical zoom capabilities are actually the same as the iPhone 17 equivalents that launched in September of last year.

There are also new Pro controls on the latest handsets, so settings for lens aperture, shutter speed, and white balance can be tweaked shot by shot — something else you might want to test out in an Apple Store.

Now available

The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max arrived in Apple's retail stores on Friday, September 18, six days after preorders started. Prices for the handsets start at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,099 and $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$2,299 respectively (for 256GB of storage).

New Apple CEO John Ternus made an appearance at the Apple Store in New York to help celebrate the wider availability of the flagship iPhones — as well as the Apple Watch Series 12, the Apple Watch Ultra 4, and the AirPods 5.

He didn't mention anything about the new 'hello' signs in stores, but they've been spotted by customers nevertheless. They look to be located on higher shelves and fixtures, perhaps to put off anyone wanting one as a souvenir.

And if you're wondering where the iPhone 18 is and when you'll be able to test that out, don't panic — it's rumored to be showing up around March time, alongside the iPhone 18e and the iPhone Air 2.

But the problem with Huawei has always been that you can't buy a lot of the company's devices in markets outside Asia. And while that doesn't look like it's changing anytime soon, every once in a while, Huawei does launch some products in the West, and it reminds us (again) of what we're missing from other major hardware makers.

That's exactly what happened with the new Huawei MatePad Air. I usually use my still-going-strong M1 iPad Air (2022) as my main tablet, but I've spent the past month using the MatePad Air as my primary device. And it has shown me the one upgrade Apple could make that would probably convince me to finally buy the next iPad Air.

The MatePad Air itself doesn't look like some groundbreaking new tablet. In fact, Huawei has so many tablets in its lineup that you'd probably have a hard time distinguishing the new MatePad Air from some of the company's other models just by looking at the back.

But flip the MatePad Air around, and that's where, for me, it starts beating a lot of the competition. The MatePad Air comes with a 12-inch OLED display with up to a 144Hz refresh rate and a 1,200-nit peak brightness. But the model I've been testing for the past month is the higher-end PaperMatte version, which can reach up to 2,000 nits.

If you're unfamiliar with Huawei's PaperMatte display technology, it's essentially a special anti-glare treatment on top of the display that, Huawei says, eliminates up to 99% of ambient light reflections. It also gives the screen a more paper-like texture, which feels natural when you're writing with a stylus, while also helping reduce things like eye strain and smudges.

And this display alone is what has made me prefer using the MatePad Air over my iPad Air for the past month.

Think about what you actually do with a tablet. Whether you use an iPad Pro or the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, almost everything revolves around the display. You're watching content, taking notes, making video calls, or reading. For 99% of the time, you're looking at and interacting with a screen.

It's not like the iPad Air's display is bad. It's still a good-looking panel, and I've used my M1 iPad Air for years without any complaints. But Apple hasn't meaningfully upgraded the display technology in a while, and it's starting to show its age.

The iPad Air still uses an LCD panel. It's still stuck at 60Hz, and the bezels are quite thick as well. None of these things really bothered me before, but switching back and forth between it and the MatePad Air made the difference quite obvious.

The 144Hz OLED panel on the MatePad Air is obviously smoother, the colors look great, and the thinner bezels make watching content much nicer. And that PaperMatte display just makes everything twice as nice.

I've used the MatePad Air pretty much everywhere, be it the subway, airplanes, or my home, and not having reflections constantly bouncing off the screen has been great.

And it's not like Apple doesn't know how to do this. The company already offers its nano-texture display on the iPad Pro. The problem is that you need to buy one of the most expensive iPad Pro configurations (specifically, a model with 1TB or more) to even get the option, pushing the price to $1,899 / £1,899 / AU$3,249.

Huawei, on the other hand, makes the upgrade much easier to swallow. In the UK, you get the PaperMatte display regardless of which version of the MatePad Air you choose; the cheapest is just £699.99 (it's not available in the US). You're also getting 256GB of storage on the base model, compared to the 128GB starting storage on the iPad Air.

Of course, the MatePad Air isn't better than the iPad Air at everything. Apple's M-series chips still give the iPad a major performance advantage, and if I'm editing videos or doing other compute-heavy work on a tablet, I'd still rather have the iPad Air.

But most of the time, that's not what I'm doing on my tablet. I mostly use my iPad to watch content and browse the web, and for both of these things, I'd rather have the MatePad Air's display.

Plus, the hardware around the OLED display is pretty impressive, too. At 12 inches, the MatePad Air sits somewhere between Apple's 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air models. It weighs just 509g and uses an aluminum frame and back, making it more than 100g lighter than the 13-inch iPad Air.

It's thinner too, measuring just 5.3mm compared to 6.1mm for the larger iPad Air, despite Huawei fitting a 10,100mAh battery inside compared to roughly 9,705mAh on Apple's tablet.

That said, none of this means I'm ready to completely ditch the iPad. I still prefer its performance, app ecosystem, and just how well it works with the rest of my Apple devices. But after a month with the MatePad Air, the one thing I desperately want to take back to my iPad is this display.

Give the next iPad Air an OLED display with (hopefully) an anti-reflective PaperMatte-like option that doesn't burn a hole in my pocket, and my M1 iPad Air might finally have a reason to retire.

A bit heavier than an Apple iPhone event, but important nonetheless.

To catch up on that and this week’s lighter (but still essential and biggest) tech news stories, scroll down for our ICYMI recaps and links to the full articles. But before you read about the news, you might want to try your hand at our quiz to see how much you remember of last week's ICYMI roundup.

7. We interviewed John Ternus

You've just been named CEO of one of the world’s most important tech companies; what runs through your mind? I asked John Ternus that question to his face, and his answer was perfect. It was all part of a wide-ranging interview we conducted with our friends over at Tom’s Guide. Lots of good bits about what innovation means at Apple and why the Cupertino giant is finally making a foldable.

• Read the full story: 'I don't think we ever lost innovation': New Apple CEO John Ternus defends Apple's track record

6. Google Live Translate went offline

Arguably the best Google Translate tool is its Live feature — which lets you converse with someone in your respective native tongue, and each sees a real-time translation of what the other has said.

It can break down the language barrier, if you have an internet connection, that is, though that is changing.

Google has started rolling out an offline mode for Live Translate. There are some limitations — it only supports translation from English to French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, and Swedish — and it’s only coming to the Google Pixel 11 series, Pixel 10 line, and Pixel 9 series.

• Read the full story: Google's new offline Live Translate tool looks like my new vacation essential

5. Canon launched the EOS R8 Mark II

Canon has debuted the EOS R8 Mark II, with a design that supposedly takes its cues from decades-old analog SLR cameras — there's a slight resemblance, but we'd argue that Canon's design department could have been given a bit more latitude.

Nonetheless, the second-generation model introduces useful upgrades over the original EOS R8, for a price that could tempt Canon enthusiasts who want powerful features but who don't need the tough build quality, high-spec displays, or long-lasting battery life of the EOS R6 series.

• Read the full hands-on review: I tried Canon's new-look EOS R8 Mark II

4. We tried the Snap Specs

A decade on from Snap’s first Spectacles launch (back when it was still Snapchat), we’ve tried the next evolution in its wearable tech: full-on AR glasses, and they’re incredible.

They’re still quite chunky, and the demo wasn’t without its quirks, but they were fun to use and comfortable to wear.

You can currently pre-order the Snap Specs for an eye-watering $2,195 (around £1,640 / AU$3,090) with a $200 deposit.

• Read the full story: I tried out Snap Specs, the social platform's chunky AR smart glasses

3. We reviewed Apple's tech

We reviewed all of Apple’s new tech, and yet again we were impressed.

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max take last year’s Pro reinvention and refine it in all the right places — but the cameras are where Apple has made the biggest leap, with a variable aperture and finally useful Pro controls.

Meanwhile, the Apple Watch Ultra 4 might look and be priced similarly to what came before, but the big difference is the battery — with a promised up to 50 hours in normal use, up to 84 hours in Low Power Mode, and up to 45 hours in Max Extended Workout Mode.

The Apple Watch 12 feels fresh with a new health-sensing system, a new SoC under the hood to power some new features, and a good bit of AI on top of what we knew was coming with watchOS 27.

• Read our iPhone 18 Pro review
• Read our Apple Watch 12 review
• Read our Apple Watch Ultra 4 review

2. iOS 27 gave our iPhones a huge upgrade

This week Apple gave millions of iPhones their biggest software upgrade this year. iOS 27 rolled out (if you haven’t got it yet, check General > Software Update), and it includes Siri AI — a new version of the voice assistant that is, finally, good.

Like all major iOS updates, there are lots of smaller quality-of-life upgrades that we’re enjoying too. These include the ability to make Shortcuts with natural language, a neat ‘Reframe’ feature for Photos, and the long-awaited option to set alarm volumes separately from your main ringtone. We’d highly recommend downloading iOS 27 now if you haven’t already.

• Read the full story: I've been using iOS 27 for 3 months already — these are the 5 best features arriving on your iPhone today

1. We debated AI slowdown

In a move that’s managed to draw in commentary from Donald Trump, JD Vance, and pretty much every major news organization on the planet, some of the biggest names in AI — including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elon Musk — are calling for the development of frontier models to slow down while stronger safeguards are introduced.

They argue that increasingly capable, autonomous AI could escape human control, attack critical infrastructure or help bad actors create catastrophic weapons. Proposed protections include independent evaluators inside AI companies, international safety standards, government oversight, “kill switches” and restrictions on releasing especially powerful models.

Donald Trump rejects these concerns as a “hoax”, arguing that slowing development would damage the US economy and hand China an advantage in the global AI race. That means global consensus on how AI regulation should work is unlikely to arrive anytime soon. Until then, we better hope our new AI overlords are as bad at reaching a global consensus as us.

• Read the full story: 5 things you need to know about Trump's AI regulation battle

Its Ceramic Shield 2 display glass — first introduced on the iPhone 17 line and returning this year on the iPhone 18 Pro — is earning plaudits for delivering on the promise of 3x better scratch resistance 12 months on from its release, while the iPhone Duo is set to arrive next month with a host of impressive durability credentials (including, notably, a Galaxy Z Fold 8-beating IP68 resistance rating).

But while features like ingress protection and corrosion resistance aren’t the sexiest topics of discussion at Apple Park, they are some of the most important for ensuring Apple’s products stand the test of time — and Tom Marieb, the company’s new Vice President of Hardware Engineering (a role formerly occupied by CEO John Ternus), knows that better than most.

I had the chance to quiz Marieb on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo in a group interview at Apple’s London HQ, and he lifted the lid on how Ceramic Shield 2 — which we described as “the first iPhone glass we fully trust” earlier this year — managed to deliver such a noticeable jump in quality versus the original Ceramic Shield, and why he’s “especially proud” of the iPhone Duo’s hinge durability.

“Personally, when I see someone put a screen protector on their iPhone, it makes my skin crawl, because we work so hard to make beautiful front screens,” Marieb told me. “So we very much wanted to develop new coatings that could withstand [scratches], but also make sure that these coatings were wear-resistant as well. We worry about scratching, which is obviously very dependent on having [material that can withstand] very sharp things going into the screen. But we also worry about wear over time; as people use the screen, whether they’ll wear away that surface. And it turns out that those things are a little counterindicated in a lot of materials.

“So we had to try to optimize both of those [qualities] simultaneously [...] And I think we finally hit on a nice balance between the two [in Ceramic Shield 2]. We could have made it more scratch-resistant, but it would have been a little less wear-resistant. It’s the long life we’re looking for against both of those loads over time.”

Marieb added that, in testing Ceramic Shield 2, Apple accounted for half a decade’s worth of use in a comparatively minuscule testing period: “We very much try to meet the customer where they live, and so we don't design tests that measure old military specs or old standards; we try to say, ‘How are customers actually using this? What exactly are they exposing it to in the real world?’ And we make tests that mimic those things.

“And as you said, people waiting a year or two to actually see the benefits of [Ceramic Shield 2] means we've correctly predicted how people would use it. We accelerate time to try to compress those things into the engineering cycle, so that we can feed back as we try one thing after another, and can represent five years of life — or even more — within a couple of weeks of testing.”

It all hinges on the hinge

The display is the most important part of any iPhone, but the foldable iPhone Duo saw Apple tasked with protecting a new, equally crucial component: the hinge.

Like any foldable, the Duo can be used open or closed, and Apple has also developed dedicated ‘Seated’ or ‘Standing’ modes that will see the Duo bent at various angles for extended periods. The former displays visual content on the top half of the screen and viewing controls on the bottom (picture a Game Boy Advance), while the latter turns the Duo into a bedside clock, photo gallery, or weather screen via StandBy.

Whichever orientation you choose, the Duo remains fixed in place — but the work to make that happen wasn’t easy.

“I'm glad you hit on this, because this is something I'm especially proud of, and it took us a long time [to crack],” Marieb explained. “What we worry about with this device is that people see how thin it is and they think it's fragile. People seem to be worried about the Air, too, but it's honestly one of the most reliable phones we’ve ever made. And so we thought, ‘How do we design a hinge that feels very solid when you close it, but also really solid when you open it?’

“We really worked on the torque profile very heavily, and that means changing a lot of the mechanical properties of the hinge to have it feel solid, like a high-end automobile's car door, when you shut it. That was design intent, so people would have a feeling like, ‘Oh, it's okay. This is well crafted, and it's safe for me to use and not worry about it.’

And then, as you said, we have a lot of use cases where the Duo is [in a half-folded state]. And so we also had to think, ‘Can people interact with this [device] and not have it feel floppy?’ So getting those torque profiles right at both those ends, as well as in the middle — not having it feel like you're pulling something open, and not feeling as if it's floppy — we spent a lot of time optimizing that. So thank you for noticing, because a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into that.”

The dual benefits of nano texture

On top (literally) of the iPhone Duo’s hinge, Apple has equipped its first foldable phone with a 7.6‑inch nano‑texture display. This new material isn’t a million miles away from the anti-reflective nano-texture glass that can be added to the best MacBooks, though, of course, the Duo version of said glass needs to bend in half.

Another journalist in my group interview with Marieb noted that foldable creases typically appear minimal out of the box, but become more prominent mere months after being used extensively. In response, the Apple executive was bullish on the longevity of the Duo’s hinge and explained that the nano‑texture display should help maintain its obscurity:

“Hold us accountable to that, please […] The choice of a matte finish — apart from it being beautiful — is part of that equation. When you look at glossy displays, their specularity makes it very easy to pick up topology differences. That’s part of the reason we picked the matte finish — it’s not only beautiful in terms of preventing glare, but it’s also more forgiving of [topology] changes over time.”

Apple, then, is supremely confident in the durability credentials of its first foldable phone — and we look forward to putting the iPhone Duo through its paces ahead of its official launch on October 23. For our full verdict on Apple's latest candybar handsets, check out our iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review.

Samsung Display has unveiled the first OLED panel to deliver 10,000 nits of peak brightness, and it's already coming in a phone.

The new 'M16' OLED display is capable of 10,000 nits in 1% of the window, although in full screen it puts out a less searingly bright (but massively impressive) 2,800 nits. These numbers put it in the region of micro-LED tech, and way beyond anything we've seen for OLED so far.

Of course, brightness is all well and good, though few people are probably begging for their phone to be as bright as a full sunny day. What's arguably more exciting is that the panel is Samsung's second-generation polarizer-free OLED, which enables it to deliver significantly improved energy efficiency and brightness — the claim is a 30% improvement in efficiency.

This means that even if you view it more like the 1,000 nits of most elite phones, you're saving way more battery — and since the display is one of the biggest battery hogs in phones (or the best smartwatches, where the tech would also be really useful), that could make a real difference to phone longevity.

The M-series panels are made for smartphones and other mobile devices, but the advances in OLED material here may make their way into the best OLED TVs too, at least partly.

Where to see Samsung Display's new ultra-bright OLED

According to industry site FlatpanelsHD, Samsung Display will be providing the M16 OLEDs to Vivo for its iQOO 16 gaming phone.

Previous reports also suggest that Apple is using the M16 in its iPhone 18 Pro, as Apple has previously used even-numbered M-series OLEDs in its iPhones. My colleague Matt Bolton highlighted the longer battery life in the iPhone 8 Pro as one of its, uh, highlights — noting that battery improvements usually come from multiple elements combining, so it would makes sense if this new display is one of those elements.

For TV buyers, the most significant thing here is how fast OLED tech is evolving. Samsung announced its first 5,000 nit OLED in March 2025, and it's doubled the brightness and massively increased the energy efficiency in just over a year.

It'll be some time before these more efficient displays make their way to monitors and TVs (monitors might come sooner), and there are currently trade-offs involved — the lack of a polarizer can mean less defined contrast and black levels, which may be Apple is adding other anti-reflective tech to its displays — but clearly, any so-called OLED killers can't be complacent when OLED is evolving at such a speed.

It’s a pretty similar upgrade to the Series 12, which you can read my preview of here — it gets the redesigned rear as part of the new health-sensing system, there’s a new S11 chip inside with a Secure Enclave and separate always-on processor, a new Readiness Score that looks set to take on Oura and Whoop, two new AI features will begin rolling out later this year, and it can deliver HRV (heart rate variability).

But one key change is a bigger battery: the Apple Watch Ultra 4 has a 5% larger battery than the Apple Watch Ultra 3, paired with more efficiencies to deliver Apple's promised runtimes. That means the Ultra 4 can truly go the extra mile, with a promised up to 50 hours in normal use, up to 84 hours in Low Power Mode, and up to 45 hours in Max Extended Workout Mode.

Those are strong numbers, and thus far, it’s lasted in lockstep with the Ultra 3, offering more than a day of use and getting pretty close to a full two days. I’ll need more time with it before I can say whether that bigger battery and the efficiency gains translate into a meaningful real-world improvement, but so far, there’s plenty of endurance here.

There’s also a new Apple Watch Charger in the box. It looks the same as the previous one, but the cable has new tech that lets it charge even faster, with Apple promising up to 18 hours of battery life from a 15-minute charge. That’s mostly been the case in my testing so far, but I want to put it through some more charging cycles before I can say exactly how much of a difference it makes.

And just like with the Series 12, I’m holding off on a full verdict for now. The new Readiness Score is one of the biggest changes to the Apple Watch experience, and I want to give it enough time to build a picture of my data before I draw any conclusions. Apple says it generally takes seven nights of wear to calculate a score.

The redesigned health-sensing system and more frequent heart-rate and HRV tracking are already interesting additions, particularly on a watch built around fitness and endurance. It’s paired with full activity tracking, dual-band GPS, hypertension notifications, blood oxygen tracking, and satellite connectivity. Being able to pull up real-time heart rate and have the watch sample this data more frequently should make the Ultra 4 even more useful for workouts, while HRV adds another metric that brings it closer to competing devices.

There’s also the AI side of things, although that story isn’t fully here yet. Sound Recognition and faster Shazam are already available, while Live Rewind and Siri Recap are slated to arrive later this year, initially in beta and in the U.S. I’ll need more time with those once they launch to see whether they actually change how I use the Ultra 4 day-to-day. And, certainly, the Ultra 4 could have an advantage over the Series 12 when running these features thanks to its larger battery — time will tell.

So, for now, the Apple Watch Ultra 4 is very much an evolution of the Ultra 3 rather than a reinvention, but the bigger battery is a really nice surprise. The changes are mostly under the hood, with health sensing, processing, battery life, and charging all getting some attention.

I’m going to spend more time with it before I deliver a full verdict, especially when it comes to Readiness. But after several days, the Ultra 4 is already shaping up as a familiar Apple Watch Ultra with a little more endurance and a lot more data happening underneath the surface.

The Apple Watch Ultra 4 is up for preorder now at the same price of $799 / £749 / AU$1,349 and will officially launch on September 18, 2026.

Unveiled at Apple’s September 9, 2026, ‘Surprise and shine’ event, the next-generation mid-range Apple Watch — err, flagship for everyone in between the SE third-gen and Ultra 4 — doesn’t change much in terms of looks over the Series 11, but does usher in a redesigned rear as part of a new health-sensing system, a new SoC under the hood to power some new features, and a good bit of AI on top of what we knew was coming with watchOS 27.

And while I do have a full review coming, I’m waiting to gather more data and get my first taste of a Readiness Score — Apple’s fresh take on contextualizing all your data in an upgraded Vitals experience that I’m pretty stoked to try. In most cases, it will take just seven nights of wear to calculate.

While there are new case types — Ceramic arrives alongside Titanium and Aluminum — the Series 12 design is very similar to the Series 11. You can pick between a 44mm or a 46mm display, and it’s still an Always-On OLED that goes pretty close to the edges and even curves down a bit. I’ve specifically been testing the black aluminum, which looks fine and a bit plain — more importantly, it retains the slim profile.

Thankfully, all your previous bands will still work, but on the back you’ll see the new health-sensing system. The layout is different; it looks almost like a sundial with new placements for electrodes and diodes. Apple also swapped in a green LED, which is more efficient at getting readings. Despite the changes, the watch still sits on the wrist just as well. Of course, it still protrudes a bit from the back; see the photo below.

