At 10am Pacific on September 10, Apple will host its annual iPhone event in the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California. We’re expecting new iPhones and a new Apple Watch of some kind, and as has been the case for recent Apple launches, there have been reliable leaks of details about both.
With the event less than a week away, let’s look at what we know so far—what will be different about the new iPhones? What features are coming to the Apple Watch? And will Apple actually deliver a “one more thing” announcement on top of the usual this time?
We’re doubtful about really big surprises at this point. The days of surprising revelations seem to be over; the company has settled into a fairly predictable product-release schedule, and most major details about new products—be they hardware or software—tend to show up in reports in tech and business publications around the Web.
That said, sifting through all the bad reports to find the reliable ones can be a real task. So can framing each report in terms of how likely it is to come to pass. That’s what we’ve tried to do here. Let’s start with the iPhone.
Once again, three new iPhones
The new iPhones are all about the cameras. But let’s start with the names. A Bloomberg report citing sources familiar with Apple’s plans says that three iPhones will again launch. They’ll be direct successors to each of the 2018 phones—the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max, and the iPhone XR.
The two high-end phones—follow-ups to the XS and XS Max—will carry the “Pro” label, a la the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro. We expect the sizes and basic form factors to stay pretty close to the same, so “iPhone Pro” and “iPhone Pro Max” wouldn’t be surprising. Not as much is known about the name of the XR replacement, but iPhone 11 is certainly possible. One other possibility—and this is pure speculation based on past Apple naming conventions—is that the company might simply rebrand that model as the “iPhone.”
Above all else, the upgrades this year are about cameras. The flagship feature, probably exclusive to the iPhone Pro models, will be greatly improved optical zoom and low-light photography, as well as the capability to take much wider-angle photos. Video recording is also likely to improve.
Apple will introduce a completely different camera array on the back, and this will probably represent the biggest change to the devices’ appearance apart from the logo change we’ll get into momentarily. That means a triple-camera lens system for the Pro models and a dual-camera system for the cheaper model. It will be the first time every iPhone Apple introduces in a given year will come with optical zoom, and it seems possible that Apple will include an OLED in all three models for the first time, not just the two flagships.
Below: The iPhone XS Max from our review last year. Expect a very different camera array and a differently positioned logo. But the 2019 iPhone flagship will otherwise be similar.
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