Everything Announced at Apple Event: iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, AirPods 5 and more
In Short
Apple ended six years of foldable jokes with the iPhone Duo, while also refreshing its Pro iPhones, watches, AirPods and software lineup.
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Everything Announced at Apple Event: iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, AirPods 5 and more
For six years, Apple was the one big phone company that hadn't touched a foldable, and the joke about it had long since worn thin. That changed on September 9, when Apple held its "Surprise and Shine" event at Apple Park and saved its biggest reveal for last: the iPhone Duo. It's a phone that opens into a 7.6-inch display, folds down to something close to the size of a passport, and will set you back $1,999 in the US - or Rs 2,99,900 if you're buying it in India. That price tag alone makes it the most expensive iPhone Apple has ever put on shelves, by a comfortable margin, and arguably the most genuinely interesting device the company has shipped since the iPhone X.
But the Duo wasn't the whole show. Tim Cook made a brief appearance, and even that brief appearance turned into its own little moment. The Pro iPhones got a camera with actual moving parts inside it for the first time. The Apple Watch lineup leaned harder into health tracking and picked up AI features along the way. AirPods showed up too - not the camera-equipped version that had been rumoured for months, but the everyday pair most people actually buy, which finally gained proper noise cancellation. And somewhere in between all the sticker shock, it would be easy to have forgotten the standard iPhone 18 was barely mentioned at all.
Here's a full rundown of everything Apple announced at "Surprise and Shine," including what each device costs - starting right where Apple itself began the night.
Tim Cook Narrates the Video, Says He's Not the Star, Then Walks On Stage Anyway
Apple opened the show with a short film shot entirely on iPhone - fire, explosions, dynamic range pushed to its limits - before the camera swept over Big Sur and followed a car winding its way toward Apple Park.
The narrator turned out to be Tim Cook himself, which was the first pleasant surprise of the night. He teased the unveiling of the evening's "main character," then quickly ruled himself out of the running, saying: "Not me, that's your guy." That line only made his actual walk-on moment land harder, because he did show up in person a few seconds later. Cook said a few words and then handed the stage over - and if you've watched an Apple keynote before, you know exactly how that part goes.
There was no cheerful "good morning" this time, either. New Apple executive Ternus opened with a simple hello instead. As you'd expect from someone stepping into a bigger spotlight, he spent a moment talking about his years at Apple and what it means to represent the company, before diving straight into the topic he'd clearly come to talk about: artificial intelligence.
Ternus described what an ideal AI device would look like if you were designing one completely from scratch. It would understand your personal context, he said. It would stay with you throughout the day, run its models directly on the device, and only reach out to the cloud when absolutely necessary. It would need a large display, strong cameras, good microphones, and a battery that could actually go the distance. Then came the punchline everyone in the room could see coming from a mile away - that device, he said, already exists, and it's sitting in your pocket right now.
"It's iPhone." A not-so-subtle nod in OpenAI's direction
Ternus was also unusually direct about privacy, arguing that rival companies treat personal data as something to be collected and stockpiled, and that trust falls apart the moment your data stops being something you control. The underlying message was simple: Apple isn't trying to invent a brand-new gadget for the AI era. It's making the case that it already sold a billion of them - and there's a decent chance you're holding one right now.
The iPhone Duo Is Apple's First Foldable - And Its Most Expensive iPhone Yet
The Duo opens like a book and, crucially, lies completely flat when unfolded. Its inner Super Retina XDR display measures 7.6 inches - about 50 percent larger than the screen on the iPhone 18 Pro Max - while the outer display comes in at 5.4 inches, roughly 90 percent of the display area you'd get on a standard iPhone 18 Pro. More importantly, both screens share the same aspect ratio, so content scales cleanly between them instead of reflowing awkwardly every time you open or close the phone. That mismatch has been the Achilles' heel of nearly every book-style foldable released so far, and it's exactly the kind of detail Apple tends to take years to get right.
Unfolded, the Duo measures just 5.2mm thick - thinner than any iPhone Apple has ever made. Folded shut, it's 11.3mm thick and weighs 254 grams, a heft you will absolutely notice in a shirt pocket.