This, in conjunction with the new S11 chip, which is actually a derivative of the A20 Pro in terms of design and components, makes use of a Secure Enclave and an always-on processor section to improve sampling rates. This is the big ‘aha’ achievement, as it lets the Apple Watch track HRV and real-time heart rate whether you open the app or use the complication, and it also speeds up pedometer performance for faster step tracking.

Heart rate variability is a really sweet metric to have, and its arrival on the Apple Watch brings it closer to some competitors. This will also inform the Readiness Score. My Apple Watch still needs one more night of sleep tracking and one more overall HRV rating — it’s helpful that the watch can keep you informed about what’s needed, and fair to expect it to take about a week of wear before you get that reading.

Still, I am bullish on how Readiness will perform and will circle back with full thoughts on that front in due time. For now, the ability to pull up real-time heart rate is great for workouts, whether it be something more endurance-focused or just a walk and/or run. I really like the steps complication, as it auto-updates, and a quick glance at your wrist can show you how you’re pacing for the day.

As of yet, I’d note that actively having these complications running — either steps or heart rate — doesn’t seem to tank the battery life. It’s very much a full day of use, after a day or two of indexing, like the Series 11 established last year.

And then there’s the AI side of things, which I’m only getting a taste of for now. Sound Recognition and faster Shazam are already here, and both are nice little quality-of-life additions, but the more intriguing stuff is still to come.

Live Rewind and Siri Recap are slated to arrive later this year, initially in beta and in the U.S., and I’m especially curious to see how useful they are in the real world. The former can capture and transcribe a recent snippet of a conversation thanks to a rolling 15-second buffer, while the latter can recap what you’ve been talking about throughout the day down to the facts.

I’ll need more time with both once they launch before I can say how much they actually change the Apple Watch experience, but they’re another piece of the Series 12 story that could become more interesting as the year goes on. It also pushes the Apple Watch — mainly Series 12 and Ultra 4 — as more of an AI wearable, beyond activity or health tracking, notifications, and on-wrist apps.

For now, the Apple Watch Series 12 delivers more of the same in a familiar package, with better processing that’ll speed up classic features and enable new ones in two key areas. It’s a refresh of sorts for activity. The updates to Vitals, HRV, more frequent heart rate tracking, and Readiness bring it in line with other wearables like the Oura Ring, Whoop, or Fitbit Air. Simultaneously, it’s getting smarter with new audio recognition features and even taking on more of a role with AI functionality — a real first step for Apple.

We’ll be back soon with our full review, but if you have an older watch or have been waiting for Apple’s take on further contextualizing health data — or just really need HRV — this might be an excellent year to upgrade.

If you’re sold, the Apple Watch Series 12 is up for preorder now and begins shipping tomorrow, September 18, 2026, at the same starting price as the Series 11: $399 / £369 / AU$649.

Naturally, the iPhone 18 Pro preorders quickly followed suit, with rebates of up to AU$1,595 when you trade in an old phone, and accompanying SIM plans from AU$39/m.

While it’s always nice to have the latest tech, a fresh product launch also means an older device is ripe for discounts, and that’s certainly the case for the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Apple may have discontinued both models from its online store, but retailers and telcos, including Amazon, Optus and Vodafone, still have stock — including the popular Cosmic Orange colour — meaning you still have time to score one at a discount. Whether you just want to save money, aren’t fussed with having the latest iPhone, or you simply prefer the colour options of the iPhone 17 Pro series, now’s a great time to take advantage of any offers.

Buying outright

If you want to buy outright, then Amazon and Optus are great options, although if you’d prefer to shop at the former, you’ll want to hurry as the retailer doesn’t have stock of all sizes and all colours.

The standout offer has to be a 9% saving on the iPhone 17 Pro Max (256GB) in Cosmic Orange, now AU$1,995. The same phone is also available in Silver for the same price.

If you’d prefer the smaller iPhone 17 Pro, Amazon no longer has stock of the base 256GB variant. Instead, the most affordable option is 512GB for AU$2,197 in Deep Blue, or AU$2,229 in Cosmic Orange.

Alternatively, you could get the 256GB iPhone 17 Pro from a retailer such as The Good Guys, and pair it with Optus’ Small plan, or any of our other highly recommended SIM-only plans.

With a telco

Optus arguably has some tempting offers of its own. Not only can you split the cost of either the iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone 17 Pro Max into monthly interest-free instalments over up to 36 months, but all colours and storage sizes are in stock.

And, for a limited time, you can pair either iPhone with Optus’ Small plan, which has currently been reduced to just AU$39/m while the included data has increased from 60GB to 100GB. These benefits only apply to the first 12 months, after which the plan reverts to its regular AU$60/m for 60GB data — at this point, I’d recommend you check out the best SIM-only mobile plans for a more affordable option.

If you’re able to, it’s cheapest to pay the device off over 12 months, as you can see in the table below.

However, if you intend to remain on that Optus plan for three years anyway, all three options cost exactly the same over 36 months: AU$3,906.72. With the 12-month option, you'd simply pay $205.56/month for year one, then $60/month for years two and three.

Vodafone also has some attractive offers, with monthly device payments for the iPhone 17 Pro starting at AU$47.18/m. Once again, you’ll spend the least amount of money if you pay off over 12 months.

This is just a snapshot of the iPhone 17 Pro offers available right now, but if you want to take advantage, you’ll need to be quick, because once stock has gone, it’s gone.

Sift through the press releases that Apple pushed out while announcing the new iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, and you'll see some big battery life increases touted — including "the largest increase in battery life ever" on an iPhone with the Pro Max model (compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max).

We know that the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max come with 4,056 mAh and 5,391 mAh capacity batteries respectively (at least in Europe), but does that translate into much better battery life? We put both of these new handsets through their paces in the TechRadar labs (as part of our full iPhone 18 Pro review) to see if Apple's claims held up under some real-world testing.

Our standard test involves having the iPhone automatically cycle through a series of websites over a cellular connection, until the battery dies. Features like location services, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth are all turned off while the test is being run, and the battery management features in iOS are disabled too.

The iPhone 18 Pro managed 16 hours and 17 minutes in the test, compared to 15 hours and 21 minutes on the iPhone 17 Pro, a boost of around 6% overall. The iPhone 18 Pro Max managed 18 hours and 27 minutes compared to 17 hours and 54 minutes on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, an increase of roughly 3% in total.

Those increases are of course welcome, but perhaps aren't quite as impressive as Apple is making out, though there are a lot of different variables (like screen brightness) involved. Apple's own figures usually make use of video playback time — as in how long a single battery charge lasts when you've watching a video.

For the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, Apple quotes 33 hours and 39 hours respectively, while for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max those numbers go up to 36 hours (a 9% increase) and 45 hours (a 15% increase). That last jump is indeed significant, but may only apply in quite a narrow set of scenarios.

"All battery claims depend on network configuration and many other factors," explains Apple in the small print on its comparison page. "Actual results will vary. Batteries have limited recharge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and charge cycles vary by use and settings."

We can safely say that you should see better battery life on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max compared to the models that preceded them, but based on our own testing, don't expect the kind of improvements Apple is promising unless you're doing nothing but watching videos in long stretches between recharges.

If the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max were a reinvention of the flagship iPhone, the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max see Apple carrying the flagship-iPhone baton forward with few, if any, missteps.

I’ve spent the last week with a Glacier iPhone 18 Pro Max and a Burgundy iPhone 18 Pro — both colors are striking new additions to Apple’s iPhone color palette — and Apple has mostly stuck to last year's winning formula, while updating key aspects of the experience to push things forward.

While the main camera array still carries the same 48-megapixel count across the telephoto, ultra-wide, and main lenses, the arrival of Pro controls in the Camera app breathes new life into the photo-taking experience, letting you get seriously creative whenever you want to.

You can also take advantage of the new variable aperture on the main 48-megapixel Fusion camera to shoot across ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, or ƒ/4.0, and capture unique visuals, including starburst effects from lights. Of course, you can also choose to let the Camera app take control, and in general it’ll capture a well-balanced shot that you can still edit after the fact.

All in all, after taking hundreds of photos and shooting dozens of videos, I’m impressed with the level of detail the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max can deliver. Some images match what you’ll get from the previous-generation Pros, but these iPhones can also deliver even better-looking images and video, especially when you take control.

Under the hood is Apple’s first 2-nanometer chip in an iPhone, the A20 Pro, and while it doesn’t run laps around the previous A19 Pro, or the chip before that one, its CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine do an excellent job of handling general iOS tasks, as well as more advanced AI features, including keeping Siri AI chugging along where it's available and powering Apple Intelligence features in Photos, such as Clean Up and Reframing. It also ensures that third-party experiences run well, and I’ll be shocked if you encounter noticeable slowdowns anywhere.

The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max can easily keep pace with any of the other best modern smartphones, and I suspect they’ll keep doing so for years. You can again choose between a punchy, vibrant, and crisp 6.3-inch or 6.9-inch Super Retina XDR display, and that’s the main difference between the two Pro iPhones, as Apple maintains feature parity across the lineup.

Another meaningful improvement is in battery life, with the iPhone 18 Pro lasting longer than the 17 Pro Max according to Apple, while it says the 18 Pro Max establishes a new iPhone battery-life record. Add in the improved thermal management, smaller Dynamic Island, and arrival of Siri AI, and there’s a lot of refinement here beyond the cameras and processor.

And that’s ultimately what the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max feel like to me: a refinement of an already excellent Pro iPhone, rather than a reinvention. If the iPhone 17 Pro generation was about Apple changing the formula, the iPhone 18 Pro is about taking that formula and making it better across the board, without messing with what worked.

It’s not night and day across the board, and if you’re coming from an iPhone 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max, you probably don’t need to upgrade. The A20 Pro feels largely neck and neck with the A19 Pro in daily use, the displays remain familiar, and the overall design is essentially unchanged. But I would bet that some iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max owners will want to make the jump anyway, particularly for the camera improvements. The combination of the variable aperture and, finally, a genuinely customizable Camera app with Pro controls enables a level of user input that I’ve wanted Apple to bake into the iPhone for years.

If you’re holding onto an iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, or anything older, the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max represent a much more substantial generational leap. You’re getting bigger and better displays, way-improved cameras, better battery life, a faster and more future-ready chip, improved thermals, and a modern, durable design that Apple has now had a year to refine.

And that’s the thing about the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max: you don’t need any one of these upgrades to completely reinvent how you use an iPhone. Taken together, though, they make for a seriously capable flagship that feels ready for the next several years.

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review: Price and Availability

• Starts at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,099 for 256GB
• Both Pro models now offer 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB options
• On sale September 18, with preorders open now

Apple made the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max official at its September 9, 2026, ‘Surprise and Shine’ special event; preorders are open now, with an on-sale date of September 18.

The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 in the US, £1,199 in the UK, and AU$2,099 in Australia, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max at $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$2,299, respectively. That means they come with a $100 / £100 / AU$100 increase in starting price over the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, while, like last year’s Pros, starting at 256GB of storage. Both can be configured with 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB of storage, with the latter now an option on both Pro models. You can choose from Burgundy, Glacier, Silver, and Black.

Both phones officially go on sale on September 18, 2026.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review: Design

• The 18 Pro keeps the 17 Pro’s aluminum body and camera plateau
• Burgundy and Glacier colors bring some welcome personality to the Pro lineup
• A new vapor chamber and Nanotwin copper help keep things cooler under load

With the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, Apple chose to dramatically reinvent the Pro-series iPhone's design. It swapped the left-side bump that housed the main camera system for a plateau that stretches across the back, went back to aluminum, and focused heavily on durability.

Given that, the odds of a major redesign for the next-gen Pro phones were slim, and the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max stick with a design that not only scored well in our reviews, but also won over a wider audience. I've been switching between the iPhone 17 Pro Max in Cosmic Orange and the iPhone Air for the last year.

The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max stick with the aluminum body and camera plateau from last year's models. That might seem like a safe choice, considering that the iPhone Duo is launching alongside these candy-bar-style phones in October, but it also shows Apple pushing forward with a working design — essentially the same trajectory it took from the iPhone 16 to the iPhone 17.

Still, to help the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max stand out from the crowd — and just to let people know you’re rocking one of Apple’s new phones, rather than a 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max — there are two entirely new colors, and I can't decide which is my favorite, and luckily I've been testing both. Burgundy is sort of a dark-red wine color that evokes a sense of high-class sleekness, while Glacier, which the event invite teased, is a mix of blue and silver that looks decidedly fresh. These are the two colors that pop, both much more muted than Cosmic Orange, but also a bit more vibrant than the Dark Navy from 2025. Those two join silver and the first ‘true’ black Pro model. It shows that Apple is listening, and I'm all for more Pro colors.

The dimensions are the same year over year. The iPhone 18 Pro measures 150 x 71.9 x 8.75mm, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max comes in at 163.4 x 78 x 8.75mm — exactly the same footprint as their predecessors. The button placement is also identical, so if you've spent the last year with an iPhone 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max, there's nothing new to learn here: power and Camera Control are on the right, with the Action Button, and volume up and volume down on the left. Both phones are a little heavier than last year’s: the 18 Pro weighs 211 grams, up from 206 grams, while the 18 Pro Max jumps to 249 grams from 233 grams.

Even with the slight weight increase, both the 6.3-inch Pro and 6.9-inch Pro Max feel comfortable in the hand and are pretty well balanced. The Pro Max is still very much a two-handed phone for me, especially for texting, while the Pro is still the smaller, more portable option.

Then there's Ceramic Shield 2, which is sticking around. Judging by the coatings on my iPhone Air and 17 Pro Max, it's done wonders at preventing micro-abrasions and front-screen scratches, and even means that drops don’t elicit a gasp, since after a year my screens are still unblemished. In my few days testing the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, I haven't seen a scratch on the front or abrasions on the back, which is both aluminum and glass.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max was known for getting warm, or at least warmer to the touch, during more intense activities such as gaming or long content shoots, and Apple has looked to address that issue with some new cooling tech under the hood. There's a new thermal architecture inside, which consists of a vapor chamber, the positioning of which has been tweaked, and which offers three times the surface area to better dissipate heat. Apple has paired this with an industry-first Nanotwin copper material, which is baked into the display plate to help keep that surface cool.

For the most part, this has kept the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max cool during my testing. They can still get warm, but nowhere near as warm as the 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max, and the heat is more spread out when it does become noticeable. I noticed it mostly heating up during longer capture sessions, especially when swapping between photo and video, but even then the heat felt more spread out and better regulated, and dissipated more quickly.

It's a subtle change, but one that matters when you're using the phone heavily. And that's really the story of the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max design: Apple hasn't reinvented the wheel this year. Instead, it's taken the design it introduced with the iPhone 17 Pro and refined the parts that matter — durability, thermals, finishes, and how the phone feels during sustained use.

• Design score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review: Display

• Two sizes, same experience across both
• A new anti-reflective coating joins 3,000 nits peak brightness and120Hz ProMotion
• Smaller Dynamic Island with room for three Live Activities

Your main decision when choosing between the 18 Pro and the 18 Pro Max comes down to size, as there’s feature parity between the two, and that’s a good thing. The iPhone 18 Pro features a 6.3-inch display, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch display. Both are punchy, vibrant, and a joy to look at and use for any task, be it FaceTiming with friends or loved ones, typing out comms, reading an email, browsing the web, scrolling your photos, watching video, or just navigating iOS elements.

Much of that comes from the fact that these are Super Retina XDR displays, which are OLED and always-on, meaning that even when the phone is locked, the screen dims down to still show you the time, widgets, and even notifications. Like the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max before them, the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max have a buttery-smooth 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate and top out at a maximum brightness of 3,000 nits. It’s unlikely the phone will always run at that brightness, but suffice to say that even on a bright, humid, sunny day — and I mean it was really beating down — in Orlando, Florida, enjoying the sights, sounds, and rides of Disney World, I had no issues viewing content on the screen.

There’s also a new anti-reflective coating on the display, and while this isn’t a full Nano-texture coating like you’ll find on some of Apple’s other displays and the folding iPhone Duo, it’s a noticeable step up when it comes to reducing reflections and smudges. It’s particularly useful outdoors, where fewer reflections mean less fighting with the screen to see what’s actually on it. Compared to older iPhones, like the iPhone 16 and earlier models, this feels like a much bigger display upgrade.

There is one thing that really did catch my eye, though, and it’s the key change with the display: Apple has shrunk the Dynamic Island down on the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. It’s about the size of an extra-strength Tylenol liquid gel, and much less of a distraction at the top, if you could even call it that. In addition to the reduced size, the other big change is to Live Activities — the Dynamic Island can now support three, rather than two. So maybe it’s directions, music playback, and a timer, or if you’re on a flight, maybe it’s United Airlines showing the seat number, Flighty counting down your arrival time, and music playing in Music or Spotify.

I’m not saying you need to rush out to upgrade just for this if you have a 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max — although that might be the case for the cameras or battery life — but if you’re a fan of using this space, it’s definitely a super-functional quality-of-life upgrade.

• Display score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review: Cameras

• Pro controls finally arrive to let you adjust aperture, shutter speed, white balance, and more.
• The 48MP Fusion main camera aperture is adjustable from ƒ/1.48 to ƒ/4.0
• Better detail, strong low-light performance, and excellent 4x and 8x zoom

Alright, buckle in, because while the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max still boasts 48-megapixel main, 48-megapixel ultra-wide, and a 48-megapixel telephoto camera — similar to the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max setup — things are a bit different across the board, and especially in one specific area.

For starters, if you’ve been wanting Apple to bake more controls into the Camera app, your wish has been granted. There are now Pro controls that let you adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and white balance for the main camera, alongside a host of other tools, including improved Photographic Styles, with more granular controls, and the ability to bring up a histogram.

You can also customize which of these controls live at the top of your screen, in a similar fashion to designing your perfect home screen or Control Center. Changes to shutter speed and aperture are persistent if you have that enabled in Settings for preserving camera settings, but you can’t design exact presets with a specific aperture or shutter speed, although — hint, Apple — that would be a nice upgrade.

Photographic Styles are also getting more flexible. You can still pick from the expected presets, but Apple now gives you more granular control over things like texture, including adjustments specifically aimed at skin. Push it in the right direction, and you can get smoother, more glowy-looking portraits, though there are times when that comes at the expense of some detail, particularly in lower-light areas of the frame.

That’s where I think Apple’s approach makes sense: the default Auto processing generally aims to strike a balance between detail, exposure, color, and skin tones, so you don’t have to think about any of this. But if you want to get more creative, the tools are there — and you can still make adjustments after the fact, rather than having to nail everything before you hit the shutter button.

Here’s a look at the camera specs, right before the big change that has to do with the main lens:

• 48MP Fusion main with variable aperture of ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, or ƒ/4.0
• 48MP Fusion ultra-wide at ƒ/2.2
• 48MP Fusion telephoto at ƒ/2.8

With these, you can still shoot at 0.5x, 1x at 24mm, 28mm, or 35mm, 2x for a digital crop with optical-quality results, 4x (as a digital sensor crop), or an optical 8x, and stretch all the way up to 40x digital zoom.

The big change, though, is that the main lens — the one your iPhone is set to by default — has a variable aperture for the first time ever on an iPhone. With a fine eye, or another camera pointed at it, you can actually see the lens aperture adjusting, getting wider or narrower to let more or less light in. It also swaps the previous main aperture of ƒ/1.78 on 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, as the 18 Pro’ now offering ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, and ƒ/4.0.

You can choose to ignore this new control, as well as the ability to adjust white balance or shutter speed, and let the iPhone and its image-processing pipeline automatically engage what it believes are the optimum settings to capture a great shot. And in my testing so far, it succeeds here, offering on-par quality with the iPhone 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max, but mostly punching above those phones with better details, more natural blurring and focus points, and excellent highlights.

The image-processing pipeline has also been updated. Performance still feels very much in line with what I’ve come to expect from an iPhone, but images are more detailed and sharper throughout, though at times they can pack a little more punch with colors thanks to some update on the image pipeline. Especially for 4x and 8x shots, I’ve found that these preserve more details generation over generation. It’s not a dramatic departure from the iPhone look, but there’s a clear refinement here in how the phone handles detail and brings a scene to life.

The 4x and 8x zoom continued to surprise me with how much detail they can deliver, namely with the former being a sensor crop and the latter being optical. Whether I’m picking out details around Disney World’s parks or zooming in on something far away, the results stay impressively detailed without looking like a processed digital crop.

The variable aperture gives the main camera more flexibility, especially when you want to control how much light comes in, or how much of a subject is separated from the background. The wider maximum aperture also helps make this excellent main camera even more versatile in lower-light scenarios, and because it’s the camera your iPhone defaults to, it’s likely the one you’ll navigate to first.

