Apple takes the stage on September 9, and nothing about the phone has been confirmed. It also hasn’t needed to be. Eight months of leaks have converged on the same boring answer, and at this point the only genuinely exciting outcome is that they all turn out to be wrong.
I’ve been on iPhone for five years. 12 Pro Max first, 15 Pro Max now, and somewhere in between I stopped watching the September keynote live and started reading the liveblog the next morning instead. That’s not cynicism. It’s pattern recognition.
Twelve days on, the situation is still that very little has been confirmed regarding the new iPhone. All Apple has done is to announce a date, a time, a room, and three words. All the other information you’ve seen, including all the content in this article, is merely supply chain gossip, leaked case molds, analyst notes, regulatory filings and one huge data breach.
I’m able to let you know how I’ll be feeling on September 9 and so can you; that’s the point worth discussing.
Short list.
The event will take place on Wednesday, 9th September at 10 a.m. Pacific time in the Steve Jobs Theater and will be available on Apple’s website, the TV app and on YouTube. The tagline is ‘Surprise and Shine’.
John Ternus is the CEO; he assumed the position from Tim Cook on September 1, and so this is his first keynote address in the role, occurring nine days after the transition.
In June, Apple increased the prices of the Mac and the iPad. Before handing over control, Cook described the memory market as “like a hundred-year flood in terms of memory pricing, with exponential rises.”
That’s all there is to it; the pile is confirmed. All that lies below this line is mere rumour, and I shall continue to state that, since this particular cycle has deserved the caveat.
Before anybody treats the spec sheet as final, it should be noted that the viral iPhone Fold unboxing video which circulated in April was created by Johan Lelievre as an April Fool’s joke and was posted on April 1 before being passed off as genuine for several weeks; the device has never been switched on.
Image Credits: The Mac Observer
In June, a real breach did take place at Tata Electronics, one of Apple’s Indian assembly plants, as a result of which genuine supplier maps and drop-test photographs were leaked. However, the viral video linked to Evan Blass was not actually his; he publicly rejected the account, which was subsequently suspended, and the footage could have been produced by AI. As for Notebookcheck’s view on the alleged design leaks of the standard iPhone 18, it is straightforward in that there are no realistic ones, merely edited images being circulated on Weibo and TikTok.
The dummy units which YouTubers are measuring aren’t made by Apple either; they are replicas constructed by accessory suppliers using CAD data, which is why the widely circulated foldable mockup measured 11mm when the reported figure is 9mm.
Then, keep everything in a loose manner, including my argument.
Having said that, the solid foundation of this cycle, based on Gurman at Bloomberg, Ming-Chi Kuo, Jeff Pu, the case and dummy leaks from Sonny Dickson and Majin Bu, the Chinese battery filings, and the strings found in the iOS 27 code, has been very consistent. Here is the composite iPhone 18 Pro that they describe.
Image Credits: Digital Trends
It could be a smaller Dynamic Island, perhaps. Ice Universe states that it is about 35% narrower, while Digital Chat Station says that the island isn’t getting smaller until the iPhone 19. The two most frequently cited leakers in the industry can’t agree on whether the single most noticeable change to the front of the phone is taking place at all.
A display of the LTPO+ type, in the same 6.3 and 6.9 inch sizes.
The A20 Pro, which is said to be Apple’s first 2nm chip, has its RAM stacked onto the chip wafer and is claimed to be about 18% faster and 30% more efficient.
The main camera has a variable aperture, which represents a true optical improvement and is the most interesting feature on this list. According to some reports, it is available only on the Pro Max model.
At last the flagship model is getting Apple’s own C2 modem, featuring mmWave and satellite 5G; meanwhile the N2 networking chip remains a mystery even to those who are leaking information about it.
Dark Cherry is a new colour, and Cosmic Orange and Deep Blue are being retired.
Image Credits: Macworld
It is reported that the Camera Control button has lost its touch sensitivity and haptics and now only responds to pressure. This is an example of a feature being removed and it was included as part of the specifications.