Most of the real engineering work here is invisible. The hinge alone is built from more than 100 individual components and is designed to keep the center of the display perfectly flat, with a magnet array handling the final snap shut. The frame is grade 5 titanium, and even the hinge cover is 3D printed. The display stack itself is arguably the cleverer part of the whole design. Beneath a nano-textured cover layer - made from a polymer Apple says is up to 40 percent stiffer than typical industry materials - sit multiple sheets of high-strength glass, bonded together with adhesives that allow the layers to slide against one another as the phone closes, much like pages shifting inside a book. That sliding motion is what's meant to stop the crease from turning into a permanent scar after a year of daily folding.
The Duo also carries an IP68 water and dust resistance rating - something no rival foldable has managed to pull off even after six years of trying - along with Ceramic Shield 2 protecting the outer display. Notably, there's no Face ID here. Instead, Touch ID is built into the side button, a setup iPad owners have lived with comfortably for years, and you can also unlock the Duo using a paired Apple Watch. It comes in two finishes, star white and night sky, and both displays will support the Apple Pencil later this year.
On the camera front, you get two 48MP sensors: a Fusion Main lens with a 2x optical-quality crop, and the same Fusion Ultra Wide sensor found on the iPhone 18 Pro. There's no dedicated telephoto lens, and - somewhat surprisingly for a phone at this price - no Action button either.
What the Duo does have going for it is that second screen, and Apple has clearly put real thought into using it well. Duo Preview projects a live viewfinder onto the outer display, so whoever you're photographing can actually see how they're framed while you shoot them using the superior rear cameras. Smart Take quietly watches the scene on-device and fires the shutter automatically once everyone in frame is actually ready, which finally solves the age-old problem of the person taking the photo never appearing in it. Kid Cue plays Peanuts animations to grab a child's attention and get them looking at the lens, and Duo FaceTime lets a person sitting across from you join a video call directly through the outer screen.
On the software side, iOS 27 shifts the dock and system controls to the side of the screen, turns the Dynamic Island vertical, and introduces Split View - letting an iPhone run two apps at once, something Apple had resisted for eighteen years. Netflix, Zoom and Slack have already rolled out updates built around it.
The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 in the US and Rs 2,99,900 in India for the 256GB model, climbing to $3,199 for the top-end 2TB version. Pre-orders open October 16, with sales beginning October 23.
The A20 Pro Chip Finally Fixes What iPhones Have Always Struggled With: Staying Fast
On paper, the A20 Pro reads like every high-end Apple chip announcement before it. It's built on a 2nm process, the 6-core CPU now includes integrated Neural Accelerators, the 7-core GPU is claimed to be up to 40 percent faster than the A19 Pro, and a new Dual 16-core Neural Engine doubles AI processing throughput across 32 cores in total. Memory bandwidth has also jumped by 50 percent. None of that is new territory for an Apple keynote slide.
The change that will actually be noticeable in daily use is thermal, and it's borrowed straight from the Mac playbook. New M-series-style packaging places the silicon die next to the memory rather than underneath it, pulling the memory out of the chip's direct heat path and allowing the A20 Pro to sit flush against a redesigned vapor chamber that has three times the surface area of the one used in the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple claims this alone delivers a 40 percent improvement in sustained performance. It's the kind of fix that will never make headlines on its own, yet it's the sort of thing you'll notice every single day. Peak benchmark numbers have never really been the iPhone's weak point - holding onto that performance through a long 4K recording session or an extended gaming stretch has been.
Battery life follows a similar philosophy this year. The eSIM-only iPhone 18 Pro is rated for up to 36 hours of video playback, while the Pro Max climbs to 45 hours - the largest jump Apple has ever claimed for an iPhone generation. Just five minutes on a cable is said to return roughly seven hours of video playback on the Max. The Duo, meanwhile, splits its battery across both sides of the hinge, with Apple claiming 31 hours of use on the inner screen, 44 hours on the outer screen, or roughly 24 hours if you split usage evenly between the two. As always, these figures come from Apple's own lab testing, so treat them as a best-case scenario rather than a guarantee.
iPhone 18 Pro gets a major camera upgrade
If there's one place where Apple concentrated most of its engineering energy this year, it's here, inside this single lens. From the outside, the Pro models look nearly identical to last year's phones - a new color option and a slightly smaller Dynamic Island are about the only visible changes. That trimmed-down Dynamic Island, though, has picked up a genuinely useful trick: it can now display three Live Activities simultaneously while still handling Face ID authentication in the background. The real transformation happened inside the camera housing, where this year's headline upgrade is mechanical rather than another software trick.
