The Apple 2018 iPhone Event Live Blog

12:26PM EDT - Hello everybody and welcome from Apple's Steve Jobs Theater here in Cupertino, CA.

12:27PM EDT - For me personally this is the first time around on the Apple campus, and looking forward to what Apple has to reveal in this year's iPhone release event.

12:27PM EDT - There's been rumours floating around pointing out that we might be looking at two new iPhone X successors - and a third cheaper variant.

12:28PM EDT - What excites me the most is to see what this year's new Apple A12 SoC brings to the table. Hopefully we're going to be looking at a new 7nm silicon with lots of improvements on the IP blocks as well.

12:31PM EDT - Ryan should hopefully screen capturing slides off the live stream for better quality images - while I'm on location.

12:55PM EDT - The presentation scheduled to begin in 5 minutes, hang in there!

01:00PM EDT - The lights are dimmed and an introduction video started, showcasing Apple's new headquarters.

01:03PM EDT - The presentation has started, Tim in on stage.

01:03PM EDT - Tim talking about the history of Apple, starting with the Apple 2.

01:04PM EDT - A profound impact on people's lives with each product.

01:04PM EDT - Apple stores becoming part of community.

01:04PM EDT - The Bologna store revitalized a square in the city.

01:04PM EDT - 5 million visitors per year in Apple's stores.

01:05PM EDT - "We aim to put the customers at the center at everything we do"

01:05PM EDT - "iOS is the most advanced and personal OS in the world"

01:05PM EDT - 2 billion iOS devices shipped to date soon.

01:05PM EDT - "iOS changed the way we live, work, learn"

01:06PM EDT - The mission started to personalizing the desktop experience, that evolved over to the mobile space, and now even further.

01:06PM EDT - Presenting the new Apple watch.

01:06PM EDT - The Apple watch has grown tremendously in such a short time, creating a new category.

01:07PM EDT - It's the #1 smartwatch in the world - but actually it's also the #1 watch.

01:07PM EDT - "Apple watch has become a indespensible part of millions of people"

01:08PM EDT - Apple Watch has become indespensible in three areas.

01:08PM EDT - Connectivity is one part - being connected everywhere on your wrist.

01:09PM EDT - Fitness and health have also been two key aspects, monitoring your heartrate and your activity.

01:09PM EDT - Taking Apple watch to the next level - A intro video starts playing.

01:10PM EDT - Apple Watch Series 4

01:10PM EDT - "Everything has been re-engineered"

01:11PM EDT - The screen now extends to a 30% larger display area.

01:11PM EDT - There's been minimal changes in the watch's dimensions to enable this.

01:11PM EDT - The new screen has a lot better screen-to-bezel ratio.

01:12PM EDT - Brand new watch face with up to 8 complications showcasing you various information.

01:12PM EDT - A lot of new customization options for the new faces.

01:13PM EDT - New "Breathe" app to help you for focused breathing.

01:14PM EDT - The new display definitely seems like a major upgrade and key aspect of the new Watch.

01:14PM EDT - The new digital crown now has haptic feedback, better erproducting the feel of a mechanical crown.

01:14PM EDT - New speakers on the side of the watch with a lot louder volume.

01:15PM EDT - The microphone has been relocated on the right side next to the crown.

01:15PM EDT - The new back is made of ceramic and saphire crystal. This enables better cellular reception.

01:15PM EDT - The new Watch is powered by the new S4 SiP SoC platform.

01:16PM EDT - A new dual-core 64-bit CPU and new GPU - both in-house designs, meaning that Apple has now stopped using Arm's Cortex cores in the Watch.

01:17PM EDT - New accelerometer and gyroscope at 8x the sensor reporting speed, enabling much better tracking of activity. It's able to now even to identify a fall - something that's actually hard to do.

01:18PM EDT - Series 4 can now discern between falls, trips, and slipping.

01:18PM EDT - When it detects a fall and can initiate an emergency call. After one minute of no activity after a fall it can automattically call the emergencies.

01:19PM EDT - The back heart reate sensor is now upgraded.

01:19PM EDT - The new watch now can alert when it detects when your heart rate is too low.

01:20PM EDT - A second feature now is able to detect heart rythm. This has been introduced in the last few generations of industry HRT sensors

01:21PM EDT - The new sensor also includes a ECG feature, enabling an electrocardiogram.

01:21PM EDT - Apple says that this is the first ECG product available to consumers over the counter.