The Pro Max has a slightly more robust body and a larger battery; according to Chinese regulatory documents, its battery capacity is 5,567mAh compared to 5,088mAh, a difference that would be genuinely useful. The same documents show that the regular Pro has a capacity of 4,288mAh as against 4,252mAh, a gap of 36 milliamp-hours.
The person who is usually correct on this point, Mark Gurman, has described the package as “minor tweaks” and used the word underwhelming in print; this is not the kind of thing an angry blogger would say. This is the Bloomberg view.
The most favourite item from the entire cycle is that, in the same month, MacRumors published an article with a headline stating that the iPhone 18 Pro might be disappointing, and another article which gave twelve reasons for waiting for the iPhone 18 Pro. No one involved is lying. That is simply the way this discussion has developed. We have all come to be excited about a phone about which we have all come to agree is boring.
The most common complaint I have heard myself is that old iPhones begin to take photographs like a mobile phone from 2004. That is not the case. The sensor is just as good as it was on the day you purchased the phone. Silicon doesn’t decay.
The reason is that the goalposts have been moved and I find myself on the wrong side of them. Most of what gives a photograph taken with a modern iPhone its modern appearance takes place after the shutter has been triggered, during processing on the chip. New processing features are introduced on new chips. Your hardware is in good condition, but your pipeline is fixed at the year you bought the phone. That’s why, when you see a friend taking photos with their newer phone in the same restaurant lighting, yours looks as if it had been taken through a sock.
This is no gossip. Apple has already made it clear how iOS 27 functions. It can be installed on an iPhone 11. The revamped Siri, the generative one which has the ability to have a real conversation and is the reason for the release, is required to run on an iPhone 15 Pro or later. The custom Siri voices, it is reported, need an iPhone 17 Pro or Air or later.
There are three levels of iPhone user in a single software update; my phone will download iOS 27 and end up with a settings screen containing things it isn’t allowed to run.
I agree with the engineering point of view, and in fact some of it is correct. But if a company says that my four-year-old phone is capable of running the new operating system yet at the same time isn’t able to run the new operating system, then I cease to hear anything about engineering and instead start to hear product strategy.
The hardware rumors are scarce while the pricing ones are abundant and inconsistent, a fact which is informative.
Gurman gives a figure of about $100, bringing the price down to around $1,199 and $1,299. IDC states a possible increase of $200. Jeff Pu claims a range of $250 to $300, which would bring the Pro Max up to $1,499. Counterpoint anticipates around $300 for the high-capacity models. That amounts to a $200 difference on the main figure, even though it is less than two weeks before the launch.
The actual cause is genuine and has nothing to do with Apple. The reason for the global shortage of memory is that all the people on the planet are simultaneously setting up AI datacentres. According to TrendForce the cost of the components needed for a 256GB iPhone 18 Pro is about 38% higher than that of the equivalent model from last year, memory accounting for around 34% of the build cost on the 1TB version. Apple has already issued warnings regarding its margins and received a downgrading as a result of this.
The costs rise. That’s fine, but there’s one rumor that caused me to put down my coffee.
It is said that Apple is switching the 1TB and 2TB models to use QLC flash from SK hynix, while the 256GB and 512GB models will continue to use TLC. QLC is slower when it comes to writing and wears out more quickly. If this is the case, you will have to pay an extra $200 or $400 for the highest storage level and end up with poorer storage than the person who bought the cheaper model.
In each cycle there is one leak which shows you where a company is heading; if that leak is accurate, then that’s the situation.
This is more than just a complaint because, on the same day and at the same event, Apple is said to be launching its most ambitious iPhone in ten years.
The device, which Apple calls the iPhone Ultra internally, is said to be 4.5mm thick when unfolded and thus the thinnest product that the company has ever released. It features a liquid-metal hinge, a frame made from titanium and aluminium, and a crease that is reportedly less than 0.15mm deep and 2.5 degrees. It has two batteries amounting to somewhere between 5,400 and 5,800mAh.
