After a long wait Apple has finally revealed the newest designs in its iPhone lineup.
The firm unveiled the iPhone 11 at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino on Tuesday, showing off a $699 mid-range handset with a 6.1-inch display that will come in six colors: purple, white, yellow, green, black, and Product Red.
Apple also showed off its new premium models, the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max, which come with either a 5.8-inch or 6.5-inch display and will be available starting at $999 (R14683) and $1099 (R16153), respectively.
Apple launches the ‘most powerful and most advanced’ iPhone’s. Picture: Apple
The stainless steel Pro devices boast three cameras and come in four colors, including the new midnight green, all with a matte textured finish.
They’ll also feature the new A13 Bionic chip, making for what the company says is the ‘most powerful and most advanced’ series of iPhone yet.
Pre-orders for all three of the new iPhones will open this Friday before the devices hit stores on Sept. 20.
The event began at 1 p.m. ET with some brief words from CEO Tim Cook, before launching into a look at the upcoming subscription services, Apple Arcade and Apple TV+.
Apple also revealed the successor to its 6th-generation on iPad, showing off a $329 (R4835.64) 7th-gen tablet with a 10.2-inch Retina Display and 3.5 million pixel resolution, and unveiled the Series 5 Apple Watch, which will feature an ‘always-on’ display for the first time.
The annual launch event confirmed many of the rumors that have been circulating over the past few months.
As expected, services – such as Apple Arcade and Apple TV+ – played a much bigger role this year than in the past.
‘Through the deep integration of hardware software and services, these products empower people to do incredible things every day,’ Cook said to the audience at the Steve Jobs Theater as he opened the event.
iPhone Pro and Pro Max
Apple reserved most of the fanfare for the highly-anticipated iPhone 11 Pro, unveiling the device just over an hour into its presentation.
The Pro design features surgical grade stainless steel with a machine glass backing and matte textured finish.
It has an OLED, True Tone display that achieves 1,200 nits – a unit of luminescence – meaning pictures will be ultra-clear, and ultra-bright. It is essentially a ‘Mac Pro display being built into iPhone,’ the company said.
iPhone 11 Pro will also have Super Retina XDR display and spatial audio sound, thanks to Dolby Atmos.
The device itself is also 15 percent more energy efficient, according to Apple.
It boasts the new A13 bionic chip and the firm says it now uses ‘machine learning all throughout the iPhone,’ with a low-power design and the ability to conduct one trillion operations per second.
The Pro battery will allow for four more hours of battery life per day on the 5.8-inch model and up to five more hours per day for the Max.
Its trio of cameras combined with the neural engine of the A13 chip will make for better photo capabilities than ever.
iPhone Pro models will be able to take wide and ultra-wide angle photos, and feature a 2x telephoto lens.
The combination means you can ‘take all three shots from one vantage point,’ Apple says, for both up close and and wide views.
iPhone Pro also introduces a new image processing system called Deep Fusion, which the firm says is ‘computational photography mad science.’
Pre-orders for the iPhone Pro and iPhone Pro Max will begin this Friday, Sept. 13, at 5 a.m. PDT. The phones will begin shipping on Sept. 20.
iPhone 11
Apple also introduced the more affordable iPhone 11, which starts at $699 (approximately R10 000). As expected, the handset leans heavily into its camera features.
The aluminium-glass handset has a dual camera system, boasting a 12-megapixel camera that can switch from wide to ultra-wide, offering up to a 120-degree field of view.
It also achieves 2x optical zoom and an ‘immersive camera interface,’ that will let users ‘see and capture the area outside of the frame.’
This will be particularly useful for landscape shots, the firm says, and is ‘great for short spaces where you can’t back up.’
Like the Pro models, the iPhone 11 uses machine learning to get the most out of its image processing abilities, and features multi-scale tone mapping and portrait lighting effects.
It will also have Night Mode, allowing for photos even in very low-light environments, be it outside at night or in a dark restaurant.
The iPhone 11 can shoot in 4K at up to 60 frames per second, Apple says, and has image stabilization for crisp shots. A ‘zoom wheel’ in the display will let you transition easily between the two cameras, Apple said.
iPhone 11 will also come with the ability to shoot slow motion video with the front-facing camera for the first time, and can capture 4K video with this lens.
Like the Pro models, the iPhone 11 relies on the A13 Bionic chip, which Apple says is the ‘fastest CPU ever in a smartphone.’
The new chip will also make for better battery life, making the iPhone 11 the firm’s best smartphone yet in this category.
It achieves an hour more battery life than the iPhone Xr, which was said to have the ‘longest battery life ever’ when it was released last year.
Unlocking your phone with FaceID will also be a much faster process, Apple said.
-Daily Mail