01:22PM EDT - The crown acts as an electrode which you have to touch with your other hand's finger - creating a closed loop between the Watch and your arms, measuring the ECG data of your heart.

01:23PM EDT - President of the American Heart Association, taking stage.

01:23PM EDT - He's applauding Apple's innovation and commitment to health.

01:24PM EDT - Information and data while having a health event allows the patient to collect data when it happens - most of the time measuring at the hospital the anomaly might not be measured in time.

01:25PM EDT - The Apple watch 4 has even received clearance for the FDA - which means that it is considered as an actual medical device.

01:26PM EDT - I wonder how Apple will handle the feature in other markets - getting regulatory clearance is going to be problematic.

01:27PM EDT - The personal information is strictly secured in the Apple watch - it's encrypted in the watch and the cloud.

01:27PM EDT - A lot of all-round improvements in every aspect of the new watch.

01:27PM EDT - Battery life is said to have the same battery life as prior generations - even with all the new features.

01:28PM EDT - Another video about the watch playing.

01:31PM EDT - I think that's a wrap on the Apple Watch Serioes 4.

01:32PM EDT - Obviously the bands are inter-changeable with previous generation iterations.

01:33PM EDT - $399 for the GPS version, $499 for the cellular, and keeping the previous gen version at $279.

01:33PM EDT - Oder starting Friday 14th, availability on the 21st.

01:34PM EDT - Tim is back on the stage.

01:34PM EDT - Another product video showcasing the watch.

01:35PM EDT - Now we're going to address the new iPhone.

01:36PM EDT - Stunning all-screen designs, camera system with true depth and face ID have been key features of the iPhone X.

01:36PM EDT - A lot of innovation in the IPhone X so that it changed the industry.

01:36PM EDT - It became the #1 smartphone in the world.

01:37PM EDT - It's also the most loved smartphone with 98% customer satisfaction.

01:37PM EDT - Today we're taking the iPhone X to the next level.

01:37PM EDT - "By far the most advanced iPhone we've ever created"

01:37PM EDT - Intro video of the new generation phone.

01:37PM EDT - Two new sizes in the iPhone X style.

01:38PM EDT - The iPhone XS.

01:38PM EDT - The new iPhone is made of stainless steel, with gold finishes.

01:38PM EDT - The screen is top-to-bottom edge-to-edge.

01:39PM EDT - New formulation of glass to make it more durable than ever.

01:39PM EDT - Gold, silver and space-grey are the new colours.

01:39PM EDT - IP68 rating on the new phones.

01:39PM EDT - Super Retina display - 5.8" OLED display.

01:40PM EDT - 2.7MPixels

01:40PM EDT - The 5.8" screen is a bigger display while being a smaller device than the iPhone 8 Plus

01:40PM EDT - Dolby Vision HDR10 capability.

01:40PM EDT - HDR photo capture as well, able to display it on the display natively in the large gamut.

01:41PM EDT - Also a new 6.5" model - 2688x1242 resolution at 3.3MP.

01:41PM EDT - The new big phone is as big as the iPhone 8 Plus, but having a massively bigger display.

01:41PM EDT - "What do you call a phone bigger than Plus size"?

01:41PM EDT - It's the iPhone XS Max

01:42PM EDT - A lot of new software taking advantage of the new much larger display.

01:42PM EDT - 5.8 and 6.5" screens, ticking all the features.

01:42PM EDT - Colour management, touch to wake, HDR10 wide gamut.

01:43PM EDT - Stereo sound better than any previous iPhone.

01:43PM EDT - New powerful speakers with software processing to achieve much better stereo separation.

01:43PM EDT - Face ID now being talked. Powered by the True Depth camera system.

01:44PM EDT - Talking about the myriad of sensors inside the notch area of the iPhone XS.

01:44PM EDT - Faster algorithms and faster Secure Enclave vastly accelerating Face ID unlocking.

01:44PM EDT - New A-series chip.

01:44PM EDT - Better than any other smartphone.

01:45PM EDT - The A12 Bionic.

01:45PM EDT - The A12 is the industry's first 7nm chip. Apple means it'll be the first one shipped, as Huawei had taken the first credit to the announcement.

01:45PM EDT - 6-core CPU, 4-GPU.

01:46PM EDT - Apple designed GPU with 4-cores - 50% faster performance.