The 48MP Fusion Main camera now includes a genuine variable aperture, built around six laser-cut blades mounted on a new rotor mechanism that shifts between four distinct settings. Six moving blades, inside a phone that fits in your pocket - clearly something Apple engineers have wanted to build for a very long time. Left on auto, the system quietly manages depth of field and exposure for you, which should translate into cleaner low-light shots and group photos where people standing further back stay in sharp focus.
Take manual control, and a new Pro controls interface hands over aperture, shutter speed, white balance, and a live histogram - essentially the moment Apple's Camera app stops apologizing for not being a proper camera. There's also a new API available, letting third-party developers tap into the full aperture range from within their own apps.
Surrounding that headline feature are a handful of changes that matter a great deal to anyone who shoots professionally: a new computational imaging pipeline, Photographic Styles with dedicated texture and grain controls, Cinematic effects that can now be applied after capture at up to 60fps, 4K Dolby Vision time-lapse recording, and an Audio Mix tool capable of isolating background music from the rest of a scene's audio.
As for the basics, the Pro keeps its 6.3-inch display and the Pro Max its 6.9-inch panel, both powered by the new A20 Pro chip, with storage options ranging from 256GB up to 2TB. The N1 chip manages Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread connectivity, the new C2 modem uploads data faster than last year's C1X while using 15 percent less power, and a wired charge gets you to 50 percent battery in around 15 minutes.
The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 in the US and Rs 1,64,900 in India, while the Pro Max begins at $1,299 and Rs 1,79,900. Pre-orders open September 12, with sales starting September 18. A new Burgundy finish joins the existing black, silver and glacier options - and it's arguably the one worth seeing in person before you decide.
Apple's Answer to the AI Photo Problem
This feature barely got a minute of stage time during the keynote, but photographers will likely be discussing it long after the excitement around the variable aperture fades. The new sensor inside the iPhone 18 Pro's main camera can cryptographically sign every pixel it captures. Shoot in the new Reference mode, and that signed data is sent to Private Cloud Compute, which processes it into a reference image that cannot be altered afterward. Open that file in Photos alongside an edited version, treat it essentially as a digital negative, and you can see precisely what has been changed and what remains untouched from the original capture.
Apple is pairing this with standard image metadata and upcoming support for SynthID, so AI-generated and AI-edited images can also be flagged and identified. There are gaps in the rollout, as there tend to be with features like this. Reference mode won't be available at launch in either China or the European Union, though people running iOS 27, iPadOS 27 or macOS 27 within Europe will still be able to open and view reference images sent to them from elsewhere.
Even so, for photojournalists, for anyone whose work might one day need to withstand scrutiny, and for the rest of us who have spent the past couple of years squinting at photos that turned out to be entirely AI-generated, this marks the first time a major phone maker has treated image provenance as a built-in hardware feature rather than just a company policy on paper.
The Ceramic Apple Watch Returns, and Series 12 Checks Your Heart Every Five Seconds
Ceramic makes its comeback to the Apple Watch lineup for the first time in years, available in pearl white and night blue finishes, alongside new dark bronze, black and light gold aluminium options, plus a radiant gold titanium variant. The aluminium models now feature Ceramic Shield 2, which Apple says is 60 percent tougher than the older Ion-X glass used previously.
Under the hood sits a completely new Health Sensing System paired with the S11 chip. Larger, more power-efficient green LEDs allow the watch to measure heart rate every five seconds throughout the day, and sample heart rate variability up to 24 times more frequently than before - split into "recovery HRV" for tracking daily stress and "overall HRV" for spotting longer-term trends. Apple says it ran a study involving more than 1,000 participants and now claims the most accurate heart rate sensing available in any wearable device.
All of that data feeds into a new "readiness" score - a single number from 0 to 10, calculated from recent activity, training load, vital signs and sleep quality, which then resolves into one of four simple recommendations: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It. The score updates continuously throughout the day rather than locking in a single reading each morning. Whether or not you actually take life advice from your wrist is, of course, entirely up to you.
Battery life remains steady at 24 hours of typical use, with outdoor workout tracking rated for up to 10 hours, and just 15 minutes on the charger returning about 12 hours of use. The Apple Watch Series 12 starts at $399 in the US and Rs 56,900 in India, with sales beginning September 18.
