All the news from Apple’s iPhone Duo launch event

The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max are almost here. Announced at Apple’s September 2026 “Sunrise and shine” event alongside the iPhone Duo and other new gear, the two upgraded phones feature the faster A20 Pro processor with more GPU power as well as more neural cores for AI-related tasks, plus some welcome improvements to the camera.

The phones will arrive on Friday, September 18th, and preordering one is never a bad idea if you want to ensure you get the color and storage capacity configuration you’re seeking. Speaking of, preorders are officially open.

You only get one chance at a first impression, and getting to introduce Apple’s first folding phone is certainly a strong way to start things off as Apple’s CEO. On The Vergecast today, we’re talking all about Apple’s launch event: how John Ternus did in his first appearance as CEO, what we make of the new iPhones, and whether Apple is stepping into dangerous territory with its new AI features on the Apple Watch.

First up, Allison Johnson joins me to discuss the new iPhones, which she had a chance to test in Cupertino. Both of us have some questions about the new variable aperture camera on the iPhone 18 Pro — and whether the real upgrade simply lies in the wider aperture, not the ability to stop it down. Then we dig into the iPhone Duo and how Apple decided to pick and choose the best parts of Android foldables.

The Apple AirPods 5 are bringing active noise cancellation to the masses, and they’re now available for preorder at a variety of retailers. They’ll officially launch on September 18th, the same day as the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, as well as the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max.

There are two versions this time around, just like with the last-gen model. The standard $129 model adds active noise cancelation, which was previously only found on the more expensive $179 AirPods 4 with ANC models. They’re available from Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Apple. The upgraded $149 model features a wireless charging case, longer battery life, and touch controls on the earbud stem that lets you adjust the volume without pulling out your phone. You can preorder this model at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Apple.

Apple was far from the first company to announce a passport-shaped folding phone this year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t copied. As my colleague Dom Preston already explained, it’s almost impossible to keep product development secret when Apple and its competitors all share the same global suppliers.

Apple’s new CEO John Ternus and head of marketing Greg ‘Joz’ Joswiak addressed the topic during an interview with TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff and Mark Spoonauer of Tom’s Guide.

The iPhone Duo was the unequivocal star of Apple’s “Surprise and shine” event, but not for people who were mostly paying attention for news on wearables. Thankfully, Apple had a lot to share about its new Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. There’s no update to the SE model for 2026, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (the SE 3 rules). Also, no price changes either, which can’t be said for the entire iPhone lineup.

While both new watches look similar to their predecessors, there are a number of updates under the hood that might intrigue some people enough to warrant a preorder. My colleague Victoria Song got hands-on with both smartwatches and runs down the biggest changes, from the Audio Intelligence features made possible by the S11 chip (included in the Series 12 and Ultra 4) to the possible impact of its improved sensors and tracking capabilities.

With the iPhone Duo, Apple has pulled off a familiar trick. It arrives into a mature Android foldable market with a handful of hardware features we’ve mostly already seen elsewhere, but paired with a level of software polish that makes a lot of them feel new again. It’s those software flourishes that have me excited to try the iPhone Duo when it launches next month, but I’m less convinced that its hardware will be anything special.

If Apple had gotten there first, the Duo’s biggest surprise would have been its squat, wide, passport-inspired shape. But its slow-moving supply chain meant that Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi all managed to beat Apple to market with similarly sized rivals, so the unusual design already feels fairly familiar — helped by Samsung’s aggressive efforts to market its new design.

Apple’s foldable phone is finally here — well, almost. The iPhone Duo, coming October 23rd, follows in the footsteps of past folding devices from Android phone makers like Samsung, OnePlus, and Google, with a $1,999 price tag that sits just above the Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 8.

While its hardware bears similarities to its competitors, the iPhone Duo is one of a few models that takes a passport-like approach. The aspect ratio is the same on the inside and outside screens, and it’s even usable with some apps while partially folded. The interior screen has a special outer layer, which along with its hinge design, makes the interior crease almost impossible to spot (something that many competitors struggle to do, though Samsung and Oppo are making fantastic progress).

Apple always makes a big show of the latest cameras in its phones, and the major talking point of the iPhone 18 Pro is about the new variable aperture. Both the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max have an adjustable mechanical iris in their main camera modules to let more or less light into the sensor, allowing users to shoot at f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8, and f/4. You can, of course, let the camera select your aperture automatically, but the manual aperture control comes along with other new pro controls allowing you to dial in shutter speeds, manual white balance, and even manual focusing.

I was at the iPhone keynote at Apple Park, and I got to briefly use these new phones. As a whole, this is a wealth of new controls for an iPhone camera. You’d normally have to install a third-party camera app like Halide to do some of this, and now it’s all just baked into the 18 Pro’s native camera app. (It’s almost as if Apple poached a key person directly from Halide.) But I’d temper any expectations over the variable aperture being the standout feature. It’s going to be mid, at best.

September Apple events are always a swirl of information and new, exciting products, and today’s was no different. Apple announced its first foldable, the iPhone Duo, alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max; active noise cancellation (ANC) is now on the cheapest AirPods model, the AirPods 5; and a Siri Recap feature comes to the Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4. But missing were the AirPods Pro with cameras that have been rumored throughout the year and, according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, are delayed until 2027. I’m happy about that and I hope we never get them.

I have too many concerns about a company — any company — putting cameras anywhere, especially in devices like earbuds that are now so ubiquitous in our daily lives. LED lights on glasses or earbuds do little to ease people’s minds when someone is recording them. And some Meta smart glasses users have shown people will hide their recording intentions. While recording in public in the US is generally legal, it can be very creepy. And with earbuds as common as they are, someone could wear them into sensitive situations unnoticed.

