All the news from Apple’s iPhone 17 event

The iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 fleet of phones took the spotlight during Apple’s “Awe dropping” event. If you weren’t tempted by the new phones, the fact that the entire Apple Watch lineup got refreshed might have been even bigger news to you. The Apple Watch SE 3, Apple Watch Series 11, and Apple Watch Ultra 3 have arrived, and each is bringing along some big upgrades, which we’ll get into a bit below.

All three are available now, with the SE 3 starting at $249, the Series 11 starting at $399, and the Ultra 3 starting at $799

Apple’s most impressive wireless earbuds are now available from Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target for $249. Our reviewer Victoria Song had a lot of good things to say about them in our review. But if it’s an in-depth spec showdown that you’re looking for, between the AirPods Pro 3 and the rest of Apple’s AirPods lineup of earbuds and over-ear headphones, check out our comparison guide.

The most notable change in the newer model is a built-in heart rate sensor that lets iPhone owners track calories burned and track progress in over 50 types of workouts from the Fitness app. Also of note, Apple claims that the new buds can deliver ANC that’s twice as effective as the last-gen model, while battery life has increased. But there are more features beyond improved bass and better active noise cancellation.

Apple’s iPhone 17, the 17 Pro, the 17 Pro Max, and the thin iPhone Air are now available in stores and online.

Beyond the Air’s shockingly slim design, Apple’s latest iPhone lineup features a number of notable updates worth upgrading for, especially if you have a phone that’s a few generations old. The standard iPhone 17 — which is a shockingly good value, by the way — now features a larger 6.3-inch display with ProMotion and an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz. Meanwhile, the Pro model has returned to an aluminum build while adding the biggest battery of any iPhone yet. The iPhone Air and Pro models have a lot in common, including having a raised “plateau” bump on the back, which contains not just cameras but some internal components, too, leaving some extra room in the phones for larger batteries.

The AirPods Pro 3 seem like a solid upgrade, but they have one significant drawback: Apple isn’t including a charging cable in the box, MacRumors reports. Apple spells it out right on the AirPods Pro 3 tech specs page, saying in the “In the Box” section, “USB‑C Charge Cable sold separately.” That means that if you want to charge the case for the AirPods Pro 3, you’ll need to use a charging cable you already have, buy a new one, or use a wireless charger.

For a lot of people, this may not be a huge issue, especially if you already have a bunch of USB-C cables lying around the house. It’s arguably a little more environmentally friendly, since it might mean fewer people lose or throw away yet another cable.

Apple made a lot of noise about its super-slim iPhone Air and super-citrusy iPhone 17 Pro this week, but the company gave the base iPhone 17 some major updates that make it a really great deal — and all without raising its $799 starting price.

Let’s start with the iPhone 17’s display, which is now bigger and has a higher refresh rate with a load of features that have been exclusive to the iPhone Pro for years.

Apple announced the new Apple Watch Series 11, SE 3, and Ultra 3 smartwatches during its annual iPhone hardware event on Tuesday. The 2025 models are somewhat iterative in terms of their designs. However, there are plenty of new features present in each that could make either one a worthy upgrade over previous generations, depending on how much money you want to spend.

The most affordable 2025 model is the $249 Apple Watch SE 3, which now runs on the same S10 chipset found in the pricier Series 11 and even in the Ultra 3. It comes in 40mm and 44mm sizes, and there’s an option to spend a little more on either size to get 5G connectivity (the feature adds $50 to the price). Other new features include an always-on display; temperature sensors, which can be used for ovulation tracking; and the ability to play audio through its built-in speaker.

Apple announced the iPhone 17 at its “awe dropping” event yesterday. It won’t be available to preorder until September 12th, but you may already be contemplating an upgrade. It’s easier to tell some of what makes the iPhone 17 different from its predecessor (like the larger screen and new colors), but changes under the hood (like the display’s 120Hz refresh rate) are more difficult to spot until you’ve had a chance to try it yourself. We’ve created a handy chart comparing the most significant tech specs of both smartphones to help you make sense of the changes.

Both smartphones can run iOS 26, which comes with the new Liquid Glass design language that Apple debuted at WWDC in June and is introducing across all of its devices this year. iOS 26 will come preloaded on the iPhone 17 and be available as a download on September 15th for the iPhone 11 and newer. Apple also announced the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air at the same event, and we have a comparison chart that covers all of the upcoming models.

At its latest hardware event on Tuesday, Apple officially announced the new 2025 iPhone lineup. That includes the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and the slimmed-down iPhone Air, which looks to be the standout model this year. The devices come equipped with Apple’s latest A19 processors and a few other notable upgrades. For instance, the standard iPhone 17 now features a larger 6.3-inch ProMotion display, a more advanced selfie cam, and double the base storage.

Of course, the iPhone Air is arguably the main attraction this year, featuring a design that’s just 5.6mm thick. That makes it the thinnest iPhone ever made. It boasts a 6.5-inch ProMotion display and an A19 Pro chip, though it offers one less GPU core than the A19 Pro found in the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max models. Apple claims the Air offers “all-day battery life,” with the company’s official specs showing it lags behind the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max. The device also features a single 48-megapixel camera on the back, giving users less flexibility for things like macro photography.

The iPhone Air may have been the star of the show, but Apple also announced a new pair of AirPods at its “Awe dropping” event on September 9th. The AirPods Pro 3 arrive three years after the second-generation model, which received a minor update in 2023 with a USB-C charging case and dust resistance, and will hit stores on September 19th (though you can preorder them now).