Image Credits: Notebookcheck
The outer screen is 5.5 inches and the inner one is 7.8 inches with a 4:3 ratio which no one else uses. Touch ID is included in the power button since Face ID cannot physically fit into a 4.5mm space.
Gurman refers to it as Apple’s most exciting product in recent years and states that the people who have used it love the hinge, love the fact that it folds in, and love the iPad-style layouts on the large screen. Indeed, it is not a company that has forgotten how to design hardware.
The rest of the reporting stated a price falling somewhere between $2,000 and $2,500, with the leaked pricing figures beginning at $2,320 for 256GB. Kuo estimated that between 500,000 and a million units would be assembled in the whole of the third quarter, out of 7 to 8 million for the half-year period. It might be the first to be launched in the United States, with other markets following two or three months later. Delivery times were expected to be between four and six weeks, and the units were likely to sell out.
There are two cameras: a wide-angle and an ultra-wide-angle one, with no telephoto option since there isn’t any space for it. At a price of $2,300, it has been sold to exactly those people who care about zoom. That was the sole complaint reportedly given by every early tester.
Therefore, if the leaks are to be believed, the interesting phone is one that is only available in limited numbers and can’t be obtained, while the phone you will in fact end up holding will be the one with the new paint and possibly a smaller notch, costing one to three hundred dollars more than last year’s model.
It is not stagnation; stagnation would be an accident; that is allocation.
It is worth saying outright, since nothing in this has been confirmed.
If the details are accurate, they’re by no means insignificant. It’s the first 2nm chip to be used in a phone, with the RAM fused directly onto the chip wafer, which represents a genuine packaging innovation with actual thermal implications. In the top-end models, Apple is now using its own modem after having relied on Qualcomm for so many years, and this version also includes a satellite capability. The variable aperture makes use of physical optics rather than being another trick based on computational bokeh. On the Watch side, the Series 12 and Ultra 4 are reported to finally receive a new S-chip after two generations of using the recycled S10, and ceramic cases are returning after six years. If you look at die shots just for enjoyment, then this is a good year.
Yet that doesn’t alter the fact that the phone is something one has to live with, and the only change you notice each time you unlock it is the one which the leakers are still arguing about.
I also think of the scenario on September 9 in which I appear foolish, and in that case I should be happy. Apple has had the ability to deliver genuine surprises in the past. In that situation, if the Dynamic Island is eliminated completely rather than just reduced in size, if the foldable phone is released in large numbers at a price that has a one in front of it, and if the new Siri turns out to operate on phones that people already have, then the rumor mill would have spent eight months talking about a phone that Apple wasn’t actually making. That result would be the ideal one and I would gladly write the follow-up.
Given that the only question worth asking is what there still is to be excited about, allow me to present my list, and I should make it clear that none of it is coloured.
Complete the front of the phone with all of Face ID being located under the glass and there being no cutout. The current rumour is that Apple will move exactly one of the four components (the flood illuminator) under the display and leave the other three in a smaller pill shape. That is the first stage of the migration, which is presented as a feature.
Send the ship software to the phones that people already have, or clearly explain to the buyer why it isn’t possible, using terms that the buyer can check.
Get the battery back to a useful state. The fact that battery degradation is the single most common reason why any of the people I know upgrade has now been turned into the main driver of upgrades.
A price that isn’t intended as a statement can be had for the foldable. The second-generation model, which is currently in stock, costs $1,400 and is the phone that changes my mind.
The fast flash ought to be placed in the more expensive category. There’s no need to state that.
I agree. It’s the first keynote given by a newly appointed CEO, nine days after taking the job, and it’s reportedly the first new iPhone form factor since 2017. What a real morning in the tech world and I won’t pretend that it isn’t.
I am not going to pre-order it. My phone is perfectly serviceable. The photos are all right, no matter what the internet has led me to believe when I compare them with those from a more recent model. As for the one device on display that I am actually interested in, it seems to be priced and subject to supply constraints, which is all the curiosity I end up with.
What I’ve worked out after five years with this company is that it never ceases to surprise me and that it has decided on the cost of that.