The Most Magical Place on Earth deserves the best camera on a phone on Earth, right? So I’ve done the bulk of my iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max camera testing around the Disney World parks in Orlando, and taken plenty of additional shots in New Jersey, California, and even up in the sky from the windows of planes. That means I’ve tested the cameras in just about every condition I could throw at them, from the beating Florida sun to nighttime attractions, indoor spaces, moving subjects, and everything in between.

I’ve been putting the low-light performance to the test around Disney World, too, including taking plenty of shots after the sun went down. Even in Auto mode, I found the iPhone 18 Pro could deliver detail-packed, appropriately lit shots in less time, with Night mode often requiring less time to capture a shot than on previous generations. This comes down to about one to three seconds, versus five to eight seconds for processing. And that means less waiting around for the camera to finish its exposure and, more importantly, less chance of a moving subject turning into a blurry mess. You can accomplish longer exposures if the iPhone detects it’s in a tripod as well.

When I wanted more control, though, I could jump in and adjust the shutter speed and aperture when shooting at 1x or 2x zoom, letting me decide how I wanted to capture the scene, rather than leaving it entirely up to the iPhone. If you’re willing to take the time to dive into the controls, you can really customize how the iPhone captures a scene, and get much more creative with your shots.

For instance, I shot the Magic of Disney Animation building at night at ƒ/1.48 and 1/30s, deliberately opening up the aperture and slowing the shutter to let in more light. The result is a detail-packed shot with rich colors and a dramatic nighttime look, as you can see above. It’s still an iPhone, so you can absolutely leave everything on Auto and get a great photo, but when you want to take more control, the tools are there to help you capture the shot you have in your mind’s eye.

The same Pro controls carry over to video, giving you more control over how you capture moving footage. There’s also a new auto-tracking feature, and I’ve found it particularly useful for fast-moving subjects.

I put it to the test at Disney World with Slinky Dog Dash, capturing the coaster as it came down the sloping track. The iPhone did a great job of keeping the front of the coaster in focus while the people blurred with the speed of the ride, and the lighting on the track moving alongside the vehicles stayed remarkably clear. The shot came out incredibly well, and it really shows what the iPhone can do with a fast-moving subject.

The 18-megapixel front-facing camera is essentially unchanged from last year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the Center Stage camera still uses that clever square sensor, letting you rotate between portrait and landscape framing without physically turning the iPhone. Better yet, it will still automatically adjust to fit more people in the shot.

The cameras are easily the most exciting part of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, and as in years and generations past, it’s a big reason why folks go Pro. You get three capable shooters, and the ability to step back or step closer, depending on what you’re trying to capture. This year, Apple is giving you more control, and adding a genuinely neat upgrade to the main camera. The choice is ultimately yours: you can stick with Auto and still capture great shots, or make your mark with adjustments and shoot more intentionally.

Yes, third-party apps have offered many of these controls before, but having them baked right into the native Camera app can make a big impact, in my opinion. You don’t have to download another app or learn another interface to take advantage of them — they’re right there when you open the camera.

• Camera score: 5 / 5

Camera samples

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review: Software, Siri AI, and Apple Intelligence

• Siri AI is here, in beta, and works across apps and personal context
• It can use your current on-screen context to help answer questions
• It's a major step forward, but it still makes mistakes and has rough edges

The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max ran iOS 26 out of the box, and it's no surprise that iOS 27 is preloaded on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. It runs really well here, and the A20 Pro under the hood keeps things gliding along — more on that processor below.

Much of iOS 27 is about under-the-hood changes that speed things up, which is especially helpful for older phones, along with more ways to customize the Liquid Glass interface, including adjusting how much of that glass effect you want to see.

The real story, though, is that the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max come with the new, AI-powered Siri out of the box, in beta, in specific regions. It’s available now in the United States, though you’ll need to join a waitlist, and it arrives alongside some new Apple Intelligence features.

For starters, Siri AI is much faster, and shows its work as it goes, which makes the experience feel more transparent. For instance, I’ve asked for details on my last flight and watched Siri AI dive into the right app — whether that’s Calendar, Flighty, United, or even Mail — to pull up the information I’m looking for. I’ve also used it to confirm my departure time, and ask how long it might take to get to the airport. It really does work, and it feels natural, and easy to get the hang of.

That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Siri AI diving into some apps can cause mistakes, and at times it can pull up the wrong dataset or make the wrong assumption about what I’m asking for. But given how delayed this upgrade has been, and how limited the existing Siri has felt, overall it finally feels like Apple has delivered on the promise of a more capable assistant, while still putting privacy at the center as it works with your personal data and what’s on your device.

Siri AI can even be cued to see what’s on your screen, adding another layer of usefulness. Rather than having to explain everything you’re looking at, you can let Siri understand the context of what’s in front of you and go from there. It’s one of those features that sounds small on paper, but once you start using it, it feels like the direction Siri should have been heading in all along.

Apple Intelligence also brings a handful of other updates, including new ways to work with images, improvements to Photos and other apps, and more ways to put on-device intelligence to work. But Siri AI is easily the headline for me. After years of Siri feeling like an assistant that was increasingly behind the times, it finally feels like I’m actually talking to an AI assistant on an iPhone, rather than simply giving commands to a voice interface.

And while it’s still in beta, and there are clearly some kinks to work out, that’s an important distinction. Apple isn’t just talking about what Siri will be able to do anymore — on the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, I’m actually using it. It’s faster, more conversational, understands more context, and can work across the apps and information already on my phone.

For me, that makes iOS 27 feel less like a flashy annual software update, and more like the foundation for where Apple wants the iPhone to go next. The A20 Pro gives it the horsepower to keep everything moving, while Siri AI finally starts making good on the Apple Intelligence promise. And because it’s built into the iPhone, and designed around the information already on your device, it feels like a much more natural extension of how I already use my phone, rather than another AI chatbot I need to remember to open.

• Software score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review: Performance

• A20 Pro is seriously fast
• The biggest gains over the A19 Pro come in specific workloads and future headroom
• Improved thermal management helps keep the phone cooler under heavy use

It might be no surprise, but the A20 Pro chip inside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max is, as Apple claims, the fastest chip it’s put in an iPhone. And it’s actually more similar to an M-Series-powered SoC that Apple might opt for in a Mac than previous A-series chips.

With the A20 Pro, the SoC actually sits next to the DRAM, rather than having the memory stacked on top, as it has been in previous generations. It’s also built on a 2-nanometer process, just like the M6.

Inside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, the A20 Pro is broken up into a 6-core CPU — two performance cores and four efficiency cores — a 7-core GPU, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine.

What does all of that mean for real-world use? Well, pretty much what you’d expect from a new Pro iPhone: everything is fast. Apps open quickly, jumping between them is fluid, games run smoothly, and even more demanding tasks don’t really give the A20 Pro much pause.

Take video exports, for example. I’ve been exporting 4K videos with graphics, text, and transitions in both Edits and CapCut, and the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max handle them quickly. It’s the kind of task where you can really feel the combination of the new chip and all that processing power, especially when you’re working with more complicated edits.

Gaming is another area where the A20 Pro flexes a bit. Real Flight Simulator runs smoothly, with environments rendering quickly as I’m flying around. The same goes for Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact, both of which seemingly put a pretty serious load on the phones, which they seemingly handle without issue.

Multitasking has also been a non-issue. I’ve had plenty of apps open, jumped into FaceTime while playing a game, and bounced between multiple text conversations without the iPhone 18 Pro or 18 Pro Max missing a beat. That’s probably the less exciting side of performance, but it’s also where you notice the power of the A20 Pro day-to-day — you don’t really have to think about what’s running in the background.

Photo Clean Up is a bit faster than it was on the iPhone 17 Pro, for example, so removing an unwanted object or person from a shot takes less time. It’s not a massive difference, but when you use these tools frequently, those little speed improvements add up.

Additionally, the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max handle heat better, so sustained performance doesn’t come with the same uncomfortable warmth I experienced with the 17 Pro generation. The heat isn’t magically gone, but it’s distributed better, rather than sitting in one spot on the back, and dissipates faster.

It’s worth keeping some perspective here, though. The A20 Pro isn’t night-and-day faster than the A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro or the chip in the iPhone Air, and you’ll likely only see more meaningful gains over something like the iPhone 16 Pro in specific scenarios. That’s not really the point.

The A20 Pro gives the iPhone more headroom for the future, especially as we run more and more AI-powered tasks on our phones, and, increasingly, other Apple devices. After spending this much time with it, the A20 Pro gives me no pause about getting several years of strong performance out of the iPhone 18 Pro or 18 Pro Max.

If you’re coming from an iPhone 15 or older, though, that’s where I think you’ll really notice the difference. You’re not just getting a faster chip; you’re getting a phone with considerably more processing headroom for demanding games, video editing, Apple Intelligence, and whatever Apple adds over the next few years.

Additionally, the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will both feature the new Apple-made C2 modem globally. On my Burgundy iPhone 18 Pro connected to AT&T's network, I scored over 900MBps down in a jam-packed park, but the story is a little different with the 18 Pro Max in the US. The larger Pro iPhone in the States opts for a Qualcomm modem, but I didn't notice much of an issue with performance. I was connected to the Visible network and averaged about 350MBps to 500MBps down while in the parks and around New Jersey.

• Performance score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max review: Battery

• I averaged around 30 hours, with the Pro Max stretching further
• 50% charge in 15 minutes means you can get back in action quickly with wired charging

Alongside variable aperture on the main camera and the faster A20 Pro inside, Apple is making big promises about battery life with its latest Pro iPhones. In fact, the Cupertino giant notes that the iPhone 18 Pro will last longer than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max offers the longest battery life ever in an iPhone.

More specifically, it’s up to 36 hours of video playback on the iPhone 18 Pro, and up to 45 hours on the iPhone 18 Pro Max. These figures are based on Apple’s video-playback testing, and real-world battery life will vary depending on what you’re doing. Also keep in mind that these devices will need some time to index and get their bearings.

I’ll likely need to come back to this section in the coming weeks as indexing concludes, and I’m not shooting hundreds of photos and many minutes of video a day — after all, this is a review period. But with both the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, I’ve averaged around 30 hours of use before needing to plug in, and that stretches a bit further with the Max.

Even on an endurance day in the Florida heat, with hundreds of photos captured and nearly an hour of video recorded, the iPhone 18 Pro Max lasted an impressive amount of time before I needed a pit stop back at the hotel to recharge. It can drain quickly with heavy use, especially when you’re doing a lot of content capture, but in my testing thus far, both phones have been impressive.

In Future Labs' battery test, the iPhone 18 Pro lasted 16 hours and 17 minutes, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max ran for 18 hours and 27 minutes. That’s a good chunk less than Apple’s own video-playback figures, but my daily usage does stretch a bit closer to its claims.

On my last day of testing, I took the iPhone 18 Pro Max off the charger at 6AM and it hit 80% right before 11AM. With lots of app usage and some capture, it dropped to around 40% around 6PM with heavier use, but on average I got about 30 hours of use.

Apple also has improved fast wired charging, letting you hit 50% in just 15 minutes. I achieved that with both phones using Apple’s own Dynamic 40W charger, as well as a smaller Anker 45W Nano Cube. That means even if you do drain the battery, you don’t have to spend long tethered to an outlet before you’re back in business.

• Battery score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max: Should you buy?

Buy it if...

Don’t buy it if...

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max: Also consider

Apple iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max: How I tested

I’ve covered iPhones since the iPhone 8 generation, and the iPhone 3GS was my first personal iPhone. For this review, I spent a week with the iPhone 18 Pro in Burgundy and the iPhone 18 Pro Max in Glacier.

I used both as daily drivers, covering everything from calls and streaming to gaming, work apps, photography, and video. I also ran performance benchmarks, tested multitasking and demanding workloads, and tracked battery drain across different usage scenarios alongside a standardized battery test.

For the cameras, I captured hundreds of photos and dozens of videos across Disney World — including Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and the resorts — as well as New Jersey, California, and from airplane windows. I tested every rear camera, multiple focal lengths, variable aperture, Pro controls, Night mode, Portrait mode, and video, along with the 18MP Center Stage camera.

I also compared the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max with the previous-generation Pro models, the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and other smartphones including the Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro.

First reviewed September 2026.

It's the iPhone Duo, okay?

Apple hasn't and honestly wouldn't say this, but sometimes it only takes a subtle signal or simple choice to reveal what should've been obvious in the first place.

On Monday night, amid the Hollywood glitz and glamour of the 78th Primetime Emmys, newly minted Apple CEO John Ternus stood on the red carpet. Looking spiffy and maybe a bit uncomfortable in his tuxedo, with multiple microphones stuck in his face, Ternus fielded questions about Apple TV's incredible seven-year run and vast trove of awards for shows like Shrinking and the freshman Windows Bay, which garnered more season 1 Emmys than any other show before it.

He produced it like magic

Then a Deadline reporter started asking about the new phones. Without hesitation, Ternus pulled the stunning new iPhone Duo from his breast pocket as the reporter squealed with delight.

I guess she could be forgiven for her over-the-top reaction. After all, since Apple unveiled its first folding phone as the "one more thing" during Apple's "Surprise & Shine" iPhone event, not much has been seen of the passport-sized handset. It's shipping almost a month after the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, the only other new iPhones on offer right now.

And yet, here was Ternus, carrying it as, it seems, his phone of choice. Or at least the one he chose for that night. I guess he could've demurred when the reporter asked and pulled out a burgundy iPhone 18 Pro, but he didn't.

It was hard to hear what Ternus said over the reporter's screams, but I think it was "there we go...look at that," as he unfolded the phone to show off the unusual matte and virutally creasless display.

Doing so, on one of the entertainment world's biggest stages, was surely a calculated choice. Apple is steering all eyes toward its $1999 iPhone Duo.

You might say it's a craven attempt to garner more revenue via the pricey handset, but I think something else is at work here.

Why Apple needs to try harder with the Duo

With its late entry into the folding space, Apple is taking a risk. It's calculated, but still a risk. The foldable phone market is tiny, and most of it is owned by Samsung, which has a wide array of folding devices in shapes from the basic Flip to the larger and more powerful (at least camera-wise) Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. It also has a passport-sized Galaxy Z Fold 8.

Apple isn't the first, and we still haven't decided whether it is the best. Still, how often has Samsung had the opportunity to show off its hardware at a big consumer entertainment event ostensibly watched by millions?

Well, it has been pushing its newest foldables in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but in the action film, the phones are featured but not addressed in any real way. No one plays with them on camera to show off new features.

What would Samsung have done?

I do recall, though, when Samsung sponsored the 2014 Oscar telecast and handed out Samsung phones to celebrity audience members. With one of those phones, Ellen took one of the most famous, fame-filled selfies of all time. Even so, that sold people on social media and not the Samsung Galaxy phone.

This Emmy's opportunity was different. You had a willing and tech-obsessed reporter and Ternus, who just so happened to have their newest and most important Apple product in his pocket. There's little chance she would've asked, and he would've presented it, if he were only carrying the iPhone 18 Pro.

That wasn't the only moment where someone mentioned the foldable phone to Ternus. Another entertainment reporter called it the "Flip," and Ternus let it pass (notably without producing the phone). For Apple, it was a golden opportunity to steer consumers toward the new iPhone form factor and give it an even better chance of success.

I know, it was just a few seconds and by no means a true commercial for the iPhone Duo, but give Ternus credit for making the most of it and sending a clear signal of where Apple hopes you spend your next iPhone dollars.

Apple’s iOS 27 update has just been released to the public, and it comes with an artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Spatial Reframing that lets you adjust the angle of your photos after they’ve been taken. But as one Redditor discovered, the feature has limitations and could potentially do with a little more time in the oven.

Posting on social media, Reddit user friendofmany claimed that iOS 27’s Spatial Reframing tool added a “random dude” into their photo of a horse. The person in the accompanying image was not someone known to the poster and was instead a total hallucination dreamed up by the AI — a “full rando,” in the user’s words.

The Redditor went on to explain that the original photo showed a “tiny bit of hat peeking out behind the horse.” When they moved the focal point of the image using Spatial Reframing, that scrap of headgear was fleshed out into a completely non-existent human.

And while it’s an amusing example of AI losing its way, it aptly showcases the weaknesses of the current tech.

Getting fast and loose with reality

Once you activate Spatial Reframing in iOS 27, you can drag a photo with your finger and the angle of the shot changes accordingly. Apple says this lets you create a more satisfying composition without having to go back and try to capture the moment all over again.

However, this process necessarily means that the AI has to fill in some blanks. If your edits mean the camera now appears to have been pointing in a new direction, Apple’s AI has to get a little creative with what’s in the image. In this case, it seemingly went completely off the rails by dreaming up a person who doesn’t even exist.

It’s not just people where Spatial Reframing has the occasional blip. I’ve had plenty of experiences where the tool got a little too loose with its adjustments. That often occurred when I took a photo of a building or busy street, then tried tweaking the angle using Spatial Reframing — the AI would end up adding features to buildings (such as windows and ledges) that weren’t present in real life.

That’s unsurprising given the AI has to put something in the image, but it was still a little galling considering I was standing there and could see that the AI-edited picture simply didn’t reflect reality.

Back on Reddit, the case of the phantom horseman highlights what can go wrong when you start editing your photos with AI. And with AI tools becoming ever-more prominent in both Apple’s best iPhones and in daily life, it’s likely we’ll continue to see unsettling hallucinations like this. For now, though, it seems clear that Apple’s Spatial Reframing feature could do with a little more work, even as it makes its iOS 27 debut.

Apple seemingly continues to show its devotion to gaming with something that's in the pipeline for iOS gamers.

As reported by PC Mag, macOS 26.7 code references two unreleased iPhone game controllers, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman suggests Apple has been working on them for almost a year. More importantly, though, Gurman says these controllers could launch under the Beats brand.

The controllers are codenamed T6502 and T1057 according to MacRumors (which discovered the references), with different haptic designs alongside a standard game controller's features. Beats, which was acquired by Apple in 2014, is a brand often used for its own popular audio products (of course), but also for USB-C cables and some iPhone cases.

Now, it appears as though Beats may well represent gaming accessories for Apple going forward, and Gurman claims these controllers are being led by Beats executives in both "product engineering and conception".

It's a potential move that comes at a convenient time for iPhone owners intrigued by gaming, as the RAM crisis continues to impact the PC hardware and games console market. Gurman observes that Apple sees gaming accessories such as those for phones as a "growing market and wants in".

Game controller and speaker hybrid?

If this does indeed happen, it seems somewhat bizarre to have Beats producing game controllers, as it's quite a switch from the traditional audio products. Fortunately though, it opens the door to some surprising designs, and I'm thinking specifically of the audio side of the equation when connecting the purported controllers to an iPhone.

Maybe Beats could look to do something similar to Asus and its ROG Phone AeroActive Coolers, which feature shoulder buttons for gaming alongside a built-in subwoofer for a significant boost in bass and audio quality. No, these ROG peripherals aren't full game controllers, but they effectively illustrate what could be realized with a hybrid speaker and controller combo.

Based on the brief design description from the references found in macOS, alongside Gurman's report, it's hard to say that the rumored peripherals will be anything other than simple controllers. But there are presumably opportunities for clever design twists, particularly given the Beats branding.

If this Beats rumor turns out to be true, it's clear that Apple is looking to serve a market that is growing amid the RAM crisis, and hoping to leverage the accessibility that comes with iPhones for gaming.

And honestly, this change in direction made sense. After all, iPads now run MacBook-level M-series chips; the iPad Pro (2025), for instance, uses the M5. They also let you run background exports in creative apps, switch audio sources while podcasting, and complete many more high-level productivity tasks.

One excellent addition in iPadOS 26 was the arrival of the Menu Bar, which acts as a facsimile of the macOS version of the same feature. But having used iPadOS 27, which launches today (September 14), since its launch in beta earlier this year, I can confidently say that this new software package makes the iPad feel more Mac-like than ever — and the Menu Bar is once again responsible for that.

Passing the bar

As mentioned, the Menu Bar is about as Mac as it gets, offering app-specific options at the top of the iPad screen. It’s as synonymous with macOS as the Dock, and it’s one of the core features that take some getting used to when switching from a Windows PC to a Mac.

On Mac, the Menu Bar is permanent. It sits at the top of the screen for easy access and highlights which app you’re currently using (something that’s particularly useful if you’re juggling multiple apps and keyboard shortcuts), but in iPadOS 26 it wasn’t, meaning it could be just as much of a hindrance as it was a help.

Thankfully, iPadOS 27 ensures the Menu Bar is always available, and while there are still some things I wish I could do on Apple’s tablet, the ability to affix the Menu Bar permanently is a change I welcome.

To do so, once you’ve updated to iPadOS 27, open Settings and select ‘Multitasking & Gestures’ on the left-hand sidebar. You’ll have to be on the Windowed Apps or Stage Manager option to be able to see the Menu Bar.

From here, look for a toggle labelled ‘Automatically Show and Hide Menu Bar’. If it’s on, turn it off, and you’ll see the Menu Bar consistently across apps, unless you’re watching something in full-screen mode. If you get fed up with it, just toggle that ‘Automatically Show and Hide Menu Bar’ option back on, and it’ll disappear again.