01:46PM EDT - New Neural Engine with an 8-core design. Previously there were only 2 MAC engines in the A11.

01:47PM EDT - 600GOPs for the A11, the A12 augments that to 5TOPs, almost 10x faster.

01:47PM EDT - New media pipeline with ISPs, video encoders.

01:47PM EDT - Storage available up to 512GB.

01:48PM EDT - The CPU performance bump is quite conservative at 15% however efficiency is promised to be great with 40% lower power.

01:48PM EDT - "A12 Bionic was designed for iPhone, not any other smartphone"

01:49PM EDT - The new chip supports the iPhone's typical use-cases, camera, gaming and variety of app uses.

01:49PM EDT - Multi-tasking is easy with the A12's power.

01:50PM EDT - iOS 12's performance upgrades in coordination with the A12 allows for 30% faster app launches.

01:50PM EDT - Machine learning on the device is being talked about now.

01:51PM EDT - The next generation NPU allows for real-time inferencing on video data streams.

01:51PM EDT - This allows for much better experience in image recognition applications, animoji's being an example.

01:52PM EDT - Core ML framework is opened up to the new Neural engine, enabling 9x faster speed.

01:52PM EDT - Running at 1/10th of the energy - vastly improving Augmented Reality use-cases.

01:53PM EDT - The camera view-finder in AR really transforms the experience.

01:53PM EDT - ARKit 2 enables better detection, more users.

01:54PM EDT - The A12 Bionic allows next-generation apps. We have 3 developers here showcasing their new apps.

01:54PM EDT - Todd Howard from Bethesda taking the stage.

01:55PM EDT - Showcasing The Elder Scrolls : Blades

01:55PM EDT - A first person RPG - this game has some really great graphics for a mobile game.

01:56PM EDT - "Scenes like these were used to be only available on consoles"

01:57PM EDT - Now it's possible to do it on the phone, all thanks to the new incredible performance of the new chip.

01:57PM EDT - I'd say this looks as good or maybe even better than desktop Skyrim.

01:58PM EDT - Blades comes to iOS this fall and is available for pre-order.

01:58PM EDT - The next dev showcasing Core ML from Nex Team.

01:58PM EDT - "Homecourt"

01:59PM EDT - An app to improve basketball tratining.

01:59PM EDT - The app uses AR to showcase statistics of tracking the court

01:59PM EDT - The power of the new SoC allows for features that weren't possible before as it would be too slow.

02:00PM EDT - It tracks six metrics for every shot.

02:01PM EDT - The third app uses AR for gaming.

02:01PM EDT - Directive Games CEO on stage.

02:02PM EDT - Showcasing a proper AR arcade style experience.

02:03PM EDT - Again talking about how the new GPU enables this - previously there wasn't enough performance for it.

02:04PM EDT - Moving onto the new camera.

02:04PM EDT - "World's most popular camera"

02:05PM EDT - Increasingly even professionals are using the camera - showcasing one shot that made to the cover of Time magazine.

02:05PM EDT - "You're going to be blown away by the iPhone XS camera."

02:05PM EDT - "You're going to be blown away by the iPhone XS camera."

02:06PM EDT - 12MP wide camera, with new larger sensor increasing the pixel pitch to 1.4µm.

02:06PM EDT - Telephoto 12MP camera with 2x zoom.

02:06PM EDT - New front-camera sensor with 7MP resolution and faster capture.

02:07PM EDT - The ISP works in tandem with the CPU. Exposure, white balance, focus, NR and so on.

02:07PM EDT - The ISP in the A12 does this a lot better than before.

02:07PM EDT - The new ISP works with the Neural Engine to augment the ISP's functionality.

02:08PM EDT - 1TOPs per photo.

02:08PM EDT - "Smart HDR"

02:08PM EDT - A new feature unique to the new iPhone XS'.

02:09PM EDT - The new capture mode captures a series of consecutive images at different exposures and the ISP merges it back together in to a composite image.

02:10PM EDT - The new smart HDR allows for very fast captures and has no issues even in natural dynamic range scenarios such as shooting against the sun.

02:11PM EDT - There's some visible processing on that last example where you can see the fake bokeh.

02:12PM EDT - After-the fact depth of field adjustment on the image.

02:13PM EDT - What's key here is that the software really needs to be good in segmentation on the subject.

02:13PM EDT - Repeating the term "Computational photography" that I've used this summer on the Huawei P20's.

02:14PM EDT - Now showcasing a video recording in low-light.

