Today is Apple’s Wonderlust event, and we expect to see the rumored iPhone 15 and new Apple Watches announced. You can watch Apple’s Wonderlust event stream starting at 10 am PDT/1 pm EDT. This is the first event since Apple revealed the Vision Pro on WWDC early this summer. The annual fall iPhone event has become a cultural touch point that heralds the end of summer, right up there with pumpkin spice.
For months, a seemingly endless flow of iPhone 15 rumors circulating online. Some hint at a straightforward round of year-to-year upgrades, while others point to the possibility of a revised, larger Pro model called the iPhone 15 Ultra. As anticipation builds, here’s everything you can expect from Apple’s current fall event.
Wanderlust or wonderlust?
The invitation to the event was mysterious, showing an Apple logo made up of small, dusty particles. The logo has grooves carved out of it, like the shapes you see in windy sand dunes.
The tagline, “Wonderlust,” is of course a play on the word “wanderlust,” which means a strong desire or urge to wander. Does wonder mean a strong longing for or an urge to ask? Like everyone else, we’re trying to read something in the invitation and wondering what it has to do with Apple’s upcoming announcements. Could the logo’s grooved cutouts hint at a less boxy iPhone design? Could the particles be referring to improved cameras capable of capturing more detail? Could the colors — metallic shades of gray, blue and even gold — be a reference to the colors of the new iPhone or Apple Watch?
Or is it all Apple recognizes the transient nature of existence? No idea. But I expect the iPhone 15 Pro to be the headliner.
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The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus
Like the iPhone 14 series, there will likely be four models in the new iPhone line: the iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who has a solid record when covering Apple leaks, the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus will be a repackaged iPhone 14 Pro without the telephoto camera or stainless steel body.
The new phones inherit a 48-megapixel main camera and the A16 chip from the 14 Pros. On the outside, both phones will trade their display notches for the Dynamic Island cutout that also debuted on the 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max.
Apple brought back the Plus model for the iPhone 14 series last year. It replaces the place previously reserved for the iPhone Mini model.
Despite the addition of Dynamic Island, don’t expect any changes to the screen. Show analyst Ross Young SAYS in a September 2022 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he doesn’t expect the base iPhone 15 models to get as high a refresh rate as Apple’s Pro iPhones.
And according to a report in May by ChargerLab, a battery and charging specialist website with a consistent track record for rumors, all four iPhone 15 models will support 15-watt wireless charging. using the Qi2 open standard announced earlier this year. If this is true, it could mean that the iPhone 15 will open a new world of wireless charging devices that do not require licensed Apple MagSafe accessories.
But the biggest change expected for all four iPhones is the move away from the Lightning connector. Likely driven by pressure from the European Union, which passed legislation adopting USB-C as a common charging standard, the iPhone 15 series has a USB-C port instead of a Lightning port. The last time Apple moved the power port on the iPhone was in 2012, when it debuted the Lighting port on the iPhone 5, which spelled the end of the wide 30-pin iPod connector used in the past.
It’s a bit highbrow how Apple handles this, like whether USB-C will be on all new iPhones worldwide or just in the EU. But it is likely that all new iPhone models will be sold with a USB-C port for the foreseeable future.
The lenses of the iPhone 14 Pro Max remain small. Apple could put the next telephoto lens inside the body of the iPhone 15 Pro Max through a periscope assembly.
The iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max
Of all the expected announcements by Apple, the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max may have the biggest changes. According to Bloomberg’s Gurman, stainless steel is gone, and instead the Pro model’s frame will be made from titanium. Shifting materials helps reduce the overall weight of each phone, which is heavy even without a case.
The iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max will likely get a new chip called A17 with a supertiny, 3-nanometer processor, Apple’s smallest silicon to date. Around the front, both phones are likely to have thinner display bezels.
A close-up of the camera bump on the Sony Xperia 1 V. The bottom lens is actually a mirror that allows the periscope lens to lie flat on the body to take pictures.
The biggest change in the Pro models is the USB-C port, which in a break from the regular 15 and 15 Plus can support faster data speeds for things like transferring files and ProRes video files.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max may get a new 6x optical telephoto camera. Ming-Chi Kuo, a prominent Apple analyst with TF International Securities, predicts that the iPhone 15 Pro Max will have a horizontally mounted periscope lens and camera unit inside the phone’s body, similar to available on Pixel 7 Pro, Galaxy S23 Ultra and Sony Xperia. 1 V.
Doubling the native optical zoom from 3x to 6x should enable you to take zoomed-in photos with better detail, resolution and dynamic range compared to the 6x digital zoom of a current iPhone 14 Prof.
The HTC U12 has no physical buttons. Instead there are nubs where the buttons would normally go that are touch sensitive. Apple is rumored to do the same with its iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.
Kuo’s report also suggests both Pro models will have solid-state volume and power buttons, further differentiating them from the regular 15 and 15 Plus. The buttons are not mechanical and will be more similar to the touch sensitive area that debuted on the iPhone 7 and works like a “home button” thanks to some smart haptic feedback. Back in 2018, the HTC U12 had solid-state buttons instead of mechanical ones; however, the experience of using it is not good.
There are a couple of rumors floating around though that are a bit dated or unlikely. The first is that the iPhone 15 Pro Max could be rebranded as the iPhone 15 Ultra. Bloomberg’s Gurman mentioned the possibility almost a year ago, but that should be taken with a grain of salt because Gurman hasn’t raised it recently.
Another up-in-the-air rumor comes via MacRumors, which found code in a beta version of iOS 17 that describes functionality for an action button like the one on the Apple Watch Ultra. Such a hardware addition would be a first for Apple, and the iPhone’s action button is for many phone-oriented tasks such as shortcuts or triggering the camera’s shutter. We’ll have to wait until the 12th to find out.
Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2
Apple Watch Ultra (left) vs. 41mm Apple Watch Series 8.
In a less ambitious update, it looks like the next regular Apple Watch will likely be a relatively modest year-over-year iteration of the Apple Watch Series 8. The Series 9 could come in a bag color. As reported by MacRumors, based on a post by X/Twitter user ShrimpApplePro, the Apple Watch Series 9 may have a new pink color.
The Series 9 is likely to be powered by a new S9 chip, which Bloomberg’s Gurman, posting on his Power On Discord channel in May, described as bringing improvements to performance and efficiency. That’s another way of saying battery life could be better.
The Apple Watch Ultra will see a second generation version. The rugged watch debuted last year, and a new version could carry a faster chip and come in a black titanium finish, according to an X/Twitter post by ShrimpApplePro. A black version of the Ultra would look great!
Alright, let’s talk about everything.
Potpourri and wrap-ups
Will the Vision Pro appear at Apple’s Sept. 12 events?
The AirPods case will see a new version with a USB-C connector. iOS 17 and WatchOS 10 will likely get an official release date. And I can’t imagine that Apple will pass up an opportunity to update everything with the Vision Pro headset that was announced in June at WWDC.
Obviously, until Tim Cook and crew walk that stage at the Steve Jobs Theater and make their announcements, we won’t know for sure.
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