Another September, another Apple event. Today, Apple revealed its new iPhone 17 lineup in regular and Pro models, as well as the new and very thin iPhone Air. The company also showed off the new Apple Watches—Series 11, Ultra 3, and SE—and the refreshed AirPods Pro 3.
There wasn’t much talk of software, or about Apple’s ongoing efforts to seamlessly integrate AI into all its products. But we got lots of hardware! Here’s everything Apple announced today.
New iPhones
There are four iPhones as usual, but Apple has changed things up quite a bit this year. Gone is the Plus model, and in its place is the iPhone Air, a new ultra-slim and lightweight iPhone that’s just 5.6 mm thick.
You only get one camera on this model, though, and Apple seems to be using high-density silicon-carbon batteries. The company is claiming the same 27 hours of video playback that the iPhone 16 Plus was capable of, even though this phone is much thinner and presumably has a slimmer battery. We’ll see how it performs when we test it. There’s a new low-profile MagSafe battery pack to accompany it in case you’re worried (or Apple is worried) about battery.
The iPhone 17 Pro models have a completely fresh look, with a new “Camera Plateau” design. The highlights here are a vapor chamber cooling system which helps regulate the heat generated by the beefier processor, and a 48-megapixel telephoto camera that hits 4x optical zoom and 8x “optical-like” zoom.
All of these phones employ Apple’s new N1 wireless networking chip, which features Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread support, though only the iPhone Air comes with Apple’s homebrewed C1X modem. That’s likely because the C1X doesn’t support millimeter wave 5G (only sub-6).
Perhaps more exciting is the fresh 18-megapixel selfie camera, which supports the Center Stage feature that automatically adjusts the framing to keep you centered. It also has Dual Capture support, so you can send reaction videos all day everyday and call yourself a Twitch streamer.
The base iPhone 17 starts at $799. The iPhone Air is $999, the iPhone 17 Pro is $1,099, and the iPhone Pro Max is $1,199. All iPhones will be available on September 19.
And this wasn’t in the presentation, but iOS 26 will be available on iPhones old and new on September 15. —Julian Chokkattu
3 New Watches!
Compared to last year’s somewhat lackluster 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, this year sees a complete revamp, including a long overdue update of the company’s entry-level Watch SE. This year, the Watch SE has the latest S10 chip, which means that it finally has a lot of the features available on more expensive watches, like the sleep tracking and satellite messaging. Satellite messaging became available on the iPhone last year, and is now available on all three watches. You can text your family and friends when you’re off the grid via your watch. If your watch detects that you’ve crashed or had an incident, it will also send your location via satellite to emergency services and contacts.
The latest update to the Watch Series 11 and Watch Ultra 3’s vaunted series of health features is hypertension notification, which Apple expects to be FDA-cleared within the month.
Over a period of 30 days, the watch’s optical heart sensor will check if you have symptoms of hypertension, which affects as many as one out of three of the global population and can cause everything from heart attacks to kidney disease to stroke.
This is in addition to hardware upgrades like wide-angle OLED displays that we saw on last year’s Series 10, along with—this is huge—a full 24 hours of battery life on the Series 11 and up to 72 hours of battery life on the Watch Ultra 3 in low power mode. The Apple Watches have had notoriously poor battery life for a decade, and now you can (probably) wear your Apple Watch all through the night or for a weekend camping trip! Amazing!