Still a way to go

Once you’ve toggled that setting, you can enjoy having the Menu Bar at the top of your iPad screen, but there are some caveats to be aware of.

For one, it’s not particularly useful if you use your iPad with your finger. The Menu Bar is much more suited to using a mouse, trackpad, or the Apple Pencil. I use the Magic Keyboard and, as ridiculously pricey as it was, this feature makes my whole iPad much more useful.

The other thing to be aware of is that the Menu Bar can’t be customized with third-party apps in the same way that long-running Mac ones like Bartender can. Sadly, it remains static in terms of what you can put on the right-hand side of it. Maybe one day that’ll change, but I can’t see Apple rolling out utility apps on its iPadOS platform anytime soon.

Finally, some nifty features to be aware of: you can still drag down from the right-hand side of the Menu Bar to access the Control Center (which is customizable, thankfully), and the left-hand side still takes you to your notifications (although I do wish this was a column on the side of the screen à la the macOS notification centre, rather than taking up the whole screen).

You can also drag down from the middle of the Menu Bar to access Siri AI, which is new in iPadOS 27 and makes Apple’s voice assistant much more useful.

So, what do you think? Is this the closest we’ll ever get to a MacPad? Or are you sticking with the Mac for now and leaving the iPad for content consumption? Let me know in the comments below.

The good news is that every iPhone that can run iOS 26 can also run iOS 27, though some of the more advanced Siri AI features (like the ability to change its pace and 'expressivity') are only available on the newer models with more powerful chipsets.

You'll get a notification popping up on your phone when iOS 27 is ready for you, but if you're not patient enough for that you can open up Settings on iOS and tap General > Software Update to see if there's an update waiting.

1. Reframe your photos

iOS 27 arrives with some clever AI-powered photo editing tricks, including one called Reframe. It lets you slightly change the angle of a picture you've taken, with AI adjusting the background to match.

In Photos, tap on an image to open it, then tap the icon showing three sliders at the bottom. If you then tap Tools and Reframe, you can touch and drag on the screen to change the perspective (use two fingers to pan and zoom). Tap Reframe to confirm.

The other options on the Tools menu can be useful too: Extend will use AI to imagine a wider background canvas for you, while Clean Up lets you remove specific objects or people from your images.

2. Create Shortcuts with natural language

The Shortcuts app is one of the most powerful tools available in iOS, but as we've written about before, it's not all that easy to use. With the new software update, building shortcuts becomes much easier: you can just describe the combinations you want using natural language, which significantly simplifies the process.

Shortcuts let you set up a myriad of automations and routines on your iPhone: turn text into audio, play a podcast after your morning alarm, tag notes in batches, let people know you're running late, create GIFs from videos, and a whole lot more. Open the Gallery tab in the shortcuts app for some inspiration.

With iOS 27 installed, if you tap the + (plus) button on the main All Shortcuts screen, you can simply describe what you want your shortcut to do — whether it's attaching screenshots to emails or summarizing your to do list for the day.

3. Choose a separate alarm volume

Not a feature that's going to necessarily grab the headlines, but definitely one of the most useful ones that I've come across since I first installed iOS 27: you can now set alarm volumes separately from the main ringtone and system volumes.

Head into Sounds & Haptics from Settings on iOS, turn off the Match Ringtone Volume toggle switch under Alarms and Timers, and set your preferred alarm volume — a customization that's been long overdue.

4. Adjust the Liquid Glass effect

The people asked, and Apple listened: you can now take the edge off the Liquid Glass effect if you find it a bit overwhelming in its default state. The available adjustments aren't huge, but you can tone it down (or turn it up) a little.

From Settings in iOS, tap Appearance > Liquid Glass. You get a slider that lets you shift from quite a lot of transparency (on the left) to hardly any transparency (on the right), with the changes previewed for you on the image above.

Apple has also done some cleaning up of Liquid Glass in iOS 27, so you should notice a few refinements as you start using the new operating system: as per Apple, Liquid Glass now offers "more uniform refraction and improved contrast", while individual app icons have been made "sharper and more detailed".

5. Siri AI

The biggest new feature in iOS 27 is the comprehensive upgrade that Siri's getting. It has a new name (the same as the old name, with "AI" on the end), plus vastly better underlying models (courtesy of Google) that mean it's now on a par with the likes of ChatGPT when it comes to the quality and breadth of answers you get.

So what's actually new? When it first lands, Siri AI will spend a while indexing everything on your phone, so it can give you more context about what's in your texts, calendars, and emails (none of this data gets sent back to Apple) — and it can take more actions inside apps too, including creating notes, rotating photos, resuming podcasts, and much more.

You can now give commands like "show me photos from when I went to Spain" with this personal context, and ask questions like "why do stars twinkle in the sky?" without the assistant handing off to ChatGPT. There's also a standalone Siri app for the first time, meaning you can save your chats and sync them across devices.

Typically, Apple leaves a handful of iPhones out in the cold when releasing a new version of iOS — the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max, for instance, couldn't run iOS 26 — but refreshingly, the device requirements for iOS 27 are the same as those for iOS 26.

That means the iPhone SE (2020), iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max — all of which you might have expected to lose support this year — will still be able to run iOS 27, which is an impressive showing of software support on Apple's part.

Alas, the device requirements for Apple Intelligence and Siri AI aren't so straightforward, so in this guide, we've detailed the support list for iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, Siri AI, and iPadOS 27.

iOS 27

Here’s the full compatibility list for iOS 27:

• iPhone SE (2020)
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 Pro
• iPhone 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 12 mini
• iPhone 13
• iPhone 13 Pro
• iPhone 13 Pro Max
• iPhone 13 mini
• iPhone SE (2022)
• iPhone 14
• iPhone 14 Plus
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iPhone 14 Pro Max
• iPhone 15
• iPhone 15 Plus
• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 17
• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPhone 18 Pro
• iPhone 18 Pro Max
• iPhone Duo

iOS 27 is supported by a whopping 33 iPhone models, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the largest-ever single pool of latest-update-compatible models.

What's more, iOS 27 began rolling out to all 33 of these models in one fell swoop on September 14 — Apple didn't ask owners of older iPhones to wait, which is something we've seen Samsung do, for instance, with its One UI updates.

It’s worth noting, however, that even though older models like the iPhone 11, iPhone 12, and iPhone 13 support iOS 27, Apple Intelligence — which includes features like Clean Up, Live Translation, and Apple's new AI-powered voice assistant, Siri AI — remains locked to the iPhone 15 Pro and newer.

Siri AI

As above, only those iPhones that are already compatible with Apple Intelligence will support Siri AI. The full list is as follows (I've included iPads and MacBooks, too):

• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 17
• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPhone 18 Pro
• iPhone 18 Pro Max
• iPhone Duo
• iPad models with M1 or later
• MacBooks with M1 or later
• MacBook Neo

Importantly, though, not all Siri AI features will be available on those iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks.

Specifically, expressive voices and advanced dictation are limited to devices powered by Apple’s "most powerful on-device model," AFM Core Advanced. Those devices are as follows:

• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPhone 18 Pro
• iPhone 18 Pro Max
• iPhone Duo
• iPad Pro models from 2024 and later (7th generation onwards)
• iPad Air models from 2026 and later (8th generation onwards)
• MacBook Pro models from 2023 and later
• MacBook Air models from 2024 and later

Additionally, those iPads and MacBooks will need to be equipped with at least 12GB of memory to be capable of running advanced Siri AI features.

Importantly, Siri AI isn't available in any form on iPhones and iPads in the European Union (EU) or China: "Unfortunately, due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple will not be able to ship Siri AI in the European Union with the release of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. Over the past several months, EU regulators did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants," Apple explained in a blog post.

Interestingly, though, EU users can access Siri AI on macOS 27 and visionOS 27.

So, frustratingly, you'll need to meet quite a few criteria if you're hoping to try the best version of Siri AI on your Apple device.

iPadOS 27

As for iPads, specifically, the only iPadOS 26-compatible models that don't also support iPadOS 27 are the iPad 10.2-inch (2020), iPad Air 10.5-inch (2019), and iPad mini 7.9-inch (2019).

Here’s the full compatibility list for iPadOS 27:

• iPad models from 2021 and later (9th generation onwards)
• iPad Air models from 2020 and later (4th generation onwards)
• iPad Pro models from 2017 and later (2nd generation onwards)
• iPad mini models from 2021 and later (6th generation onwards)

Side note: almost all iPad models are available in multiple sizes and in Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi + Cellular configurations, so, in the interest of readability, I’ve grouped the above models into dated categories.

I have the decision-making involved down to a fine art. Well, actually, that's probably too romantic a way to put it — after nearly 20 years, it's probably more like a cold algorithm. I have moved past feeling automatic excitement about all the things I'll definitely do with the new features of the iPhone 18 Pro, in the way that I once would have.

Don't get me wrong, the first variable aperture camera on an Apple phone would actually be genuinely useful to me, because I often have to take images of products for my work in rooms without a lot of light, and the larger aperture with improved sensor will mean cleaner, sharper images. (And as a video nerd, the variable shutter-speed recording option and 60fps cinematic mode both look cool as heck.)

And the fact that the iPhone 18 Pro will get the smartest version of Siri is something I'm cautiously interested in. I've found Apple Intelligence to be, bluntly, borderline disastrous so far — but the new version looks like it's on the right track. It has the smarts to be an actually useful addition, instead of one that sometimes adds more confusion than it solves (which is my experience of Apple Intelligence to date).

And as a tech-head, I was super-impressed with the power put into the A20 Pro, with Apple saying its new "super cores" bring "desktop-class" performance. Based on the stats we've seen before, I don't doubt it.

Having a dual neural processor system is quite the brute-force way to take the lead in AI computation power, and even ignoring most 'AI' uses, it could enable apps to do some really interesting stuff. Again, this is the kind of thing that once would have tempted to upgrade me just for the potential — or the FOMO, depending on how you look at it.

Let's get practical

But these things don't compel me the way they used to. There was only one element of the iPhone 18 Pro that actually made me lean forward and go "Ooooh" — and it was the battery.

Right now, I have the iPhone 16 Pro, so I'm in the zone for a potential upgrade. Apple is claiming a 34-hour battery life for the iPhone 18 Pro for video playback; for my iPhone 16 Pro, that figure is 27 hours. So that's a 26% increase for me in a single upgrade, and this would be a big deal for me.

Some other figures are improved even more dramatically — the 'streamed video' figure jumps from 22 hours in the 16 Pro to 31 hours in the 18 Pro, so that's a 41% improvement. To err on the side of caution, let's assume the more general improvement for typical use is around 30%.

The iPhone 16 Pro was already a great battery life upgrade when I got it, and lasts all day for me… but increasingly, it only just lasts all day. I've never been completely caught without enough power, but I've had to go into Low Power Mode to ensure I'm okay a few times when I've fallen below 20% battery.

That's the anxiety zone. The fact that I've never run out doesn't matter — falling to 20% or lower feels like running out, because now you're changing your habits. If something goes wrong while traveling home from an event and you need to fire up the GPS for a while, you're at risk of actually running out when you need it most.

With a roughly 30% increase, I'm expecting that I'll almost never drop into the red portion of the battery bar in daily use. I'll always have that buffer for emergencies, even after a really long day of using mapping to get around a city, or a day where I've spent a lot of time in surprisingly battery-hogging apps like Reddit.

It is surely a sign of my boring mid-life desires (or, if I'm being kind to myself, a sign of 'maturity') that this is what pulls me in like a magnet, not a shinier GPU or manual camera controls I'll never really make the most of.

Apple says that the battery life improvements come in part from the A20 Pro processor being more efficient, a design of battery, and the intriguingly vague "advanced system improvements".

In general, with battery improvements, you're usually look at a little improvement from battery chemistry, a little from the processor, a little from other components such as wireless connections or the display, and a little from software. It seems like that's the case here, except with maybe more than 'a little' being added from the new battery itself and the A20 Pro, giving us a bigger boost.

It's hard to make this benefit flashy in a presentation, but Apple went for it in the livestream — and evidently it's what I want to hear. That might be partly because, iPhone Duo aside, there's not a lot of major changes coming in phones these days that have big practical benefits. And it might be partly because I am a man of efficiency over excitement these days. I suspect I'm not alone there, so I'm happy to see Apple giving people like me the leap forward we actually want.

Apple doesn't always publish full spec sheets for its devices, but if you were wondering just what the battery capacity of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max were, we now know — thanks to European Union regulations demanding that these details are made public.

Energy labels applied to the phones in the EU (via Android Headlines) show that the iPhone 18 Pro is fitted with a 4,056 mAh battery, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max has a 5,391 mAh battery inside. Those represent 1.45% and 11.8% increases, respectively, on the models from the previous year.

Apple describes the battery bump on the iPhone 18 Pro Max as "the largest increase in battery life ever" on an iPhone, and says you can get 45 hours of video playback between recharges. For the iPhone 18 Pro, it's 36 hours.

One small wrinkle: these capacities refer to iPhones sold in the EU, so these models will be ones with a physical SIM card slot. The handsets sold in the US and some other regions are eSIM-only, so may have even better batteries inside.

Something different

There's more specs digging over at MacRumors, where a tip shared on social media suggests that every iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max handset has Apple's own C2 modem inside — except for the iPhone 18 Pro Max models sold in the US, which uses a Qualcomm chip.

The difference has apparently been revealed in code for iOS 27 — though for the moment it's not confirmed (pre-orders aren't shipping until Friday, September 18) — and it's most likely the Qualcomm Snapdragon X85 modem.

There shouldn't be any noticeable variation in performance between the Apple C2 and Qualcomm Snapdragon X85, though Apple says the C2 offers faster speeds than its previous C1X. It's not clear why the Qualcomm chip is hanging around in this one model, but it may be to do with contractual obligations.

We'll be bringing you our thoughts on these phones in the coming days and weeks, including the foldable Apple iPhone Duo. And if you're wondering where the standard iPhone 18 is, it's expected in March with the iPhone 18e and iPhone Air 2.

That’s not because Apple announced some sort of killer smartwatch feature that will bury the Fitbit range alive. No, it’s because viewers got to see Apple’s new plans for its Health app, which now comes with an AI-powered makeover that will likely stir up some painful emotions for many Fitbit fans.

Of course, adding AI into an app doesn’t automatically doom it. But the parallels between Apple Health and the Google Health app that Fitbit users have been lumped with — with all its wild hallucinations and crazy wellbeing inaccuracies — is undeniable.

Indeed, if the Fitbit experience is anything to go by, there’s a risk that Apple customers could be in for a bumpy ride.

Coming to your iPhone

Why might Fitbit fans be ringing a Google Health-shaped alarm bell? Well, Google-owned Fitbit announced a total overhaul of the companion app for its wearables back in May 2026 — and it was almost immediately unpopular.

The rebranded app was accused of being “unbelievably bad” amid missing features and confusing user interface decisions that made the app much less enjoyable to use than the one it replaced.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. As the weeks and months rolled on, social media started overflowing with user complaints directly squarely at one target: Google Health’s AI assistant.

This tool is meant to analyze your wellbeing data and make suggestions on ways you can improve your fitness and live a healthier life. The problem, though, is that the AI seemed to frequently go off the rails.

I’ve written about how Google’s AI has been giving people “unhinged” fitness advice, feeding them “nonstop lies” and spinning up completely fictional food-tracking metrics. It’s a real concern and has proven to be a tremendous source of frustration to anyone unfortunate enough to have to use it.

And now with the Apple Health revamp, a similar feature might be coming to your iPhone.

An anxious wait

In any other app, patchy performance like this might just be a slight irritation. But in an app like Google Health, where the AI is making suggestions that could directly affect your physical wellbeing, the effect is much more serious.

Can Apple escape such problems with its own AI revamp? I’m not sure, despite Apple's excellent track record and cautious implementation of LLMs. After all, Apple tried to go its own way with Apple Intelligence but fell so far behind the competition that it had to enlist the help of — you guessed it – Google.

That means that the same AI models that have messed up Google Health so badly are now propping up Apple Intelligence, and with it, Apple Health.

That said, there’s no guarantee that Apple Health will go the same way as Google Health. While Google’s AI is powering many of the features inside the likes of Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, we don’t know exactly how that’s going to work in Apple’s Health app do-over. Has Apple tweaked Google’s models to its own tastes or imported them wholesale?

I’d hope that Apple has made some modifications of its own. Apple's website states that 'all of our health innovations are subject to rigorous scientific validation and are developed with clinical experts from start to finish'.

Not only that, but the company is extremely hot on user privacy and security, and what could be more vulnerable than your health data? With almost every health-related feature that it has introduced in recent years, Apple has emphasized the steps it has taken to encrypt, protect and otherwise lock down your sensitive wellbeing information.

Considering that Google could be perceived to be, relatively speaking, far more lax about user privacy, I’d be shocked if Apple hadn’t taken a peek under the hood to ensure that its Health AI is as secure and reliable as possible. It would have been hard for Apple not to notice the furor that Google Health has caused Fitbit fans.

There’s no way Apple would want that kind of feedback from its own users, so I’m hoping it’s made some adjustments to ensure that its own AI is a little less eccentric, shall we say, than Google’s.

We’re not going to know for sure until the new Health app becomes available, which won’t be until 'later this year,' Apple says. Until that happens, it’s going to be an anxious wait for any Apple user aware of the carnage suffered by their Fitbit-wielding colleagues.

And yes, despite the cat being so far out of the bag that it had run down the street and disappeared over the horizon, I still felt a pang of excitement at the Duo's official unveiling, of the kind I haven’t felt for an iPhone reveal in many years. This was a big announcement, and one that I think Apple really nailed.

Yet there’s one thing stopping me from smashing the proverbial piggy bank and throwing wads of money at Apple like Fry from Futurama. And it’s made me wonder who exactly is going to buy the iPhone Duo once it lands this October.

A flawed first attempt

As exciting as it is, the iPhone Duo is clearly a device for early adopters. Like the iPhone Air before it, it’s an exciting yet compromised device that lacks many of the features found on more affordable models.

You only get two cameras versus the three on the iPhone 18 Pro, for example, despite that device costing almost half the price of the iPhone Duo. There’s no Action button, either, nor Face ID, with Touch ID making a somewhat anachronistic comeback and offering a weaker seal on your device than Apple’s facial recognition tech — a bizarre step for a company as obsessed with user security as Apple.

Of course, those Apple fans who do end up buying the iPhone Duo will clearly be willing to see past these drawbacks and, ultimately, be more concerned with the experience of using the device — and Apple has always excelled at making its products seem fun and stylish to use.

Remember the original iPhone? It came without video recording, without 3G connectivity, without third-party apps, and with subpar battery life. Yet none of that stopped it from completely revolutionizing the smartphone industry, with Apple’s rivals quickly realizing they could never go back to the old way of doing things. The iPhone Duo has the potential to do the same thing.

But being an early adopter doesn’t only mean you have to accept missing features that might, eventually, one day arrive — you also have to stump up more cash. And at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499, the iPhone Duo is easily Apple’s most expensive iPhone ever.

Now look, I can understand that a foldable phone is going to cost more than its non-foldable siblings. After all, you’re essentially getting three times the displays of the iPhone 18 Pro, special software features that aren’t available anywhere else, and a completely different user experience than is currently offered by the rest of the iPhone range.

The Duo was never going to be cheap. And considering the pre-event rumors suggesting it could start at as much as $2,500, the final $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499 price is, strangely, something of a relief.

But the iPhone Duo has made me contemplate one point in particular: who actually needs a foldable phone? Apple’s competitors have been making them for years (to varying degrees of success and quality), but in all that time, I’ve only ever seen one in the wild. I’ve never even been tempted to try one myself before the iPhone Duo came along.

Far from the revolution we were promised at the dawn of the foldable era, what we’ve seen in actuality has been something of a damp squib — and that’s not exactly auspicious for Apple’s first crack at the market.

Who’s going to buy it?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m extremely excited for the iPhone Duo. I haven’t felt the need to rush down to the Apple Store to try the latest iPhones like this for years. Usually, I’m happy to wait and go whenever it's convenient to do so. Now, though, I want to be there yesterday.

There’s a lot I love about the Duo, from the thoughtful passport design to the way Apple has cleverly minimized (but, alas, not totally hidden) the crease. What entices me most is the way the software adapts to whatever you’re doing with the hardware. This isn’t just an operating system that's been crammed into a new and awkward form factor. It’s obvious that Apple has tried hard to make sure that iOS not only works on the iPhone Duo, but does so in captivating ways.

But none of this excitement and intrigue outweighs my reluctance to fork out two grand for the privilege of owning the Duo. That’s a huge amount of money to pay for a phone, especially one that’s missing key features to the extent that the iPhone Duo is.

If someone like me — an Apple fan who has been buying iPhones since the days of the iPhone 3GS — can’t be moved to actually buy an iPhone Duo, who can? Certainly not your everyday punters. This is not a phone that’s going to sell in the same ballpark as the regular iPhone 18 (whenever it eventually arrives).