02:15PM EDT - Does the new iPhone XS's have finally gotten stereo microphone captures? That is currently the biggest weakness of the iPhone's video recording.

02:15PM EDT - No mention of that as of yet.

02:15PM EDT - Moving into battery life.

02:16PM EDT - Half an hour longer battery life for the small device, 1.5h more on the iPhone XS Max.

02:16PM EDT - New Dual-SIM capability.

02:17PM EDT - DSDS - Dual SIM dual standby, meaning only one active SIM at a time when calling.

02:17PM EDT - eSIM is now supported by the new phones.

02:17PM EDT - eSIM support also requires carrier support, hopefully this kick-starts wider support of the new SIM standard.

02:18PM EDT - Only dual SIM in China? Does that mean the western version is dual SIM only via eSIM?

02:19PM EDT - Talking about the teams who brought you the iPhones.

02:19PM EDT - Apple is now run on 100% renewable energy.

02:20PM EDT - The campus is powered by solar panels on the roofs and bio-gas fuel cells.

02:20PM EDT - Apples' data-centers are also using fully clean energy.

02:21PM EDT - Apple strives to eliminate to mine new metals from the earth.

02:21PM EDT - Sourced materials that are recyclable

02:21PM EDT - Longer lasting materials in the new iPhones.

02:21PM EDT - The motherboard is now using recycled tin solder.

02:21PM EDT - This one change prevents 10000 tons of tin ore mining in a single year.

02:22PM EDT - Also transitioning to recycled and bio plastics.

02:22PM EDT - all the new iPhones run iOS12

02:23PM EDT - Updating older devices makes them viable for longer, and this helps with eletronics disposal.

02:24PM EDT - "The best iPhones ever made, by a long shot."

02:25PM EDT - Apple wants to reach most customers - and now teasing one more iPhone.

02:25PM EDT - Intro video of another new model.

02:26PM EDT - The iPhone XR

02:26PM EDT - Aluminum made, new durable glass, in white black, blue, coral, yellow.

02:26PM EDT - Edge-to-edge screen. Also a red version.

02:27PM EDT - IP67 rating.

02:27PM EDT - IP67 rating.

02:27PM EDT - First apple edge-to-edge LCD display.

02:27PM EDT - "The most advanced LCD ever in a smartphone"

02:27PM EDT - "Liquid Retina" display

02:27PM EDT - 6.1" diameter, finding itself between the XS and XS Max

02:28PM EDT - 1792x828 resolution with 1.4MP

02:28PM EDT - That's quite low resolution for its size

02:29PM EDT - No 3D touch on this new model.

02:29PM EDT - But it introduces more haptic touch features.

02:30PM EDT - The iPhone XR also comes with the A12 Bionic.

02:31PM EDT - Portrait mode and bokeh even with only one camera.

02:32PM EDT - Overall it looks like the XR is feature-equivalent to the XS, only with an LCD screen and no telephoto lens.

02:32PM EDT - The XR lasts 1.5h more than the iPhone 8 Plus

02:33PM EDT - Looking forward to what the price segmentation will be between the models.

02:33PM EDT - A lot more colours available on the XR than on the XS.

02:34PM EDT - Three new models of iPhones today. Product video about them now.

02:38PM EDT - The iPhone XR comes in 6finishes, at 64, 128 and 256GB starting at $749

02:38PM EDT - Availability October 26th

02:39PM EDT - The iPhone XS in 64GB, 256GB and 512GB starting at $999 and the XS Max starting at $1099

02:39PM EDT - Availability starting September 21st

02:39PM EDT - September 28th for select markets in EMEA and Asia.

02:40PM EDT - The iPhone 7 is now $449, iPhone 8 $549

02:40PM EDT - iOS 12 rolling out to all iPhone starting September 17th.

02:40PM EDT - "The best lineup we've ever had"

02:41PM EDT - New Apple homepod - if you have to of them you can use them as stereo speakers.

02:42PM EDT - New updates to TV OS.

02:42PM EDT - Homepod and TV OS updates coming next Monday.

02:42PM EDT - Also a new update to macOS Mojave - available on September 24th.

02:44PM EDT - Recapping through all of the annoucements today.

02:44PM EDT - "Apple is pushing its products forward"

02:45PM EDT - It's a wrap for today's event. I'll be heading out to the hands-on while Ryan is preparing an article. Thank everybody for following!