With their debut, the official AirPods lineup now looks a little different: the fourth-gen AirPods and their ANC counterpart remain the entry-level models, but now the AirPods Pro 3 are Apple’s most premium earbuds. The AirPods Max, meanwhile, continue to be the company’s only set of over-ears.

The skepticism that I had about Apple’s rumored crossbody iPhone strap can be put to rest now that it was officially announced at yesterday’s big iPhone 17 event. I’m suitably impressed. And if we can clear up some of the confusion about why it exists in the first place, then I think more people will be, too.

Firstly, crossbody straps are supremely useful for those of us who are denied deep pockets and don’t want to carry a bag. It gives a person quick access to their phone on a bike, at a festival, in a shop to make payments, or when tapping into public transit. They’re for the old and young who fear their phones being dropped or stolen. And, yes, they’re also fashion statements that can be coordinated with your latest outfit.

It’s less noticeable than a thinner profile or trick camera lenses, but Apple is pointing out another upgrade in the iPhone 17 family of phones that it says is part of “the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.” Explicitly targeting the spyware industry that produces exploits for tools like Pegasus to hack on targeted devices, a series of changes in Apple’s chips, OS, and development tools are part of what it calls Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE).

The approach is similar to what we’ve seen from Microsoft’s introduction of memory integrity security features for Windows 11, as well as a series of changes that have arrived to prevent speculative-execution vulnerabilities like Spectre. Apple’s blog post also mentions efforts by ARM with the Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) to fight memory bugs, which is supported on Google’s Pixel phones starting with the Pixel 8 series and enabled for supported apps if you turn on Advanced Protection.

iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 users are getting another year of free access to satellite connectivity features, according to a footnote on Apple’s newsroom posts for the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro. “The free trial will be extended for iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 users who have activated their device in a country that supports Apple’s satellite features prior to 12 a.m. PT on September 9, 2025,” Apple says.

Apple originally launched its Emergency SOS service via satellite shortly after it released the iPhone 14 lineup, in November 2022, and at the time, Apple said the feature would be free for the first two years. (The feature is still free for two years after activation on iPhone 14 models and newer.) But in 2023, Apple added an additional free year for existing iPhone 14 users, meaning that the deadline to potentially start paying for the earliest adopters would be November 2025. Now, it appears that deadline has been bumped to November 2026.

Apple just announced a bunch of new health-tracking features alongside its new smartwatch lineup — but you might not need to upgrade your device to get access to them. With the launch of watchOS 26 next week, Apple will bring hypertension notifications, live translation, and the new wrist-flick gesture to the Watch Series 9 and newer, along with the last-gen Watch Ultra 2.

Apple’s new hypertension notifications use data from the watches’ existing optical heart sensor to “analyze how a user’s blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart.” An algorithm will then review this data over a period of 30 days and will notify users if it detects signs of high blood pressure. Apple says it expects clearance from the FDA and other regulators this month. It will roll out in more than 150 countries and regions.

Determined to give us something new to talk about, Apple has introduced its ultra-thin iPhone Air. It’s just 5.6mm thick with a 6.5-inch ProMotion display, a 48-megapixel dual camera, a selfie camera that supports Center Stage, and an add-on MagSafe battery. Among other things.

We asked the staff of The Verge for their first impressions of the iPhone Air. We’ll run a full review of the phone, of course, but here are some initial feelings about it from our staff.

Apple just announced arguably its boldest Pro iPhone color ever: the new “cosmic orange” for the iPhone 17 Pro. And to my surprise, I think it looks really good.

In choosing a bold hue as its hero shade for the iPhone 17 Pro, Apple also seems to have nailed one of the season’s hottest colors. Orange showed up a lot on fashion runways earlier this year, and orange-y citrus shades were one of this summer’s color trends, according to Vogue.

Apple’s chunky old MagSafe Battery Pack was beloved by a subset of iPhone owners, and now the company is bringing it back and slimming it down for the iPhone Air.

I took a first look at the battery pack this afternoon, and it has a significantly slimmer design than the old version. This version of the battery pack is thinner and longer, stretching as far across the back of the phone as it can before bumping into the camera bar. Slimming it down reduces the potential battery size, but it makes the pack more appropriately balanced with the phone as a result. The new model didn’t feel goofy to hold in the same way that the thick old version did.

Apple’s hotly anticipated event was full of news about updates to the AirPods, Apple Watch, iPhones, and more. But during the presentation, which was considerably shorter than usual at just an hour and 15 minutes, there was one notable buzzword missing from a good chunk of the fanfare: AI.

Although CEO Tim Cook said during the livestream that the company was “taking the biggest leap ever for iPhone,” there were only cursory mentions of Apple Intelligence during the new iPhone unveiling.

Inside Apple’s splashy iPhone 17 lineup is a new chip: the N1. It’s a wireless networking chip made in-house by Apple, allowing its devices to support the latest networking technologies, including Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and the smart home protocol Thread.

Apple previously used chips made by Broadcom to power Bluetooth and Wi-Fi within its smartphones. But now, Apple says the N1 chip will help boost the performance and reliability of features like AirDrop and Personal Hotspot. The iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, and iPhone Air will all ship with the N1.

Apple just announced a new, official MagSafe battery for the super-slim iPhone Air, but if you were hoping the battery would work with other iPhones, it apparently won’t. According to the product page for the $99 battery, “the iPhone Air MagSafe Battery was created exclusively for iPhone Air,” and the compatibility list includes just the iPhone Air.

Apple also has an image on its store showing the tall battery pack attached to an iPhone Air next to an iPhone 17 Pro and an iPhone 17. Looking at all of the phones side by side, it appears that if the battery were placed on the other phones, it would bump up against the cameras.