To my mind, it’s a device that many people will want to try, but that few will actually buy. Much like the Vision Pro, it’s Apple’s first attempt in a new category, and people are right to be cautious of that.

But I’m hoping that, unlike the Vision Pro, Apple doesn’t fumble it this time. It’s clear that the company has swallowed much of the cost increases caused by the global RAM crisis — the Duo could easily have cost far more than $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499, as the early rumors implied.

Now Apple needs to make sure the iPhone Duo can pull off the same winning formula as the original iPhone — and not that of the Vision Pro. I hope it can, because as much as I’ve balked at its sky-high price, I don’t remember the last time I was this enamored with a shiny new iPhone.

There was plenty more to catch up on this week, including not one but two Nintendo Directs, and an LG privacy scandal.

To catch up on all this and more, scroll down. But before you read about the news, you might want to try your hand at our quiz on the biggest events of the week.

7. LG TVs were in the privacy doghouse again

LG isn’t exactly a stranger to privacy storms, and it found itself in the middle of another big one this week thanks to a new report that made some big accusations about its TVs.

An investigation by Gamers Nexus and independent security researchers claimed that LG TVs can capture audio even when the screens are off and also monitor your entire home. These findings didn’t exactly sit well with clips of LG executives pitching to advertisers by saying “we own the glass” in reference to its TVs.

LG hit back at the claims, telling us in a statement that “the claims made in the recently published video are not true”. Still, the accusations may leave a bad taste for some, particularly as they come a month after claims (also refuted by LG) that its monitors were installing adware on PCs.

• Read the full story: 'It's extremely creepy': LG TVs collect far more data on you than you'd expect, says new report — but LG hits back, saying the claims made 'are not true'

6. A new ‘brain wearable’ arrived to track our stress

What if you could track your brain and thoughts in the same way that fitness trackers log your heart rate? That’s what a new wave of wearables is promising — and another ‘brain pattern monitor’ arrived this week, before quickly selling out its first batch.

The Atlas 1.0 sits behind your ear and tracks things like your attention span, stress levels and energy burn. In theory, the benefit of understanding these brain patterns is that the Atlas can then connect them to certain triggers — for example, revealing that social media is actually stressing you out rather than relaxing you.

We haven’t tried out this particular brain wearable yet, but our Senior Fitness & Wearables Editor Matt Evans did electrocute his own vagus nerve for a week with Nurosym’s gadget, so we’d certainly be up for the challenge when the Atlas 1.0 is back in stock.

• Read the full story: The Atlas 1.0 Pioneer Edition is a $499 brain scanner that sits behind your ear to measure your stress, attention span and energy — and the first batch has just sold out

5. Sonos debuted an Ultra soundbar

Matt Bolton got to hear the new and upgraded Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar, which sits above the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) in Sonos’ range, but is more affordable than the Sonos Arc Ultra. It promises a 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos sound system from nine built-in speakers, including two upfiring speakers, that’s much bigger, wider and more immersive than Sonos’ existing small soundbar… and based on Matt’s experience so far, it comfortably delivers.

Matt said the way the sound is disconnected from the soundbar is seriously impressive for such a compact box, with sound effects coming from way over at the sides of the room, and voices coming through really clearly, and emanating from the screen, not the box. The bass handling was great as well, despite the lack of a dedicated sub. Is this now the ultimate small soundbar option?

• Read the full story: I heard the Sonos Beam Ultra, and it delivers the most impressive Dolby Atmos sound I've experienced from a compact soundbar

4. Nintendo doubled up Directs

Nintendo treated us to not one, but two Direct livestreams this week — and both caused quite a stir.

The first was devoted to the Legend of Zelda series’s 40th anniversary and gave us our first real look at the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake. Unfortunately, its visuals were immediately divisive, with some online commenters comparing the more “realistic” direction to Nvidia’s widely mocked DLSS 5.

On a more positive note, a new Nintendo Switch 2 model inspired by the franchise was also revealed, and it already seems like it’s going to be a big hit with pre-orders flying off digital shelves.

The second Direct came one day later and focused on more general Switch and Switch 2 software news. Major announcements included the reveal of a new Metroid game, tantalizingly titled Metroid Ravenous, and free updates for Star Fox and Mario Kart World that introduce new content delighting fans.

• Read the full story: Everything announced at Nintendo Direct — from a new 2D Metroid game to a surprise Mario Kart World update, and massive Kirby reveal

3. Apple announced more than iPhones

Apple’s iPhones may have taken center stage, but some other gadgets also featured in its showcase: two new Apple Watches and the AirPods 5.

Apple’s earbuds were a fairly standard affair. The company promises better noise cancellation, a more comfortable fit, and the premium pair that comes with a wireless charging case also boasts on-AirPods volume controls — because, of course, a standard feature on other wireless earbuds is sold at a markup.

As for the Watches (Series 12 and Ultra 4), any upgrades were overshadowed by some new Siri tools. Conversation rewind will let you read a recap of the last 15 seconds of conversation, and it’s being billed as useful accessibility for folks who are hard of hearing. Meanwhile, Siri Recaps will see your Watch listen in on your day’s conversations to create a recap at the very end of the key details you heard in a quick summary. Apple has promised there are plenty of privacy protections, and that no recordings are stored, but it has some worried the ongoing wearable privacy debate is going in the wrong direction.

Read the full story: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening as you go about your day

2. Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro landed

The iPhone 18 Pro boasts many of the expected changes we’ve come to expect: an improved (A20 Pro) chipset, enhanced AI capabilities, a longer 36-hour battery life, and a few new color options (Silver returns, but it also comes in Black, Glacier, and Burgundy).

Our favorite new feature, however, is the arrival of variable aperture. Most phones boast a set aperture size, which determines how much light the lens can receive, and it usually has to compromise between maximizing nighttime quality (which wants a more open aperture) and depth of field (which wants a more closed aperture). Software trickery can help, but Apple’s mechanical approach means your iPhone 18 Pro can automatically swap to the setting that’s best for the current conditions and your photo needs — and pros can also manually control the setting if they want.

As expected based on leaks, but perhaps surprising to the non-Apple-obsessed, there was no iPhone 18. Instead, all of Apple’s older iPhone 17-series devices got a price hike.

• Read the full story: I just tried the iPhone 18 Pro — and Apple gave me two surprisingly good reasons to upgrade

1. We unfolded the iPhone Duo

Let’s round things off with a tech story you definitely didn’t miss this week: the debut of Apple’s first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo.

Originally thought to be called the iPhone Ultra, the Duo boasts a similar passport-style shape to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, but it’s a distinct foldable product in a few key ways. Two of its corners are rounded, meaning the phone’s 7.6-inch inner screen unfolds into an almost iPad mini-like shape; Apple opted to use Touch ID rather than Face ID, so there’s no visible inner-display camera; it sports a Galaxy-beating IP68 durability rating; and there’s a gorgeous open and close animation that passes across the screen when you’re switching between folded and unfolded states.

Of course, there are question marks. The Duo only packs two rear cameras; it’s both thicker and heavier than the Z Fold 8; and, of course, it’s the most expensive iPhone ever released. But, in recent memory, it’s hard to think of a more hype-inducing consumer tech product than this. We’ve been hands-on with the iPhone Duo, and our full review is coming soon.

• Read the full story: I just touched the iPhone Duo and Apple just solved the foldable crease problem in the most wonderfully basic way

When Apple announced its Live Rewind feature at its Surprise and Shine event earlier this week, many observers were concerned that it would allow you to secretly record other people without their consent. After all, the tool just requires you to press a button on your Apple Watch and it plays back any audio that was captured during the last 15 seconds.

Is this feature a privacy nightmare, one that turns every Apple Watch into a “mass surveillance device,” as some people have worried? Or have people misunderstood what is happening, with Apple putting enough safeguards in place to prevent abuse and privacy violations?

Social media users seem to be divided, with some calling it “creepy and antisocial,” while others pointed out how it could be useful for deaf people or those with autism. Let’s take a look at the facts to find out what’s really going on.

How does Live Rewind work?

What is this Live Rewind feature that is causing so much consternation? According to Apple, users of the Apple Watch Series 12 or Apple Watch Ultra 4 will be able to double-press the Digital Crown and receive a text transcription of what was said over the last 15 seconds. The company says this is useful if you missed something important, are deaf or hard of hearing, or are trying to recall a tip or recommendation from a friend.

Some people have worried that this would allow you to surreptitiously record other people without their knowledge, then save these recordings to your device for nefarious purposes.

However, Apple explained during the event that the feature never records or stores audio, it doesn’t identify anyone’s voice, and audio cannot be accessed by anyone (including Apple). To clarify matters, Apple has published an Audio Intelligence Privacy Overview that lays out how this feature — and Apple’s other new Audio Intelligence tools, including Siri Recap — works in detail.

When it comes to Live Rewind, any audio is processed in the Apple Watch’s Secure Enclave. This is a separate part of the S11 chip that, in this instance, processes audio. The Secure Enclave is siphoned off from the rest of the device and no part of the operating system can access it or the raw audio it handles. That includes both first- and third-party apps, and not even Apple can get to anything in the Secure Enclave.

Apple’s privacy paper notes that audio is never saved or recorded when you use Live Rewind. Instead, the audio is processed by the Secure Enclave and used to generate a transcript, then permanently deleted from both your device and from iCloud. There’s no way anyone can listen to the audio at a later date or extract it from your device.

Audio flows into the Secure Enclave on a rolling basis, which means that old data is continuously overwritten and deleted when new audio comes in. When activated, Live Rewind tries to send the last 15 seconds of audio to your iPhone. If it can’t — such as if your iPhone is not within wireless range — the audio is immediately discarded. If the process is successful, the audio is converted to text on your iPhone, deleted, then the text is sent back to the Secure Enclave in your Apple Watch.

The saved text stays available on your Watch for 30 seconds after the screen dims, after which it is discarded. You can optionally choose to save it to the Siri app, where it is end-to-end encrypted. This is the only instance where something is saved in the Live Rewind process. As mentioned previously, the text does not contain any speaker attribution.

You can ask Siri about your transcripts, at which point the text is sent to Apple’s secure Private Cloud Compute servers. If you use iCloud with two-factor authentication and have secured your device with a passcode, any transcripts from Live Rewind are synced using end-to-end encryption and not even Apple can decrypt them.

Respecting those around you

What about other people? Will they know that you’re using Live Rewind? Can you use the feature secretly?

Thankfully, you can’t really use Live Rewind without anyone knowing. When you double-press the Digital Crown, your Apple Watch plays an audible chime that occurs even if your device is in silent mode or you are listening via headphones. A full-screen animation also plays on screen and the microphone icon is displayed. Whether visually or through sound, your Apple Watch tries to alert other people about what is happening.

Apple also says that Live Rewind is opt-in rather than opt-out, and you can enable it when setting up a new device. You can also enable or disable the feature in Siri Settings on your Apple Watch or in the Siri Settings section of the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

Although it would be polite to do so, there’s no way for Apple to force you to ask permission before using Live Rewind. But you might take some solace from the fact that there’s no way for anyone to save or extract the audio that the feature uses, nor can they attribute speakers. All a user gets out of it is a text transcript.

These privacy guardrails go some way to distancing Live Rewind from Meta’s so-called “Pervert Glasses” and their consent-busting data collection.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked this question by friends, family, and TechRadar readers. And look, I get it: iPhones have always appeared to be cheaper in the US than in, say, the UK and Australia, and that’s true again this year for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo.

The former, for instance, starts at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,099. At the time of writing, if you convert $1,199 into British pounds, you get around £1,620; if you do the same conversion into Australian dollars, you get around AU$1,671. Those are much lower prices than £1,199 and AU$2,099, respectively, so it makes sense to buy your iPhone 18 Pro in the US, right? Well, not exactly.

Before we dig into the details, I will assume that you’re only considering this question if you’re either currently on vacation in the US, planning to be on vacation in the US, or have someone visiting you from the US who is happy to stop by the Apple Store on their way to you. Hopefully I don’t need to explain that flying to the US for the sole purpose of buying a cheaper iPhone will be more expensive than buying that same iPhone locally.

Also, Apple doesn’t ship iPhones directly from its US online store to a UK address, so even if you can live with all the other caveats I’m about to explain, you’ll still need to be on the ground in the US, or have someone on the ground in the US, to receive the delivery.

So, what are the main things to consider when bringing a US-sold iPhone into another country? Let’s use the UK as our primary example (if only because 99% of the people who ask me this question are British).

Taxes and duties

Firstly, the iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone Duo you buy in the US will likely cost more than its $1,199 / $1,999 list price. In the UK, the list price of an item typically includes applicable taxes and duties such as VAT, because these figures are determined by the UK government.

In the US, taxes and duties are determined at the state-, county-, and even city-level. The amount of sales tax you’ll pay on an iPhone 18 Pro, for instance, varies from 0% in Oregon to 10% in Louisiana (websites like ApplePriceHunt can show you the exact figures for every US city), and so the final price on an entry-level iPhone 18 Pro could be as much as $1,318.

Admittedly, that maximum price (which equates to around £975) is still cheaper than the iPhone 18 Pro’s £1,199 UK list price, but it’s worth acknowledging that the savings aren’t as big as they might seem initially.

As for customs duties at the airport, there is currently no customs duty in the UK on iPhones bought for personal use, though you (or your iPhone carrier) will still have to declare the iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone Duo when entering the UK, as it’s worth over £390.

If you plan on having the device shipped from the US to the UK, the iPhone will be treated as an imported parcel, and therefore be subject to 20% VAT, which wipes out your aforementioned list price saving.

Other countries, of course, will have their own customs rules, so it’s worth doing some research before you try shipping an iPhone to your home country, or try bringing one through customs at the airport.

SIM compatibility

For the iPhone 18 Pro specifically, the next thing to consider is the eSIM question. All new iPhones sold in the US are eSIM-only, i.e., they don’t feature a physical SIM card tray. In the UK, meanwhile, new iPhones support eSIMs and still feature a physical SIM tray (apart from the iPhone Air and iPhone Duo, which are eSIM-only globally).

So if your current or future mobile contract is digital-only, you should still be able to use it with a US-sold iPhone 18 Pro (EE, for instance, has previously confirmed to TechRadar that any EE eSIM will work with a US-sold iPhone). But if you’re on a contract with a physical SIM, you’ll either have to convert to an eSIM (if your provider allows that) or switch to an eSIM contract. You’ll have to forget about prepaid physical travel SIMs, too.

Warranty issues

The biggest consideration when buying an iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone Duo in the US for use in another country is the lack of warranty guarantees.

The Apple One-Year Limited Warranty covers iPhones against defects in materials and workmanship for one year from the original date of purchase, but Apple’s warranty policy specifically states that “Apple may restrict warranty service for hardware products to the country where Apple or its Authorized Distributors originally sold the device.”

In other words, if something goes wrong with your US-sold iPhone, you’ll almost certainly only be able to claim warranty support for it in the US. The use of “may” in Apple’s policy wording implies a degree of discretion on the part of Apple Store employees, but I wouldn’t count on being able to claim warranty support on a US-sold iPhone in the UK.

Beyond Apple’s own warranty guarantee, the UK also has strong consumer protection laws that give customers the right to cancel an order for a full refund within 14 calendar days of the day the goods were received. This law applies to orders made online, by mail, and over the phone, but not in person — however, according to Apple’s UK Returns and Refunds policy, you can return an iPhone bought in-person at a physical Apple Store for a full refund within the same 14-day window.

Officially, the UK's consumer protection laws still apply to items bought from an overseas retailer if you’re a UK-based consumer, but overseas shipping arrangements and international jurisdictions will likely make claiming a refund on your US-sold iPhone 18 Pro a long and drawn-out process.

Frequency bands

Lastly, differing frequency bands between the US and UK used to be an important consideration when buying an iPhone overseas, but these days, US-sold iPhones support all of the same frequency bands as UK-sold iPhones.

Frequency bands allow iPhones to connect to cellular networks, and EE previously confirmed to TechRadar that it is “not aware of any issues connecting to UK frequency bands [from a US-sold iPhone].” That said, if your mobile network promises certain data speeds, and your US-sold iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone Duo fails to deliver those speeds, you may have a harder time crying foul than you would if using a locally bought iPhone.

Verdict

So, is it worth buying an iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, or iPhone Duo for a lower price overseas? My responsible answer is ‘no’, simply because the savings available aren’t worth the potential headache of warranty guarantees, SIM compatibility, customs declaration, and shipping charges.

That said, if you’re someone who’s already using an eSIM mobile contract outside of the US, and are willing to 1) forgo any potential warranty-claiming power in your home country and 2) declare your boxed iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone Duo at customs, there’s nothing inherently wrong with cashing in on Apple’s US-friendly iPhone pricing.

iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max preorders begin on September 12 at 5am PT / 8am ET / 1pm BST, and the phones begin shipping on September 18. The iPhone Duo, meanwhile, opens for preorders on October 16 and begins shipping on October 23.

We’re currently putting all three phones through their paces, so stay tuned to TechRadar for our full reviews of each device.

Apple’s non-Pro series of earbuds are once again available in two flavours, with a few, admittedly useful, features separating the two. Perhaps the biggest shock, however, is that both the AirPods 5 and AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case (that name will eventually become annoying to type out) cost less than the previous AirPods 4 with ANC.

The two-year-old model launched at AU$299. The new AirPods 5 models can be yours for AU$219 and AU$249. Given the fact that Apple has been no stranger to price hikes in recent times, it’s quite remarkable that the popular AirPods got a price cut.

More impressive still, both models introduce notable upgrades over their predecessors. Apple is claiming industry-leading ANC for an open-ear design, alongside a richer, more detailed sound, with support for Personalised Spatial Audio. Apple also claims they’re more durable than before, and you also gain access to Live Translation (previously a Pro-only feature), Adaptive EQ and up to five hours of playtime with ANC on.

The AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case not only get a wireless charging case (shock) but also on-stem volume control. Take it from me as an AirPods Pro 3 user, this feature alone is worth its weight in gold — it’s so intuitive to use!

The Apple AirPods 5 and AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case (yep, still annoying to type) will be available from September 18, and you can preorder them today from the following retailers. Amazon would be my top choice, as you can save a couple of dollars on RRP.

AirPods 5 deals in Australia

• Amazon: preorder for AU$217
• The Good Guys: preorder for AU$219
• JB Hi-Fi: preorder for AU$219
• Apple: preorder for AU$219 with free engraving

AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case deals in Australia

• Amazon: preorder for AU$247
• The Good Guys: preorder for AU$249
• JB Hi-Fi: preorder for AU$249
• Apple: preorder for AU$249 with free engraving

While the pricing of the AirPods 5 is commendable, I also have to bring your attention to the AirPods Pro 3, which are available for AU$347 at the time of writing at Amazon.

It's kind of wild to watch someone who you think of as a brilliant but also normal and approachable guy transform into an industry rockstar almost overnight, and while Ternus, who is a 25-year Apple veteran and came directly from leading Apple's hardware operations, doesn't seem outwardly fazed by the transition, he's also attuned to the moment.

"What an extraordinary privilege, right?" said Ternus with a wide grin. The reality is, I just love this place, right? It's in my blood. ...I love the people I work with. I love to be able to build the products that we all build together. And so, goosebumps...and excitement."

What Ternus didn't say is that he was in any way nervous, worried, or even had any fear about the sheer scope of the role. But then, that shouldn't surprise anyone, certainly not Joswiak, who sat next to Ternus and told me, "John will be too humble to say it. The product quality that we have is really — there's nobody in the industry close to what we have — and this has really accelerated during the time that John has started leading the hardware organization that became such an incredible part of designing for that reliability and as well as testing for it. It's just off the charts."

The AI of it all

Throughout our discussion, Ternus's excitement and commitment to doing things the Apple way is clear. He's clearly so deeply embedded in every aspect of the Apple product pipeline, and when I pressed him on innovation, he made it clear that, obviously, Apple is innovating, but that he also has a point of view and, naturally, it involves AI.

"[This is] the most exciting time in my career to be building product because AI presents all these new opportunities." Ever the big-picture thinker, Ternus quickly added that you can't develop AI without being "really thoughtful about and deliberate about" it.

Still, Apple's next phase of innovation seems inexorably linked to AI. "You can see what we're able to do now in our products that we were never able to do before." Ternus mentioned the new Smart Take feature on the iPhone Duo, which essentially knows when you want to take a photo without you explicitly telling it so.

• Also read: Apple CEO John Ternus on iPhone Duo, fixing foldable screens, and the end of the no-stylus 'rule

"Those are incredibly new, exciting capabilities for the kind of products we've made. But this also opens the door for new kinds of products, and so we're just really excited....I couldn't be more excited about our roadmap and what we have ahead of us, and yeah, it's going to be fun."

Rules? There are no rules

Ternus strikes me as maybe more flexible than Steve Jobs was on certain points. Take, for instance, Apple Pencil support on the iPhone Duo. That is an iPhone with digital stylus support.

