The last major device to resist the USB-C port, Apple’s iPhone, is officially dropping its flag. The company confirmed at its annual high mass on Tuesday that the new edition of its most popular device, which represents some 52% of its revenues, will abandon the Apple-exclusive socket called “Lightning”.
This is the most notable novelty of the rather short presentation, less than an hour and a half, held at the headquarters in Cupertino. The adoption of the USB-C socket, on the way to becoming universal, was almost inevitable for Apple since the European Union made it compulsory from the fall of 2024. Gradually since 2015, all Apple devices will therefore have integrated this new standard. Charging cases for AirPods and iPhones were the last devices to have a Lightning jack.
We have also announced a new generation of AirPods Pro, also powered by a USB-C socket.
Legacies of 2022
The four new iPhone models, two standard and two Pro, are offered in two screen sizes, 6.1 and 6.7 inches. All four benefit from a photographic function called “Next-Generation Portrait”. In summary, it will be possible afterwards to modify the focus of a photo taken in Portrait mode, for example on a person previously blurred in the background.
As Apple has become accustomed to for several years, the basic iPhone 15s incorporate the characteristics of last year’s iPhone 14 Pro: they notably include the display of a dot at the top of the screen called “Dynamic Island ”, which presents content complementary to what is activated on the phone.
These iPhone 15s, which will be in stores starting September 22 at the respective announced costs of $1,129 and $1,279 in Canada, get the A16 Bionic chip and a main lens of up to 48 megapixels, two components once again of the iPhone 14Pro.
Titanium and “Action Button”
It is especially on the iPhone 15 Pro side that we find new functions. First, a new titanium shell described as “the most high-end material ever used on an Apple product” sees the light of day. The new A17 Pro chip is presented with the usual fireworks of statistics: built on a 3nm architecture, it includes 19 billion transistors and a 10% faster CPU. Its Neural Engine chip, capable of “35 million billion operations”, notably allows better local processing of artificial intelligence, giving for example Siri the possibility of responding to certain requests without connection to a server.
Even the USB-C of the iPhone Pro is pampered: with a suitable cable – but which is not supplied – its data transfer capacity goes up to 10 Gb/s.
For photography, the iPhone Pro 15 still has the main camera at 48 MP, but the telephoto lens can go up to 3x, and 5x for the Pro Max model.
The other notable addition is the disappearance of the switch at the top of the phone previously used to activate Silent mode. This switch becomes an “Action Button”, which can be associated with nine commands. Besides silent mode, it can also trigger recording of voice memos, shortcuts and camera.
The two iPhone Pros will also be in stores starting September 22, costing $1,449 and $1,749 in Canada.
Reply with a tap
The other category of devices that we wanted to promote this Tuesday is what Tim Cook presented as “the most popular watch in the world”, the Apple Watch. The Series 9 will first have a rather spectacular pink variant, with an S9 chip powering a GPU that is claimed to be 30% faster and which will allow more local processing of requests for Siri.
The screen has a maximum brightness of 2000 nits, double the previous generation, and can go down to a tiny 1 nit. This watch also uses UWB signals to detect and guide to a nearby iPhone, similar to AirTags.
We have also added a function presented as “really cool” by Jeff Williams, vice president of operations at Apple. “We believe you will use it all the time,” he said. This is a command called “Double Tap”: by tapping the thumb and index finger of the hand wearing the watch twice, you answer or interrupt a phone call.
The Apple Watch Ultra 2, meanwhile, has an even more impressive 3,000 nits of brightness, making it “the brightest screen Apple has ever created.” Its autonomy has been increased to 36 hours in normal use, 72 in energy saving mode. The Apple Watch Series 9 will be available from September 22 starting at $549, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 at $1099.