Apple Watch Ultra 4 Costs More Than Ever - And Lasts Longer Than Ever, Too
The Ultra 4 holds steady at $799 in the US, but in India it now costs Rs 1,09,900, pushing an Apple Watch past the one-lakh mark and squarely into MacBook territory. Apple's justification for that price leans entirely on endurance rather than flashy new features. Everyday battery life is now rated at up to 50 hours, or as much as 84 hours in Low Power Mode. Extended Workout mode can track activity for 25 hours with full GPS and heart rate monitoring active, while Max Extended Workout stretches that out to 45 hours - enough, Apple points out, to complete a full 100-mile ultramarathon without needing to find a charger.
The Ultra 4 continues to come in natural and black titanium finishes and shares the same sensor stack, S11 chip and readiness scoring system found on the Series 12. It also introduces Audio Intelligence, arriving as a beta feature later this year. Live Rewind lets you double-press the Digital Crown to see a text transcript of the last 15 seconds of conversation around you. Siri Recap generates high-level written summaries of conversations directly inside the new Siri app. Sound Recognition, meanwhile, alerts deaf and hard-of-hearing users to sirens, alarms and doorbells even when their iPhone isn't nearby.
A smartwatch that's constantly listening is naturally going to make some people uneasy, and Apple appears to have anticipated that reaction. All audio processing happens inside a hardware-isolated Secure Exclave built into the S11 chip and is deleted immediately afterward - nothing is recorded or stored, no individual speakers are ever identified, and Live Rewind sounds an audible chime while lighting up the entire display, so everyone nearby knows the feature is actively running. It's clear Apple has spent real time thinking through the privacy implications here.
iOS 27, macOS 27 and the New Siri AI Arrive September 14
Monday, September 14, is the other date worth circling. That's when Apple rolls out its full software update lineup as free downloads - iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and the rest of the family.
The rebuilt Siri AI arrives alongside it, though notably still in beta, which tells you quite a bit about how the past two years have actually gone. The overhauled assistant can now work across your messages, mail and photos to help you find something you only half-remember, take action based on whatever's currently on your screen, answer nearly any general question, and even write content for you based on a simple description of what you need. There's a brand-new standalone Siri app that keeps a history of your conversations, a dedicated Siri mode built into the Camera app, and on the Apple Watch, you can now nod or shake your head to answer yes or no to a prompt.
The caveats here matter more than usual. The new Siri launches only in English, with five additional languages arriving in October - and notably, no Indian language appears anywhere on Apple Intelligence's current language list. It also won't be available in the EU or China at launch, is restricted from anyone under the age of 13, and several features that rely on Apple's servers will come with daily usage limits, with the company stating plainly that expanded access will eventually cost extra.
The rest of this year's "27" software update batch is comparatively quiet. You can now dial down the opacity of the Liquid Glass design language if it's been bothering you - a small but notable concession from Apple on a design choice that drew criticism. There are also new icon styles, extra-large widget options, and a handful of other cosmetic tweaks scattered throughout. The broader pitch, though, centers on a system that's meant to feel more responsive and more stable after a year filled with complaints about both.
AirPods 5 Finally Bring Noise Cancellation to a Price Most People Can Actually Afford
The AirPods that most people actually buy have finally gained the one feature everyone kept asking for.
Active noise cancellation has arrived on Apple's entry-level earbuds for the first time. The AirPods 5 use a new multiport acoustic architecture borrowed directly from the AirPods Pro 3, along with a next-generation Adaptive EQ system, and Apple claims they block up to 50 percent more outside noise compared to the AirPods 4 with ANC. That's a genuinely difficult engineering feat to pull off on an open-ear design, since there's no physical seal to work with in the first place. Transparency mode has also been improved, and both Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness make the jump to this model as well.
That's a meaningful upgrade for what $129 - or Rs 14,900 in India - now buys you. Spend a bit more, $149 or Rs 17,900, and you get a wireless charging case along with a new force sensor that lets you swipe along the stem to adjust volume, a first for this style of earbud, plus a battery rated for five hours of listening with ANC turned on, or 22 hours when factoring in the charging case.
Live Translation is now available across the entire AirPods lineup as well, meaning even the most affordable pair in the range can help carry a conversation across different languages once it's been set up through the Translate app. The AirPods 5 go on sale September 18. And for what it's worth, both the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max have also gotten more expensive this time around.