In 2008, Steve Jobs famously dismissed stylus support for the iPhone. I think his exact words were, "Yuck."

Ternus, though, told me, " I've never really thought of it as a rule. We started with iPad. There was no Apple Pencil, right? And we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a touch interface on an iPad can be an amazingly capable and productive thing. But then there's things you can do with a pencil on that larger screen that are really powerful and capable. And I think we saw that opportunity here."

So no clear answer on innovation, but Ternus is smart about spotting and seizing opportunity.

His approach to whatever comes next is, it seems, rooted in his love of Apple and acting on those opportunities.

"I love making product," said Ternus, who added that he loves "doing it with the people here at Apple." He then pointed with some pride at the iPhone Duo, noting that he's "most excited to build amazing things like that."

iPhone is still the one

For all the changes at Apple, in the industry at large, and even trends around smartphone use, the iPhone remains firmly at the center of Apple's Ring. The introduction of the iPhone Duo, a wholly new form factor and the first two-in-one iPhone, is evidence of that, but so is how Ternus sees screens, in general.

During the keynote, Ternus, who seemed so at home on stage (both live and in the pre-recorded bits), pulled a bit of a head fake, talking about an Intelligent Personal Hub that for a moment sounded like a mythical AI wearable (iGlasses, anyone?). In reality, he was talking about the iPhone.

Ternus told me the company is not changing any strategy on wearables (AI or otherwise). After all, it has the AirPods and the Apple Watch, which are more AI-infused than ever. But he also made it clear that screens will remain an important part of the business, mainly because that's Apple's answer to customer demand.

"People want displays. You want to see information. You know, humans process information way more effectively visually than through audio. And so, having a display is amazing, and it fits in your pocket. And so, we don't see the phone losing significance in any way, shape, or form."

When I asked, though, about the missing iPhone 18 base model, Jozwiak reminded me that the Apple "Surprise and Shine" event was "the day to celebrate these new products."

I guess that's true. The iPhone 18 would've been less exciting and maybe less able to perform some of the feats now possible across Apple's myriad AI-enabled devices, and certainly would pale in comparison to the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo. But this keynote was also, in fact, a sort of elevated event. It wasn't just about the new gear. It was also about the new CEO, and Ternus delivered the exciting goods in the most Apple way.

"I think, you look across our whole portfolio and the beauty of Apple is its hardware, software, services and what I love is when all of these things kind of come together and interact and create an experience that is just bigger than the sum of its parts."

Ternus is now a bigger part of that equation, which could make Apple's next epoch even bigger than the last.

Catch the rest of the John Ternus interview on Tom's Guide

The Z Fold 8 is the latest in a long line of Galaxy foldables, and Apple's first foldable bears a number of similarities to Samsung's passport-shaped device. But for anyone considering investing in either the Z Fold 8 or iPhone Duo, there are a number of key differences to be aware of.

There’s still a month to go until iPhone Duo preorders open, and even longer until the device begins shipping (October 23). But still, there’s no time like the present to check out seven major areas in which the iPhone Duo and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 differ.

A dollar disparity

The first notable difference between the iPhone Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 8 is how much they cost.

The iPhone Duo retails for $1,999 /£1,999 / AU$3,499, which is significantly more than the Galaxy Z Fold 8's $1,899 / £1,699 / AU$2,699 (at least in certain regions), with both phones starting with the same 256GB of storage. If you want the best deal on a wide foldable, Samsung has the clear advantage.

Diverging displays

Both Samsung and Apple have gone for roughly the same shapes for their respective foldable displays, but with a small size difference. The iPhone Duo uses a 7.6-inch main inner display and a 5.4-inch outer display. The Galaxy Z Fold 8’s inner display also measures 7.6 inches across, but its outer screen is marginally larger at 5.5 inches.

There’s also an interesting split in how Samsung and Apple have treated the material in their phones' screens. The iPhone Duo uses a matte-like nano-texture display instead of a glossier, anti-glare coating like the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Both materials serve the same purpose — to make the screen easier to read under bright light. But which one is better remains to be seen at this point.

Apple has also given the iPhone Duo stylus support on both displays, via the Apple Pencil USB-C. Samsung used to offer stylus support on its foldables, but unfortunately for wannabe doodlers, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 does not work with any of Samsung’s S Pens.

Different designs and mismatching materials

Despite their similar passport shapes, the iPhone Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 8 do differ quite significantly in terms of design.

The iPhone Duo, for instance, has four rounded corners when open, but when closed, it has two right-angled corners on the hinge side. Samsung, by contrast, has gone with pointed corners all around on the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which arguably gives it a more cohesive look.

For side rail materials, it’s a case of polished titanium on the iPhone Duo versus matte aluminum on the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Both look great on their respective phones, but which finish is better will be up to the viewer.

These two phones also use different display materials to shore up their durability. Apple has equipped the Duo with its own Ceramic Shield 2 toughened glass on the front, and the original Ceramic Shield on the back. Samsung instead uses Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 to protect the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s front and back, respectively.

Apple has also equipped the iPhone Duo with the same Camera Control key that you find on other iPhones, making the edges of the phone surprisingly busy. Samsung lacks equivalents for these buttons on the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which simply offers a power button and volume controls.

Interestingly, the iPhone Duo is some 53g heavier than the Z Fold 8 (254g vs 201g), but it does offer IP68 water and dust resistance, while the Z Fold 8 only offers IP48-level protection.

The last thing to mention is color options. The iPhone Duo comes in either Star White or Night Sky (deep blue), while the Galaxy Z Fold 8 has a wider selection of Lavender, Graphite, Cream, and Pistachio.

SIM support split

When it comes to actually adding your phone number to one of these phones, there’s an important difference to consider here too. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 offers a physical SIM slot as well as eSIM support for virtual numbers. However, the iPhone Duo is eSIM-only worldwide.

You can easily convert a regular SIM into an eSIM during phone set-up. But unless you re-request a SIM card from your carrier, you’ll be locked into the eSIM way of life from then on.

Branching battery tech

Since Apple doesn’t publish its battery sizes itself, we don’t know right now what the capacity of the iPhone Duo is. Instead, Apple says its internal testing reveals the iPhone Duo is capable of 31 hours of video playback when using the inner display, 44 hours when just using the outer display, or “all-day” battery life when it comes to general use.

Samsung’s testing promise for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is 26 hours of video playback, which sounds like it’s inferior to Apple's on paper. However, without doing consistent battery testing on both phones, we don’t yet know for sure which phone will last longer in the real world.

For refuelling, Apple claims the iPhone Duo can charge up to 50% full in 20 mins with a compatible wired charger, or 30 minutes with a MagSafe or Qi2 wireless charger. Samsung’s claim is a 63% wired charge in 30 minutes, which doesn’t quite map onto Apple’s information either. This will also require some of our own testing to figure out which device charges faster.

Contrasting cameras

The iPhone Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 8 each have four cameras, serving the same purposes. But there are some technical differences to pay attention to.

On the back of the iPhone Duo, Apple has stuck with its typical 48MP main and 48MP ultra-wide combination. That puts the Duo at a small resolution disadvantage compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which boasts two rear 50MP cameras.

However, things change for front-facing cameras. Samsung uses 10MP front cameras on the inside and outside of the Z Fold 8, but Apple uses one higher-res 12MP front camera on the outer display, and an under-display inner camera of currently unknown resolution.

Samsung used to use this kind of camera on its older Galaxy Z Folds, but the Galaxy Z Fold 8 has a more typical punch-hole cutout, removing a bit of the display but guaranteeing higher-quality shots. Maybe Apple has worked out how to take clear, attractive photos through display layers, but it’s not something we’ve seen any other company manage, even after the technology has existed for several years.

Potentially polarized performance

The silicon inside the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a known quantity. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy has appeared in other premium Samsung phones this year, including the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and it’s a monstrously powerful chipset.

The iPhone Duo contains Apple’s brand-new A20 Pro chip. Since it’s fresh out of the foundry, we will have to wait for test results to know if it’s more powerful, less powerful, or about the same as the Snapdragon silicon in the Z Fold 8.

We don’t know if there’s any RAM capacity difference, but for storage, you can get 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB versions of both the iPhone Duo and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. However, Apple also offers a 2TB edition of the iPhone Duo if you want even more space for your files.

Based on these differences, would you rather buy the iPhone Duo or Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8? Let us know in the comments below.

Though I didn’t get the design upgrades I was hoping for (I wanted Apple to do a 180-degree turn and debut a completely fresh look for its watches), we got some smart new color options in the process. But that aside, the new monitoring tools do more than make up for the lack of visual upgrades — they’re smarter, insightful, and more personal than ever.

It’s hard to tell if all the new wellbeing tracking tools will be available for previous models — for anything powered by Apple Intelligence, it’s likely that these will remain native to the Series 12 and Ultra 4 — but we still think they’ll make for welcomed additions for health-conscious users.

On-camera fitness testing

As part of the wider Health app revamp, health monitoring using the Apple Watch paired with the iPhone's camera is a new feature, starting with full body assessments. The assessments allow the Health app to measure VO2 max — the the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use while exercising, a key measure of fitness — along with flexibility, strength, balance, and movement mechanics.

All you have to do is prop your iPhone vertically against a wall so that your whole body fits in the frame, and it will get you to follow a coach-guided workout. Apple says in order to measure VO2 max, you’ll need an Apple Watch, AirPods Pro 3, or a third-party heart rate sensing device.

Health Age

Apple is slightly behind on the Health Age feature — Garmin and Whoop got there first with Fitness Age and Whoop Age, respectively — but it’s finally coming to Apple Watch.

Health Age can be found under the new Longevity tab in the Health app, a hub for displaying deeper insights for different health topics including heart health, mental wellbeing, nutrition, and hearing health.

Your Health Age reading takes different aspects of your health profile into account and combines them into one score to show how your metrics compare to the average health and fitness level for your age and gender.

Health Sensing System

This is a technical upgrade to the Apple Watch itself, and a welcomed improvement to how the wearable reads your health data.

Both the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4 come fitted with new LED sensor arrays designed for better skin contact, including a new heart-rate sensor for more accurate heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements — which helps to determine the new Readiness score, which we'll discuss in a moment.

Under the new sensors are larger green LEDs, which now measure your heart rate up to every five seconds, all day long. Apple claims that it's the most accurate heart rate measurement on any wearable, and it can back this up with testing results. We can't wait to try it ourselves against an electrical heart rate monitor.

Readiness Score

Much like the Health Age metric, the new Readiness Score is a tool that's been widely adopted by rival wearables in the past — and now it’s Apple’s turn.

Diving into your Vitals, Sleep Score, recent activity, and other metrics, you'll be presented with a score from 0-10, along with a brief explanation to tell you if your watch thinks you need to pace yourself, or if you have the capacity to push yourself further.

It's a clever and handy tool that could stop you from overtraining, or change your plans to fit in a long run on a day in which you're ready for action. Readiness also updates multiple times a day as your Apple Watch gathers new data, telling you exactly what's affecting your overall score.

Insights tab

The Health app's new Insights tab looks very comprehensive. Throughout the day, Insights displays timely information about your health metrics including heart, sleep, readiness, fitness, vitals, and cycle tracking data.

It gives you short summaries about how different fitness categories are impacting your long-term health, while the 'For You' section offers personalized recommendations and even relevant health articles based on your data.

While pretty much all of the attention was focused on the foldable, the launch of macOS 27 is noteworthy for anyone with a modern Mac or MacBook, as this free upgrade brings some tasty new features, while also addressing some of the less popular changes that came with its predecessor, macOS 26 Tahoe.

If you have a compatible Mac, then you should be prompted to download and install macOS 27 Golden Gate once September 14 rolls around. However, if you have a Mac from before 2020 that doesn’t run on Apple Silicon (so any Intel-powered Macs), then you won’t be able to get the update.

For reference, here are all the Mac models that are compatible with macOS 27 Golden Gate:

• MacBook Air M1 or later
• MacBook Pro M1 or later
• MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 2020 or later
• MacBook Pro 14-inch M1 Pro 2021 or later
• MacBook Pro 16-inch M1 Pro 2021 or later
• MacBook Neo
• iMac M1 2020 or later
• Mac mini M1 2020 or later
• Mac Studio 2022 and later

Apple recently announced new M5 and M6-powered Mac mini and Mac Studio products, and they'll likely launch with macOS 27 preinstalled when they start shipping on September 22.

Fixing past mistakes

The main focus of macOS 27, as with Apple’s other operating updates such as iOS 27, and seemingly every piece of new software these days, is AI.

The upcoming macOS 27 upgrade paves the way for Siri AI integration – the long-awaited improvements to Apple’s virtual assistant that should make it more useful. When launched, Siri AI should be able to have two way conversations with you and execute multi-step tasks quickly and easily, which could make using your Mac a lot more convenient. It will be able to interact with apps such as Calendar to complete tasks such as creating events and reminders.

AI is also coming to macOS Spotlight to make finding things on your device better, and Visual Intelligence can be brought up to get information about what’s on your screen. Other AI features, such as Image Playground, are getting improvements as well.

If you’re not a fan of AI, then macOS 27 should still have plenty of reasons to download and install. One reason that will hopefully please a lot of people is that macOS 27 Golden Gate makes tweaks to some of macOS 26 Tahoe’s most controversial changes, especially when it comes to the polarizing Liquid Glass interface. The new macOS will allow you to adjust transparency effects to make using your device more comfortable, and during the beta testing process, it was one of the things our contributor Alex Blake was particularly thankful for. I’m sure he’s not the only one.

When Apple announced macOS 27 at WWDC 2026 earlier this year, it promised lots of performance improvements, especially when it comes to how responsive the operating system feels. This alone should make macOS 27 worth installing on September 14.

If you have an older Mac and feeling left out, make sure you check out our guide on the best Macs and MacBooks, which can help you find a new macOS 27-ready Mac that suits your needs and budget.

Apple finally unveiled the iPhone Duo at its ‘Surprise and Shine’ event, its first device in the foldable phone market, and from our first hands-on experiments with it I have to say, it looks rather impressive.

And yes, Apple has taken its sweet time to launch its first foldable (Samsung was ahead of the game in 2019 with the first Galaxy Fold device), but that’s likely due to Apple’s determination to solve one of the most annoying setbacks with folding phones — the display crease.

In the build-up to the iPhone Duo announcement, rumors suggested that the device’s folding display wouldn’t come with a visible crease. However, early hands-on images appear to show that Apple might not have quite got the results it was looking for.

It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the iPhone Duo was announced, and Redditors are already pointing out its partially visible crease, which you can see when the device is held at different angles and in certain lighting (see below).

I’m not one to be picky, but despite the matte smoothness of the folding nano-texture display — which helps to significantly reduce the visibility of the crease — there’s a clear vertical dip that runs through the centre of the iPhone Duo’s 7.6-inch screen. Apple knew this would be one of the most-asked questions, and the company has come equipped with all the answers you could need on the iPhone Duo product page.

‘iPhone Duo features a wonderfully flat and smooth inner display with custom nano-texture finish technology to reduce glare and reflections for an uninterrupted viewing experience. The optically clear adhesives let the display layers glide as the screen folds, minimising stress and creasing’.

Unfortunately, Apple hasn’t quite hit the nail on the head with overcoming one of the biggest obstacles with folding phones, but at the same time, eliminating the crease entirely is almost an impossible task. Think about it: if you’re constantly folding and unfolding the device several times a day, then this is going to have an obvious visual impact on the device over time — which is the case for all foldables.

Luckily for Apple, it appears that users aren’t entirely concerned with the slight visibility of the iPhone Duo’s crease.

Several owners of foldable phones shared on Reddit that once you’ve used a foldable for some time, the crease becomes invisible to you simply because you just get used to it being there. Others have been a bit more abrasive: ‘I'll never understand the people who make the crease a big deal,’ one user added, while another simply commented ‘I have a folding phone. The crease is a complete non-issue’. They must be a Galaxy Fold owner, surely.

Criticism aside, our first hands-on with the iPhone Duo was far from a let down. Our Editor-at-Large, Lance Ulanoff, recalls having very minimal issues with the device’s crease. From our first-look images, the crease is unidentifiable when the phone is held face-on, and the matte display helps to get rid of that annoying glare.

For its first foldable phone I have to say, Apple has done pretty much all it can for it to join the folding device market seven years behind its biggest rivals. Despite the lack of features such as Face ID and Action Button, the iPhone Duo looks like a solid beginning for Apple’s next big venture — even if I’m not the biggest fan of the name.

The initial reactions to Apple's new, foldable iPhone Duo seem to be largely positive, with a lot of praise for the various software tweaks that have been implemented in iOS 27 for the new form factor — including a cool transition animation that shows up when you switch between the inner and outer screens.

As you open up or close the main 7.6-inch display, the wallpaper dissolves and seems to pass through the moving half of the screen to reappear on the other side. It's a neat effect, and one Android user has wasted no time in recreating the effect on their Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 foldable.

"Felt a bit of FOMO seeing that cool iPhone Duo animation Apple showed off today, so I poked around and found that the Z Fold 8 has a really accurate hinge sensor," explains the user in question on Reddit. "I realized it would be pretty simple to take the hinge sensor values and use them to drive a transition animation on both screens."

It works really nicely too, as you can see from the video embedded above. The half of the display that's opening and closing looks like it becomes semi-transparent as it moves, revealing what's underneath — though as with the iPhone Duo, it's all trickery involving motion sensors and gradients.

Over to you, Samsung

Unfortunately, this is only a demo for now — as in, an app that screenshots the display, then shows how an open/close animation could potentially work. It's not actually something you can apply at the system level and use across all your apps, and the developer says only Samsung would have the necessary access for that.

The reactions in the Reddit thread are overwhelmingly positive, nevertheless. The hack gets described at various points as "great", "awesome", and "so cool" — and it's genuinely impressive that it was created so soon after Apple's event. It seems a lot of Samsung foldable owners would want this on their phones.

There is perhaps a word of warning here for iPhone Duo buyers. When asked about using the effect, the original poster says "honestly, it looks cool for the first minute, but it gets really annoying after that", adding that "the effect is also only convincing head on" and "any difference in viewing angles really breaks the illusion".

Whether or not that's the case on Apple's foldable remains to be seen, but it's worth considering. For the time being at least, the iPhone Duo is the only folding handset that has this particular animation — and if you've really got to have it, pre-orders open on Friday, October 16, with prices starting at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499.

I take a lot of photos on my iPhone, so watching Apple’s iPhone Duo event yesterday, I was naturally intrigued by the news of fresh Photographic Styles and the introduction of Pro controls, both of which give you more power over your smartphone images. But it now looks like there’s a serious catch that wasn’t apparent at the time of the event.

In the hours since newly instated Apple CEO John Ternus wound down his keynote speech, iPhone fans have taken to social media to point out that both Pro controls and the third-generation Photographic Styles are limited to the current batch of iPhones.

Specifically, you’ll only be able to access them if you have an iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max or an iPhone Duo. Users of last year’s iPhone 17 series — or anything released before that — will be shut out of the new features.

And that’s a shame, because they look like they could be a real boon for photography enthusiasts. Pro controls include useful tools to adjust white balance, manually tweak aperture and shutter speeds, consult histograms, and more. Photographic Styles, meanwhile, are handy presets and filters you can apply to your images and now come with precise controls for grain and texture. But if you don’t have one of the latest iPhones, they’ll be out of reach.

Extended satellite coverage

Despite this disappointing development, it wasn’t all bad news for owners of older iPhones. After the event, it emerged that Apple has quietly extended its free satellite connectivity features for another year, and that applies all the way back to the iPhone 14.

Specifically, you’ll get another year of satellite coverage if you have any device from the iPhone 14, iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 ranges, despite the fact that this deal was meant to have expired for these devices. Apple originally launched its satellite features for the iPhone 14 in 2022 and said that product would get two years of coverage, but has instead repeatedly extended its free terms for the iPhone 14 as well as the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16.

This extension applies to features including Emergency SOS via satellite, Messages via satellite, Find My via satellite, and Roadside Assistance via satellite. There’s no news regarding how much Apple might charge if it ever decides to end its free coverage, but now that’s not something you’ll have to worry about for at least another year.

With these features remaining free for the time being, owners of older iPhones have been granted a little ray of tech sunshine. Apple might be gatekeeping new Photographic Styles and Pro controls behind its latest devices, but the arguably more important satellite tools still won’t require a pricey upgrade.

While neither flagship device carries the mystique and intrigue of the iPhone Duo, both march forward with a laundry list of features and enhancements that will push the iPhone into the future for many.

As someone who’s spent a lot of time reviewing the entry-level iPhones, like the iPhone 17 and iPhone 16, which normally get the fun new colors, I was instantly struck by the new shades. Immediately, Burgundy for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max stood out — it’s a lovely dark shade of red that can shimmer a bit depending on how the light hits it, and it's definitely less of a pop than Cosmic Orange, but it's really just lovely.