Apple has seen reason: It has a black model in the iPhone Pro lineup again.

Last year, Apple went bold with its colors for the iPhone 17 Pro, offering a flashy orange, a shiny silver, and a dark blue. Don’t get me wrong, they looked nice. But there was no black (or dark gray) for the first time since the start of the iPhone Pro lineup, which Apple first introduced in September 2019 with the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max.

Apple announced the company’s first device with a folding screen today, the iPhone Duo, but that’s where the firsts end. The Duo is not only far from the first foldable on the market thanks to the efforts of Samsung and Google, but it’s also not the first product to be called the Duo.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs popularized the saying “good artists copy, great artists steal,” but will the iPhone Duo’s folding screen, which features a custom nano-texture display material to help minimize the visibility of its crease, be enough to make us forget these other Duos that have come before it? Only time, or how aggressively Apple plans to market its Duo, will tell. Is there a Duo we missed? Let us know.

Paying more for a new phone seems almost unavoidable after Apple’s event today. The new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max start at $1,199 and $1,299, respectively — a $100 price hike over their predecessors. You can’t dodge the price hike by opting for an older iPhone, either, because Apple raised prices on those by $100, too. And it’s not just Apple. This year, the $100 price hike has been a trend across the industry.

Google and Samsung followed the same formula as Apple when they each launched new phones over the past few months. The Pixel 11 starts at $899, up from $799 for last year’s Pixel 10. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra launched at $2,099, $100 more than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 it replaced.

At Wednesday’s iPhone Duo launch event, Apple announced a handful of new Siri AI Audio Intelligence features, including Siri Recap, Live Rewind, Sound Recognition, and Music Recognition. Alongside its announcement, Apple released a document laying out how it plans to balance AI “ambient listening” and users’ privacy. It says the raw audio from the new features “is handled within dedicated hardware, is not saved as a file, and is not accessible to the operating system, apps, or Apple.”

Apple explains that Audio Intelligence relies on the Secure Exclave in the S11 chip that powers the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4:

Apple rolled out the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 at its “Surprise and shine” event. The new watches feature sizable improvements to their health sensors and tracking, plus the ability to create brief audio transcriptions and summaries, plus a ceramic case option for the Series 12. Despite the new features, the watches start at the same base prices as their previous iterations. The Apple Watch Series 12 starts at $399 for the aluminum version without cellular, and the Apple Watch Ultra 4 starts at $799.

The biggest differences between the models are new features powered by the S11 processor. It supports the new Apple Intelligence features as well as more detailed health and fitness programs. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 also has longer battery life, up to 50 hours on a single charge, up from 42 on the Ultra 3. All the watches are slightly heavier, with the heaviest ceramic Apple Watch Series 12 sitting at 42.8 grams for the 42mm version and 52.9 grams for the 46mm version. The heaviest Apple Watch Ultra is 63.1 grams, up from 61.8 grams on the older model.

Apple has just announced its first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo. The new phone has a 5.4-inch outer screen and a 7.6-inch inner screen, two back cameras, Touch ID for authentication, an IP68 rating, and all sorts of slick software tricks to make iOS feel more at home on the new device. Preorders start on October 16th ahead of availability on October 23rd, and it starts at $1,999 for 256GB of storage.

It’s a huge announcement for Apple, and we have many feelings about it. Here’s our gut reactions to the phone. And let us know in the comments what you think!

Apple is launching a new way to prove that the picture you took isn’t manipulated by AI. A new feature, called “Reference Image,” will arrive with the iPhone 18 Pro lineup later this month and is supposed to use the device’s new camera sensor to “sign every pixel it sees.”

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will only authenticate photos when placed into Reference mode. Once the camera captures signed sensor data, Apple says its Private Cloud Compute will develop it “into an unalterable reference image” that can be viewed in the Photos app. You’ll be able to compare the reference image with other versions of the photo to see if any edits were made.

We’ve just gotten our hands on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max at Apple Park following the company’s “Surprise and shine” presentation.

The new phones look quite similar to the previous iPhone 17 Pro lineup, keeping the same general design, aluminum body, and screen sizes. The 18 Pro lineup comes in four colors — black, silver, “glacier” (which is blue), and burgundy — and they now have color-matched glass on the back that blends in more seamlessly with the body.

After Apple wrapped up its “Surprise and shine” event today, we were able to get a look at the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4.

Both of the new watches launch September 18th, with preorders available starting today.

Apple’s release cadence for the latest iPhones is unusual. It’ll start with the 18 Pro models, then with the foldable iPhone Duo releasing in October for $1,999. It hasn’t confirmed when its base iPhone 18 model will launch. So this post is focused just on the new the 18 Pro and the 18 Pro Max.

Both phones are launching on September 18th, with preorders opening Saturday, September 12th. The 6.3-inch iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199, which is $100 more than last year’s phone. The 6.9-inch iPhone 18 Pro Max goes up to $1,299, another $100 jump.

The first foldable iPhone is finally here, and following its announcement, we got the chance to try the phone for ourselves. We’ve long been told that Apple would make a foldable iPhone once the tech was good enough — has it been worth the wait?

It definitely feels like something different. The inner screen has a decidedly matte finish that handled even some glare from the windows above the hands-on area well. The folding mechanism is smooth, and even IP68 rated, and the crease is almost impossible to find with my finger. The 5.4-inch outer screen looks petite by modern slab phone standards.