Back in black

There’s also Glacier, a light blue that can come across as bluish silver depending on how the light hits it — and it was the color of the invite for Apple’s Special Event. Black, in a very matte, dark fashion, is back as a Pro color option alongside silver.

Aside from that, these new phones look and feel very much like the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max in your hand — not a bad thing, as that ushered in a slightly sturdier build with the larger camera plateau.

Arguably the biggest hardware change lives here, though, and it’s variable aperture — which you can actually see in action, opening and closing, with your own eyes — for the 48-megapixel main Fusion camera. This should give the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max a leg up in low light, as you can adjust — either manually with Pro Controls or by letting the iPhone set it automatically — aperture, shutter speed, and white balance.

You can pick between a set of four — ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, and ƒ/4.0 — apertures for the main lens and, depending on your pick, you can let more light in or less, so it handles multiple depths for subjects in one shot more effectively.

I played around with these and the new Pro Controls interface at the top of the camera app, and here’s the good news: it’s fully customizable, so you can place what is most helpful there.

I didn’t have much time with it, but it’s clear it does open and close the aperture window on the back of the phone, so it moves as Apple describes. You have way more controls now over your photos so you can get closer to what you’re really after. It's also coupled with enhancements to Photographic Styles that will let you add in texture or grain, as well as AI-infused photo editing features as part of iOS 27.

This 48-megapixel main camera with variable aperture is paired with a 48-megapixel telephoto lens and a 48-megapixel ultra-wide lens. This means that the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max can still shoot from 0.5x to 8x optical, and up to 40x digitally. So while the iPhone Duo folds, the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max do still pack the Pro-grade camera system.

On the front, there’s still the impressive CenterStage Camera and Face ID stack with all the nifty features that the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max ushered in, but the change is a dramatically smaller Dynamic Island. And it’s not a case of shrinking it for shrinking’s sake either — the increased screen real estate around the smaller island that’s centered at the top lets it show up to three Live Activities at once, and each of these can show a bit more detail.

For instance, if you have music playing at the top and a timer next to it, you previously couldn’t actually see how much time is left — that’s fixed now. I tried a mix of these — tossing Flighty, Maps, Music, Timer, and other apps at the top — and I do believe this will be genuinely useful. I’m not sure it’s an immediate reason to upgrade from, say, a 17 Pro, but those who swear by the Dynamic Island won’t be disappointed.

Those are the most evident changes I noticed from a brief hands-on, and it’s a toss-up for me between the Burgundy and Glacier shades and the camera upgrades for my favorite new feature. iOS 27 ran really smoothly on the unit I used in the hands-on space Apple provided, and that’s likely thanks to the two-nanometer A20 Pro chip under the hood. It’s Apple’s fastest yet and features ‘Super Cores’ in the CPU, much like Apple’s M-Class silicon for the Mac lineup.

It’s also paired with a new thermal architecture that includes a larger vapor chamber, which should keep the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max a bit cooler, especially around the raised camera plateau on the back. Perhaps the biggest change I didn’t get to test is the longer battery-life promise. The 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max were no slouches in this department by any means, but Apple’s running laps year over year, with the 18 Pro now lasting as long as last year's 17 Pro Max and the 18 Pro Max going even further.

There’s a $100 price increase for these new devices in the United States — the iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 for 256GB and the 18 Pro Max at $1,299 for 256GB. That’s a $100 increase generation over generation, and you can pay more to configure these up to 2TB. Both go up for preorder on September 12, 2026, and launch on September 18, 2026. There will be both carrier deals and the Apple Upgrade Financing route.

I’ll need to spend more time with both to see how much those changes actually matter in everyday use, but after this first hands-on, the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max feel like a continuation of what Apple started with the 17 Pro generation rather than a complete rethink.

And honestly, that’s not a bad thing. The hardware still feels premium in hand, the new colors are excellent, the smaller Dynamic Island looks genuinely useful, and the variable aperture is the one change that immediately made me want to spend more time with the camera.

The iPhone Duo may have the flashier story this year, but the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max still feel very much like the flagship iPhones to beat – and I’m especially curious to see what that camera can actually do once I get them out of Apple's hands-on area and into the real world.

In some ways, the iPhone Duo is exactly what we expected. A 5.4-inch external display and a large 7.6-inch internal or main, unfolded one. The size, shape, and specs are somewhat similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. But there are several exciting differences.

Folded and in my hand, the iPhone Duo feels, quite honestly, nothing like any iPhone that's come before it. Heck, Apple even redesigned iOS to accommodate the unusually shaped displays, putting the dock and other controls on the right side (no word on whether you can move them to the other side). For larger screens, that might make everything more thumb accessible.

The 5.4-inch external display is bright, sharp, and features a Center Stage camera (not in the center of the display, despite the name).

As with the Galaxy Z Fold 8, the shape does take some getting used to, but Apple's decision to use curved chrome edges and curves on the right side (when you open it, you see four rounded corners) serves the device well. It's comfortable to hold.

I wasn't entirely successful at folding and unfolding with one hand, but I did do it easily with two and noted the solid feel of the hinge and that I could open and close it to varying degrees. It's hard to believe that this is also an IP68 (for dust and water resistance) device — but Apple does love its challenges.

The 7.6-inch main display, though, is astonishing. Apple went a little wild on the layering, mixing in numerous sheets of custom polymer, the OLED panel, a couple of glass layers, and a titanium backing (all held together with flexible glue that lets them slide back and forth against each other), but the really exciting part is the topmost layer.

The texture layer

When I talk to folding phone curious consumers, they all ask me the same thing: "Is there a crease?" Look, I explain: these are folding devices, and the engineering has to accommodate the folding without breaking any of the various layers and, yes, the thin glass. There has to be a tiny bit of curvature remaining when you unfold.

Even on the excellent Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, the crease is slightly perceptible in certain lighting.

The crease is gone on the iPhone Duo. I can feel it with my finger, but cannot see it, because Apple decided to put a special nano-texture covering on the main display. This has the effect of dispersing the light, especially around any spots where, normally, the crease might be visible.

This also gives that big screen a matte finish that looks and feels unusual in the smartphone space, is unheard of for a foldable, and is generally lovely. I was seriously impressed.

Let's play

I didn't get a ton of time with this star of the show, but what I saw bodes well for Apple's first folding device.

Apple really thought through, for instance, the handoff from the cover screen to the main display. I tried this with a game and with Netflix, where I'd open the app on the cover screen and then slowly open the iPhone Duo: the handoff from one screen to the other is perfection, a precision of connection that should please users and might excite anyone who ever wondered, "Why buy a folding phone?"

I briefly played a console-level game on it, which showed off the fresh power of the new 2-nanometer A20 Pro chip, and took photos with all the cameras, including the 48MP main and 48MP ultrawide with 2x optical zoom. On the latter, I'm not thrilled that I get just 2x zoom, but at least it's optical. Also, it's pretty clear that this thinner-than-the-iPhone Air (when unfolded) probably can't accommodate a longer telephoto lens.

There are a variety of settings for managing the cover screen and cameras so that, for instance, you can use the former as a viewfinder for the best camera for top-notch selfies.

The main screen also hides a new FaceTime Camera, which I noticed effectively disappeared when you're not using it.

I love that you can set up the iPhone Duo as a desktop clock, though I noticed that it wasn't entirely obvious how you put it in StandBy mode without docking it or putting it to sleep.

The main screen is also big enough for multitasking, and I tried my hand at splitting it between Photos and Messages: you drag an app into a side dock, and then it opens on one side. After I opened Photos and Messages, I dragged and dropped a photo into a message. It was a smooth operation.

The reorganization of the iOS interface might throw some, but it made intuitive sense to me as I was playing with the iPhone Duo. I found, though, that the Control Panel still works the same way as it does on other iPhones.

Oh, the Pencil

Two other things of note. The iPhone Duo will be the first iPhone to work with the USB-C Apple Pencil. That is a huge deal. I've been complaining for a while that the wonderful Galaxy Z Fold line lost that digitizing layer.

I cannot wait to try the Apple Pencil on that big screen (there were no Pencils in the demo space). I bet the nano-coating will even make a difference in how the Pencil feels on the Display. I do not yet know if the iPhone Duo will also accept Apple Pencil Pro input, though I hope it does.

The other thing is that, yes, the iPhone Duo includes MagSafe. There are, by the way, two batteries that are promising "all-day" battery life.

This is also Apple's most expensive iPhone, starting at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499 for the 256GB model. Naturally, Apple will tell you it'll be far more obtainable with a trade-in and the new leasing option (pay a fixed monthly sum for two years and then return it for a new one),

Overall, this is an exciting start for Apple's first foray into foldables. Sure, it stands on the shoulders of giants, but as is often the case, Apple's done all this in a very Apple-ly way, and in this case, that looks like a very good thing.

To help you make sense of the 78-minute event, here's your essential rundown of everything important that Apple talked about. As well as the main headlines, there are some smaller reveals that you might have missed.

1. The iPhone Duo is Apple’s first foldable

The big one: after many years of rumor and counter-rumor, Apple has released its first foldable phone, ready to compete with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold. Like the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it uses a wider, 'passport' style form factor that gives you a more tablet-like experience (measuring 7.6 inches corner to corner) when it's opened out.

You can get the iPhone Duo in star white and night sky, with pre-orders opening on Friday, October 16, and full availability on Friday, October 23. Hopefully, you've been saving up: it starts at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499 with 256GB of storage.

• Read more: The iPhone Duo lacks Face ID, a telephoto camera, and the Action Button, but I still want it more than every Android foldable I've ever tested — here's why

2. iOS 27 has learned some unique tricks for the iPhone Duo

Apple has clearly put a lot of thought into the iPhone Duo experience, and that extends to iOS 27 and the native apps that run on top of it. When the phone is folded closed for example, the key navigation buttons shift to the right of the screen so they're easy to tap with your thumb.

You can put apps side-by-side on the big screen, and pin pairs of apps together to make it easier to get back to them. Apple has included some clever camera tricks as well including a selfie preview that uses the outer screen in combination with the rear cameras.

3. The Duo brings Apple Pencil to the iPhone for the first time

Squint a little, and the iPhone Duo looks like an iPad mini when it's opened out. Adding to that impression is Apple Pencil support for the handset — it's the first time you've been able to use a stylus with an iPhone (apologies to Steve Jobs).

You don't get the Apple Pencil bundled with the iPhone Duo, and there's no storage slot as there is on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, but you'll be able to use the accessory on either screen to make selections or get creative.

• Read more: 'Who wants a stylus?' — Steve Jobs famously mocked them, but Apple Pencil support could be the iPhone Duo’s secret weapon

4. The Duo's two screens are the same aspect ratio

Another nice touch we've noticed with the iPhone Duo: both the 5.4-inch outer screen and the 7.6-inch have the same aspect ratio, which Apple says ensures "visual continuity" as you open up the phone and close it again.

The aspect ratio in question is 1:1.4, and should mean that you don't have a jarring experience switching between the displays. The larger main display can also be used in portrait as well as landscape mode, with apps adjusting to fit.

5. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max have some serious camera boosts

During Apple's reveal of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, the cameras took center stage. We've got a 48MP main camera that adds a variable aperture for the first time on an iPhone (for better light control), as well as a new sensor behind it.

Apple is also talking up a new "computational imaging pipeline", improved Photographic Styles, and extra professional controls in the Camera app, enabling you to take more control over how your images are captured.

• Read more: I'm a pro photographer — here’s why the iPhone 18 Pro’s variable aperture is its biggest camera upgrade

6. The iPhone 18 Pro Max is the ultimate iPhone for battery life

Another plus point on the iPhone 18 Pro Max: it's very much the iPhone to get if you value battery life above everything else. You can get up to 45 hours of video playback on the eSIM version of the iPhone 18 Pro Max between charges, a new iPhone record.

The iPhone 18 Pro is no battery slouch either, and can manage up to 36 hours of video playback on a single charge if you're using the eSIM version. Charging speeds have been upped over last year's models as well.

• Read more: iPhone 18 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro — 5 key differences between Apple's newest and previous best smartphones

7. The A20 Pro chip is a big leap forward

At the center of the iPhone Duo, the iPhone 18 Pro, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max we've got the brand new A20 Pro chipset. It boasts a 6-core CPU, a 7-core GPU, and two 16-core Neural Engines for all your AI needs.

Add in an upgraded vapor chamber, and we can expect major performance upgrades over the 2025 models. Apple says there's as much as a 40% sustained performance gain on the iPhone 18 Pro compared to the iPhone 17 Pro.

8. The new base AirPods 5 come with ANC

On to the new open-ear AirPods 5, which come in two different versions, both of which have Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) that Apple is calling "best-in-class". Thanks to changes in the design of the earbuds and the algorithms they're using, you can expect up to 50% more noise removal compared to the AirPods 4 with ANC.

The improvements don't stop there, because the Transparency mode has been upgraded as well, so when you need to hear voices and nearby sounds through your AirPods, they should be more accurately represented.

9. Siri Recap is the creepy, always-on audio feature for the Apple Watch 12

Here's one feature we're a little less sure about: the Apple Watch 12 comes with a Siri Recap feature that essentially listens to the conversations you're having and lets you see a summary of them later, just in case there are details you need to remember.

It might come in handy in certain situations, but we can see users having a few concerns. Apple says Siri Recap processes audio in real time and never records anything, and that no one — not even Apple — can access the audio feed.

• Read more: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening as you go about your day — but Apple may be risking a Meta Glasses-style backlash

10. iOS 27 will launch on September 14 with Siri AI

It's been a long wait for iOS 27 since Apple first announced it back in June, but the operating system update is finally going to make its way to millions of iPhones worldwide from Monday, September 14.

The headline new feature is of course that big Siri AI upgrade — we've been waiting for that for even longer. Expect a digital assistant that's more on a par with ChatGPT and Gemini, able to interact with your apps and give comprehensive answers.

11. The new Apple Watches have a Health Sensing System

Apple didn't neglect its smartwatches during the event, and says that the Apple Watch 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 both offer "the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable", which is quite the claim.

That's achieved through higher-frequency heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, via new optical and electrical heart sensors. It's part of a wider Health Sensing System that gives users a more detailed look into their fitness.

12. There's a redesigned Health app as well

To match the new features on the latest Apple Watch wearables, as well as some other changes (including Apple Intelligence upgrades), the Health app on the iPhone is getting a redesign — including a new Insights tab with "timely health information".

There's also a new Longevity tab, which shows you deeper health insights over a longer period. There's a Health Age reading here, for example, which shows how certain fitness metrics are matching up with your actual age.

13. We’ll have to wait longer for a new Apple TV 4K

One of the no-shows at the 'Surprise and Shine' event was a new Apple TV 4K. As a reminder, the last model (the third generation) was launched all the way back in 2022, so we're overdue a new one.

Some of the pre-show rumors had suggested Apple would refresh its streaming box, but there's nothing yet. A new device has been showing up in Apple software code, so it shouldn't be too long before it appears.

14. There’s no new base iPhone 18 (yet)

Wondering where the iPhone 18 is? Well, we don't think it's been canceled. Rumors have been swirling all year that the standard model phone would be pushed back to March-ish, to launch with the iPhone Air 2 and the iPhone 18e.

There are multiple reasons, according to the leaks: Apple wants to spread out its revenue more evenly across the year, reduce the pressure to get hardware and software out every September, and better compete with manufacturers who launch their handsets earlier in the year (looking at you, Samsung).

15. Apple largely spared us from price hikes

It was a mixed bag in terms of pricing at the Apple event, though it's fair to say that the price hikes we did see weren't quite as severe as we might have expected given the ongoing memory shortage affecting the whole industry.

Both the iPhone 18 Pro and the Pro Max are starting at a $100 higher price than their immediate predecessors, but the new Apple Watch models are sticking to the same prices as last time, while the AirPods 5 are actually cheaper than the AirPods 4 were at launch.

The Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 are the latest models to join Apple's family of wearables, and both pack quite a punch on the features- and health-tracking front, thanks to the combination of the new Health Sensing System and deeper Apple Intelligence integration.

Of course every new Apple Watch offers improvements over the previous generation — the question is always whether it offers enough to make it worth the upgrade. To help you decide, I've compared the new Apple Watch Series 12 against its predecessor, the Apple Watch Series 11, so you can see all the changes side-by-side.

Apple Watch Series 12 vs Apple Watch Series 11: Specifications

Design

We weren't expecting a visual overhaul with the Apple Watch Series 12, and nor did we get one.

The new model packs the same digital crown and side button that you'll find on most Apple Watch models, and size-wise the only difference is that the Series 12 is 1mm wider; if you can spot that in real life, you have sharper eyes than I do.

However, there are some design changes worth talking about. The key one is that as well as being available in Aluminium and Titanium, as the Watch 11 is, there's also now a Ceramic version — the first since the Series 5.

The Ceramic Watch 12 comes in two colors, Pearl White and Night Blue, while the Aluminum model is available in Space Gray, Black, Light Gold and the stunning new Dark Bronze shade, perfect for both casual and smart wear. The Titanium versions come in Radiant Gold and Natural.

Sticking with the Apple Watch 11? Then your choices are between Space Gray, Jet Black, Rose Gold, and Silver for Aluminum, and Slate, Gold, and Natural Polished in Titanium. And to reiterate, there is no Ceramic Watch 11 — so if you want that, you'll need the new model.

Features

Minor design changes aside, the key reasons to upgrade to the Apple Watch 12 relate to its health-tracking smarts.

Many of these stem from its new S11 chip. Apple — inevitably — describes this as its "most powerful wearable chip", and it powers the new Health Sensing System and Audio Intelligence features.

Let's start with the Health Sensing System, the redesign of the previous generation's LED heart rate sensor array. The Series 12's electrode surface area is now bigger, allowing for better skin contact for ECG tracking. It also packs new optical-sensing photo diodes to capture light more efficiently, while its brighter green LEDs support accurate HR in motion. In short, it's the most accurate Apple Watch ever, tied with its sibling the Apple Watch Ultra 4.

It records heart rate continuously, up to every five seconds, and heart rate variability (a key part of sleep tracking and recovery metrics) up to every five minutes. That's a massive 24x more frequently than it did before, ensuring peak accuracy (in theory).

However one of the new standout features is the new Readiness Score, which has finally arrived on Apple Watch. Every other health wearable seems to have one, and Apple's Readiness Score will combine your rings, vitals and other health metrics into a single actionable, frequently updated number.

There are also a significant redesign of the Health app which thrusts Apple Intelligence to the front of the experience. Now, Apple Watch lets you explore health profiles while offering personalized guidance thanks to Apple Intelligence. Once the Health app gets a sense of your health habits, it will tweak its recommendations so that they align with your health levels and data.

Health Age is another new feature that aligns your metrics and fitness level with your actual age, similar to features on Whoop and Garmin.

The Series 12 is packing tons of new fitness features, but Apple Intelligence — or at least, audio intelligence — is brand new and unrelated to health.

Audio Intelligence is comprised of four features. The Series 12 can listen out for sounds, be that a doorbell, traffic, or oncoming pedestrians, and will send alerts right to your watch face — which is ideal for users who are hard of hearing. You can also Shazam songs from your wrist.

Slightly more suspect are Live Rewind and Siri Recaps. Live Rewind allows you to go back 15 seconds to remember parts of a conversation. Didn't catch what the waiter said was new on the menu? Just double-press the digital crown and your watch will generate a transcript for you to read. Siri Recaps is a feature that, when active, listens constantly in the background, providing you with a summary of your day in the evening, including conversations.

We've covered these two features in more detail here, including Apple's privacy assurances and why the Cupertino giant might not be reading the room on this feature, as surveillance-capable wearables are receiving a lot of pushback at the moment.

You can pre-order the Apple Watch Series 12 now, which will be available starting September 18.

As detailed in our Apple Event 2026 recap, Apple has decked out its first foldable with a range of high-spec specs befitting the phone’s Duo branding and new ‘Intelligent Personal Hub’ concept.

It gets a 5.4-inch cover display, a 7.6-inch inner display, and an A20 Pro chipset. It also comes with a 48MP wide-angle camera, a 48MP ultra-wide camera, a 12MP selfie camera on the cover screen, and an under-display camera under the inner screen. Apple also claims the iPhone Duo lasts up to 24 hours on a single charge when both screens are used equally. Put simply, this thing is a beast.

I’ll say it right now — I want the iPhone Duo more than I’ve ever wanted a folding phone. I’ve used plenty of the best folding phones in my time as a tech journalist, penning TechRadar’s Honor Magic V5 review and Oppo Find N5 review, but the iPhone Duo’s combination of Apple finesse and futuristic form factor has put it squarely at the top of my shopping list — now all I need is a spare $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499.

However, the iPhone Duo comes with some caveats that could upset long-time Apple fans. It lacks Face ID, a staple since 2017. It also loses the Action Button, which you'll find on all but a few iPhones released since the iPhone 15 Pro launched in 2023. And it misses out on the telephoto camera boasted by its sibling, the iPhone 18 Pro, and similar zoom lenses sported by competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

Even if you don’t use these features much, some Apple fans are bound to feel let down by the fact that the iPhone Duo misses out on key hardware found on cheaper models. But I’m not one of these people — here are five reasons why I still want the iPhone Duo more than any other folding phone.

Ecosystem and software

It’s been said a million times, but I’ll say it once more — Apple’s ecosystem prowess is not to be underestimated. Despite a few wobbles with the launch of iOS 26 last year, the Apple ecosystem is still the cleanest, least ad-infested, and most seamless software environment on the consumer tech market.

Having a folding phone join the fray gives Apple the opportunity to merge the function of the iPhone and iPad in new ways, bringing together the company’s experience across mobile and tablet development. We saw this during the Duo's announcement — Apple has created a fluid transition between folded and open states with a seamless Liquid Glass animation; it's moved core controls to the right side of the screen for easier access; and it's optimized all of its own apps for the Duo's new form factor. And, of course, the Duo is still keyed in to AirDrop, AirPlay, and other Apple conveniences.

If Apple is sensible enough to equip the Duo with the iPad versions of productivity and creative apps like Pages and Final Cut Pro, the new device could be a genuine portable workstation like nothing Samsung or Google have ever released. Apple simply has access to better software than Android folding phones; it just has to leverage it.

The iPad legacy

On the subject of iPads, Apple has the best track record of any small tablet maker, bar none, thanks to the quality of the iPad mini, so the iPhone Duo already has a model of success to follow. Our list of the best tablets highlights the iPad mini as the best compact tablet, and has done so for years.

We saw the iPhone Duo used in split-screen mode during the keynote, with Apple showing off optimized apps from Netflix, Slack, and Detail, and telling us all about the performance of the A20 Pro mobile chipset. Considering the MacBook Neo, a full-on laptop, runs on an A18 chipset from two generations back, I’m pretty confident that the iPhone Duo will be as powerful as any true tablet bar the M-series iPads.

I’ve used and reviewed tablets from other manufacturers, and while I’ve been impressed on occasion, these devices typically come nowhere close to the iPad’s smooth performance and software optimization. And other folding phones have to contend with some jank as phone makers try to make the Android and off-the-shelf chipsets play ball with their specific screen size, resolution, and processing requirements.

Apple's display pedigree

What good is software without decent hardware to experience it on?

The iPhone Duo comes with two screens that share the same 10:14 aspect ratio, offering more consistency than taller foldables, with a nano-textured upper layer laser-lithographed to create a lens for each pixel. Apple also claims that the screen “doesn’t degrade over time” due to a system of layered polymers that slide over one another as the screen moves.

As folding phone screens are known to peel and wear down, I won't pass judgment on the folding inner screen until I see it in person, but the excellence of Apple's previous iPhone and iPad displays gives me faith (at least when it comes to quality).

Build quality

Apple spent plenty of time in the keynote talking about iPhone Duo’s durability. The phone is made of glass, ceramic inserts, and grade 5 titanium, and achieves the IP68 dust and water resistance that Samsung and Google only recently achieved with their foldable devices. Also, its larger vapor chamber means it offers 35% better sustained performance than iPhone 18 Pro, by Apple’s own metrics.

In fairness, Samsung and Google build folding phones exceptionally well too — but even at the sky-high prices foldables command, this isn’t a given. I’ve used some folding phones that wobble around when partially opened, don’t stay fully shut, or show signs of screen peeling after just a few weeks of use. Apple will still have to earn my trust with the iPhone Duo, but the keynote suggests its engineering teams are on top form.

The missing features aren't *that* important

Comment section debaters, get ready. Part of the reason I still want the iPhone Duo is that its missing features just don’t matter that much — at least to me.

While the iPhone Duo does lose Face ID, I’ve always preferred in-button fingerprint scanners to any other kind of biometric security — they’re faster, easier to use, and won’t get blocked by a scarf or sunglasses. I love the scanner on my Oppo Find N6, for example.

I think I’d miss the Action Button and telephoto camera, but these don’t preclude the iPhone Duo’s software potential. With the iPhone Duo’s wide unfolded form factor, I can see why Apple ditched the button, as it may not be useful when the phone is unfolded.

And TechRadar Phones Editor Axel Metz made peace with the iPhone Air’s single camera, so I’m sure the iPhone Duo’s dual camera system would be perfectly usable, even without the reach of the zoom lenses found on competing foldables like the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

So, for me, Apple's first foldable iPhone was worth the wait — at least on paper. I can't wait to get my hands on one and put it through its paces.

When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone in 2007 he famously posed the rhetorical question “Who wants a stylus?”. His argument was that you already have the best stylus you’d ever need with you at all times — your fingers.

Touchscreen displays have gone on to dominate smartphone and tablet design, and have proved far superior to the stylus as a way of navigating a software interface; but the humble stylus has always had its advocates, and it has never really gone away.

Some Samsung devices in particular can be used with a stylus — the S Pen. And, of course, Apple eventually capitulated and introduced the Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro, turning the tablet into a digital drawing pad for illustrators, artists and anyone who simply likes to sketch out ideas.

Perhaps I should clarify that Apple's first successful stylus was the Apple Pencil (2nd edition), rather than the original Apple Pencil. The original Apple Pencil had a terrible design that meant you had to remove a tiny, easily lost cap to charge it, and worse, the Pencil’s Lightning connector plugged directly into the iPad. That left the Pencil sticking precariously out of the tablet, so it was easy to knock, and seemingly designed to snap either the connector or the iPad’s port at some point. It also had no built-in way to attach securely to the iPad for storage.

In terms of Apple’s design failures, the original Apple Pencil is right up there with the Apple Magic Mouse, which has the charging port placement underneath, so it can’t be charged and used at the same time. Amazingly, that’s still the current design of the Magic Mouse, but Apple quickly did something about the Apple Pencil.

The Apple Pencil was fixed with the second-generation, which was released alongside a redesigned iPad Pro in 2018. Instead of plugging directly into the iPad’s Lightning port (such a bad idea) it attached magnetically to the iPad’s side, where it effortlessly paired, charged wirelessly and stayed stored. That eliminated both the precarious protruding connector and the removable cap.

Turning in his grave?

So would Steve Jobs really be turning in his grave right now to know that Apple’s new phone works with its stylus? I’m not so sure.

I went back and watched ​​the original iPhone keynote from 2007. Talking about styluses Jobs said, “Yuck! Who wants a stylus? You have to get ‘em, put ‘em away and you lose them. Nobody wants a stylus! [...] We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with. We’re born with ten of them, we’re going to use our fingers. We’re going to touch this with our fingers.”

Looking back, we can forgive him some of the hyperbole about the stylus at the launch of the iPhone because he was introducing what, for many people watching, was previously unthinkable — a way of using a screen-based smartphone that relied on just your fingers, and he had a battle to win people over and a point to make. In the broadest sense, he was right — touchscreen displays have proved far superior to the stylus as a way of navigating an interface; but the stylus has never really gone away.

The iPhone Duo’s secret weapon

Of course, back in Apple’s history there was another device that had a stylus, the Apple Newton MessagePad. It launched in 1993, came with a plastic stylus for writing, tapping and using its much-mocked handwriting recognition software. Jobs killed off the Newton in 1998, shortly after his return to Apple.

Apple generally called the Newton’s stylus a pen, rather than giving it a standalone product name. So the Apple Pencil wasn’t Apple’s first stylus. It was the company’s return to pen input after Steve Jobs had famously ridiculed styluses when introducing the iPhone.

The Apple Pencil was introduced four years after Jobs’ death in 2015, but I think he would have approved. People genuinely seem to love the Apple Pencil, despite it still having some flaws (there’s no eraser on the other end, for example) and it could even be the secret weapon in Apple’s new iPhone Duo’s success.

The fact that you can use the Apple Pencil with the new iPhone Duo immediately locks Apple’s new foldable phone tightly into Apple's ecosystem of connected devices. The Apple Pencil is expensive, but a lot of iPhone Duo buyers will already own an Apple Pencil, because Apple households tend to have quite a number of Apple devices already in them. (It would be wise to check which version of the Apple Pencil you own though, since the Apple press release only says the "iPhone Duo will support Apple Pencil with USB-C).

And that’s what could make Apple Pencil support much more than another feature on the spec sheet. The iPhone Duo’s folding screen gives people a larger canvas, but the Pencil gives them a reason to use it — for drawing, handwriting, annotating documents and editing photos with precision. Jobs’s real objection was to a stylus you needed simply to operate a phone; on the iPhone Duo, your fingers would still handle that perfectly well, and the Pencil would step in when it was genuinely the better tool. Far from turning in his grave, I suspect Jobs might have appreciated the distinction.

In Apple's big iPhone 18 event, the headline upgrade in the new iPhone 18 camera, from my perspective as a professional photographer, is the company's first mechanical aperture ('variable aperture', as Apple likes to call it).

This feature is not only a first for Apple, it's a rarity in smartphones — Huawei equips several of its flagship devices with one, including its Pura 80 Ultra and other current models.

My 'proper' camera gear has this feature too — whether that's a premium compact camera like my Ricoh GR IV, or the lenses I pair with my pro Nikon mirrorless camera.

But what is a mechanical aperture, why would you want one, and how will it impact the camera experience in the latest crop of iPhones? Let's dive in.

What is aperture and why is it important?

Until now, all iPhones, and indeed the majority of smartphones, feature a fixed-lens aperture. The main camera in the iPhone 17 Pro, for example, has a bright f/1.78 aperture.

That just changed with the iPhone 18 Pro series, and its six mechanical aperture blades, which are thinner than a human hair, and made from a polymer composite.

When I'm using my proper camera gear, aperture tends to be the first manual exposure control I think about — for me it's the single most important camera setting for getting the image to look the way I want, and I change it based on what I'm photographing.

Aperture size determines how much light reaches the camera's sensor; a bigger aperture lets in more light (useful for capturing detail in low light, like at night), while a smaller aperture lets in less light (ideal for, say, a bright sunny day to avoid overly bright images).

Aperture also impacts depth of field; a bigger aperture equals shallower depth of field (useful for punchy portraits when you want to blur backgrounds), while a smaller aperture results in more of the scene being in sharp focus (which is what you might want for, say, landscape photography).

With no control over aperture size, and with small sensors, most phones including iPhone rely on computational photography (software-based) to get effects such as background blur or punchy low light shots — think the portrait and night settings on your phone.

A mechanical aperture, on the other hand, can be opened-up and closed-down, according to the scene you're capturing. The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra, for example, features a f/1.6-4.0 aperture main camera. The user can manually adjust how much light is reaching the sensor at the aperture level. (Shutter speed is the other main factor of exposure.)

Did iPhone cameras just get serious?

I want to be clear from the off — the smaller the sensor size, the less impactful a mechanical aperture is regarding depth of field control.

The iPhone 18 Pro / Pro Max's sensor size appears to still be smaller than the 1-inch type in Chinese flagship's such as the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Oppo Find X8 Ultra. As such, there's less need to close down the aperture to increase depth of field.

But you'll also notice that the iPhone 18 Pro / Pro Max's mechanical aperture range starts at f/1.48 and can be closed down to f/4 — so there's more light entering compared to the previous generation of iPhones too. Apple says this makes it great for indoor portraits and astrophotography.

Exposure control and image sharpness are the big other benefits here, though. Stopping aperture down from f/1.48 to f/4 reduces the amount of light hitting the camera's sensor, and is certainly useful when shooting in bright light.

It enables slower shutter speeds, which is super handy for video recording which natively needs slower shutter speeds compared to photography for smooth motion (and Apple has added the ability to change the shutter speed when video recording), and even for long exposure effects.

A smaller aperture can also increase image quality because you're more likely to get more in focus, and you're using the sharpest central area of the lens, which should deliver the crispest possible detail, without the softness and lens distortion that you typically get with a wide open aperture.

I still expect that that the iPhone's computational skills deliver more obvious improvements in image quality, both creatively and technically.

Portrait mode convincingly blurs backgrounds. Night mode increases light hitting the sensor at a shutter speed level, paired nicely with processing that increases dynamic range and sharpens detail.

But a mechanical aperture is sure to please serious photographers and filmmakers shooting with iPhone. For certain users and situations, it takes on some of the work rather than software doing all of the heavy lifting, and providing us more control.

It's just unlikely to suddenly make your iPhone shots way better just on its own, but I'm excited for the extra control it gives me.

Apple's hotly anticipated ‘Surprise and Shine’ event has been and gone, leaving a foldable iPhone Duo, the iPhone 18 Pro, AirPods 5, and many more new products in its wake.

The iPhone Duo is, of course, the biggest talking point — it's Apple's first foldable iPhone, and will "redefine what an iPhone can do, while still feeling natural and familiar," according to the Cupertino tech giant.

Elsewhere, Apple refreshed its wearable lineup with the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4; the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max got a variable aperture feature; and AirPods 5 are bringing new Audio Intelligence features to the table.

We've picked out the key points of every new product announcement below.

iPhone Duo

It's finally official — Apple's first foldable phone is here. The iPhone Duo (yes, not the iPhone Ultra) is its answer to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, combining a 5.4-inch outer screen with a 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR inner display and lots of neat software tricks.

Powered by the "desktop-class" A20 Pro chip, the iPhone Duo has a titanium frame that's apparently been strengthened by ceramic fibers, and it'll be available in two colors: 'star white' and 'night sky' (a dark blue).

Interestingly, the iPhone Duo also lacks a few key iPhone features, including Face ID, but it was undoubtedly the star of Apple's iPhone 18 Pro launch — and we'll be bringing you our hands-on first impressions very soon.

• 5.4-inch cover display, 7.6-inch foldable display
• A20 Pro chipset with C2 modem
• 48MP Fusion main camera, 48MP ultra-wide
• Starts at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499

iPhone 18 Pro

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are, of course, being billed as the best iPhones yet. They both use Apple's new A20 Pro chip, which boasts a 20% faster CPU and 40% faster GPU, but performance improvements are just the beginning.

For budding cinematographers, the biggest upgrade for both phones is the variable aperture in their 48MP main cameras. You'll be able to widen the lens to let in more light for nightography, or make the aperture smaller for greater depth of field to capture more details in a single shot.

The battery life has been upgraded on both phones, too. Apple says the iPhone 18 Pro has the same battery life as the iPhone 17 Pro Max — that’s 36 hours of video playback. The iPhone 18 Pro Max's endurance is up to 45 hours.

The only catch? Both phones will cost you a little more than last year. The base model starts at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,099 rather than $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,999, while the Pro Max starts at $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$2,299 rather than $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,149.

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max launch on September 18, and you can snag them in Silver, Black, Glacier (a sort of lilac), or Burgundy.

For a breakdown of how the iPhone 18 Pro compares to the iPhone 17 Pro, check out our iPhone 18 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro comparison.

• Variable aperture in 48MP fusion main camera
• iPhone 18 has a 36-hour battery life, the same as iPhone 17 Pro Max
• A20 Pro chipset: 20% faster CPU, 40% faster GPU
• Price starts at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,099 for 256GB; launches September 18
• Comes in Silver, Black, Glacier, or Burgundy colors

Apple Watch Series 12

The Apple Watch Series 12 brings a few new design tweaks, including a new color — dark bronze — alongside space grey, black, and light gold, all in 100% recycled aluminum. A new Ceramic Shield 2 lens is 60% tougher than the previous generation, while the biggest performance change is in the sensor.

The new Health Sensing System offers better skin contact thanks to an increased electrode surface area. Heart rate readings are now being read up to every five seconds, with heart rate variability (a measure of recovery) being read up to every five minutes. All this enables features like the new Readiness Score (it's about time, as every other wearable has one), an improved Vitals app, and an incoming redesigned Health app on iPhone to match, which allows you to measure your VO2 Max using a guided workout on your iPhone's camera. Health Age behaves like similar features you'll find on a Whoop or Garmin, comparing your fitness to the averages in your age bracket.

However, it's Audio Intelligence that's proving the most interesting (and most controversial) feature, as Siri Recap and Live Rewind listen throughout the day to provide summaries of your day and instantly recall conversations, respectively.

• Aluminum / ceramic body, Ceramic Shield 2 lens
• 24-hour battery life
• Starts at $399 / £369 / AU$649
• S11 chipset
• Redesigned Health Sensing System, Readiness, Audio Intelligence

Apple Watch Ultra 4

Apple's big beast returns with all the upgrades of the Series 12 above: a redesigned Health Sensing System for better heart rate accuracy (the most accurate of any wearable, according to Apple), Readiness Score, improved Vitals app, Health Age, and so on. It also gets all the Audio Intelligence features previously mentioned, which, along with Live Rewind and Siri Recap, offer sound recognition (doorbells, sirens, and so on) and Shazam on-wrist.

Ultra-specific improvements are thin on the ground. The battery now stretches from last year's 42 hours to a full two days. In GPS mode, you get 18 hours, enough for all but the toughest ultramarathons. Very little else has changed, design-wise: there are no new colors or dramatic upsets. The Ultra 4 does, however, get the new Ceramic Shield 2 protection in addition to a super-hard titanium case.

• Titanium body,
• Ceramic Shield 2 lens
• 48-hour battery life
• Starts at $799 / £749 / AU$1,349
• S11 chipset
• Redesigned Health Sensing System, Readiness, Audio Intelligence

AirPods 5

You've got two new AirPods to choose from: the AirPods 5, and AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case and Volume Swipe.

Key upgrades for both models include Live Translation, next-generation Adaptive EQ, and 50% more noise reduction over the AirPods 4. Battery life is also up to 22 hours (if you carry the case with you).

And no, there are no cameras here, low-res or otherwise — even in the top-tier set. We didn't expect that particular feature in AirPods 'til 2027, and we were right to stay firm on it — it seems Apple eyes in your ears are still a way off.

As well as the Wireless Charging Case, the pricier AirPods 5 also boast the volume swipe feature of the latest AirPods Pro. They'll cost you $149 / £149 / AU$249 — so less than the original AirPods 4 with ANC, but more than the standard AirPods 5 at $129 / £129 / AU$219.

• 50% better ANC than the previous generation, plus Adaptive Audio
• $129 / £129 / AU$219 for the AirPods 5
• $149 / £149 / AU$249 for the AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case
• Personalized Spatial Audio, Live Translation, Adaptive EQ
• Volume swipe functionality, longer battery life (up to 22 hours using the case), plus wireless charging in the step-up model

Apple Event 2026 — reactions

• iPhone price hikes — here's the full list of every price increase from the iPhone 18 Pro to a 21% rise for one iPhone Air model
• 15 things we learned from Apple's big iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro launch — from its first-ever foldable to new AirPods
• The iPhone Duo lacks Face ID, a telephoto camera, and the Action Button, but I still want it more than every Android foldable I've ever tested — here's why
• iPhone 18 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro: 5 key differences between Apple's newest and previous best smartphones
• I'm a pro photographer — here’s why the iPhone 18 Pro’s variable aperture is its biggest camera upgrade
• Apple Watch Ultra 4 vs Apple Watch Ultra 3: what's changed, and should you upgrade?
• Apple Watch Series 12 vs Series 11 — new Ceramic model, Health Sensing System, Audio Intelligence and all the key upgrades
• Apple iPhone 18 Pro & Apple iPhone Duo preorders: everything you need to know, including start times, deals, and pricing
• Apple continually teased the idea of a 'personal hub' at its recent event, but then didn't launch a HomePod mini 2, and I'm mad about it
• Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening as you go about your day — but Apple may be risking a Meta Glasses-style backlash
• Good news: Apple almost totally dodged inflation on the new iPhones, AirPods and Watches — bad news: the price of all other iPhones just got jacked up

Apple Event 2026 — how to rewatch

You can rewatch Apple's ‘Surprise and Shine’ keynote via Apple’s YouTube page or via the embedded video above.

Blog posts

This phone has been rumored for years, so it’s almost hard to believe that it could finally be launching today, but all signs suggest that it is — and it won’t be alone, as other phones, plus new wearables and AirPods, look set to be unveiled too.

So, below, we’ve detailed how to watch today's Apple Event, along with all the things we expect to see announced in Cupertino. And to follow along with the announcements as they happen, head to our Apple Event 2026 live blog.

How to watch Apple’s iPhone Ultra launch

Today's major Apple launch is being held at the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park, Cupertino, California. As with all these events, it will also be streamed online, so you don’t have to attend in person to witness it.

It starts at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST, which is 3am AEST on September 10 for people in Australia. So there’s a good chance you’ll either be at work or asleep while it happens, but you’ll be able to view a recorded version of the video after the live stream has ended, and we’ll also have full coverage of the event here on TechRadar, so you can always just stick with us for our analysis and impressions.

As for how to watch, that’s easy: simply hit play on the video embedded above. Alternatively you can head to YouTube, or Apple’s event page. You’ll also be able to view the livestream on Apple TV.

So, there are lots of ways to watch today's event, and if you press the ‘Notify me’ button on that video, you’ll also get a reminder when the event is starting.