“Design has always been fundamental to who we are and what we do,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said on Tuesday, offering a short summary of the products soon to come: new AirPods, updated Apple Watch, and, of course, iPhones. In truth, design was indeed a primary theme across Apple’s 2025 fall launch, which featured multiple voiceovers provided by the company’s design teams.

Most of the pre-event speculation turned out to be correct. Apple fans were treated to the astonishingly thin iPhone Air; AirPods Pro with health features and live translation; and 5G across the much-revised Apple Watch range. 

In the background

iPhones remained the star of the event, with a new camera design (the so-called “forged plateau”), a slew of new process technologies, a wave of Apple Silicon — including the seriously impressive A19 chips, and a new pricing scale. But what Apple has really achieved is to further differentiate the products it offers, which should both boost each individual model while also opening new opportunities to make each one of its smartphones even more unique and diversified in future.

What the iPhone range costs

Price matters, particularly as Apple fights its competitors while also handling the fallout from tariffs and a political will to turn away from China. With that in mind, the company has done incredibly well. 

It is also worth noting the extent to which Apple spoke up for some of the advanced materials and manufacturing processes it introduced; those must be seen as signs of what’s to come as the company continues to work toward building up its US business by focusing on building things that cannot be made elsewhere. Apple achieved a great deal during the keynote when measured by that subtext.

As to price: The iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17 Pro all now start with 256GB of storage, making them even more performant and certainly tuned up enough to handle the next generation of generative AI tasks. The starting prices across the range become:

• iPhone 16e: $599.
• iPhone 17: $799.
• iPhone Air: $999.
• iPhone 17 Pro: $1,099.
• iPhone 17 Pro Max: $1,199.

There’s more information about the new phones below, but first let’s take a quick glance at what else the company unveiled.

AirPods Pro 3, the next generation

Introduced by a short ad that nodded in a big way toward the insanely successful ‘Silhouette’ series of iPod ads (remember them?), Apple’s new AirPods Pro 3 bring in far more effective noise cancellation, health features, and a Live Translation feature that really should make these things indispensable for anyone handling multilingual meetings. Live Translation in AirPods will translate every word you hear, with the ANC reducing the volume of what the person says so you can hear the translation. Two or more users can communicate in multipole languages thanks to this. 

The new acoustic architecture also delivers a better audio response, with a wider sound stage and vocal clarity. Active Noise Cancellation is now twice as good as before and four times more effective than the first-generation version.

There’s more for fitness, too. As well as being more sweat-resistant, the company also introduced heart rate sensors during fitness sessions; it all works with on-device AI to track heart rate, calories, step counts and more. Despite doing so much more, you can expect six- to eight-hours of battery life on a single charge. Price remains unchanged at $249; preorder today for deliver beginning Sept. 19.

Apple Watch gets heart health and 5G

Accompanied by the now customary but nevertheless remarkable customer stories explaining how using the Watch literally saved their lives, the new Apple Watch range features 5G support. 

Many improvements feature in the Apple Watch Series 11 (starting at $399), including use of new materials science to make the device even more resilient than before. It has a new S10 chip for an always-on display and gesture controls and provides a comprehensive collection of new health features, including new heart health and sleep tools. Available in 150 countries this month, the big heart health improvement is a tool to track high blood pressure/hypertension; the watch uses AI to identify patterns of hypertension, based on an extensive research study. There’s also 5G cellular connectivity, more durable glass, and the watch charges twice as fast as before.

The 5G Apple Watch SE3 ($249) uses theS10 chip, boasts an always-on display, and gesture control through double tap. It adds wrist temperatures sensing and includes a small speaker for music or podcast playback when you leave your Bluetooth headphones behind. It also charges twice as fast as before.

Then we come to Apple Watch Ultra, the $799 aspirational model much beloved by athletes, action heroes, and those who want to look like they might be one of those people. With thinner borders for more display space and a brighter screen, this model offers all of the improvements carried by the other products in the new range but adds a noteworthy 42 hours of battery life. You also get satellite connectivity for Emergency SOS, Messages via Satellite, and Find My.

Four new iPhones, a variety of new technologies

The technologies Apple has wrapped inside this year’s phones include:

The Forged Plateau

Gone is the traditional camera bump on iPhones. It has been replaced by the forged plateau, a highly designed and highly tooled solution that has been created to hold some of the most significant components, leaving room for even more battery. The antennas are integrated around the perimeter for the highest-performing antenna system. 

Ceramic Shield

Apple’s latest display innovation is Ceramic Shield 2 glass with 3× better scratch resistance and reduced glare. It makes the phones it is used in more resilient and capable of handling most of what you may throw at them.

The A19 and A19 pro chips

The 3nm A19 chip delivers:

• A 16-core Neural engine for power efficient AI
• A 6-core CPU
• A 5-core GPU

The 3nm A19 Pro, boosted by Apple’s vapor chamber, provides:

• A 16-core Neural engine for power efficient AI
• A 6-core CPU
• A 6-core GPU.

The Pro chip promises “MacBook Pro level performance on a smartphone,” according to Apple.

iPhone 17 — the basics

Equipped with that A19 chip, the 6.3-in. Super Retina XDR display on iPhone 17 has an adaptive refresh rate of 120Hz. It boasts the Ceramic Shield and a new N1 wireless chip, with support for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread. It’s also eSIM-only in some markets.

iPhone users took over 500 billion selfies last year, so Apple has improved the front camera in the iPhone with a much larger, square sensor. The rear camera system has a 48 MP Fusion Main camera with an integrated optical-quality 2× Telephoto — essentially two cameras in one. It also has a 48 MP Fusion Ultra-Wide camera, offering up to 4× the resolution of the previous generation, ideal for wide-angle and macro shots. Expect all-day battery life with up to 30 hours of video playback and the capacity to charge the device to 50% in 20 minutes using an optional 40W power adaptor. 

As expected, Apple has raised the entry level storage to 256GB. Available in black, lavender, mist blue, sage and white, the iPhone 17 can be pre-ordered on Sept. 12 and will be available a week later. In a rare historical comparison, no doubt designed to accelerate upgrades a little, Apple says this phone is twice as fast as an iPhone 13.

iPhone Air in brief

Replacing the iPhone Plus, the iPhone Air is a great illustration of the extent to which Apple’s work on processor technology has allowed it to push new design boundaries; the thinnest iPhone ever is crafted using space-grade titanium for durability. Powered by the A19 Pro chip, the Air also uses Apple’s N1 processor, which means Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread are supported.

It features a 6.5-in. ProMotion display with 120 Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, matching the brightness of the iPhone 17. It’s highly resilient – Apple says it exceeds its bend-strength requirements” and calls it “more-durable” than any previous iPhone. The dual rear camera has a 48MP main sensor and 12MP telephoto lens. You also get the 18MP Center Stage front camera introduced with iPhone 17.

With a device so thin, you might expect very limited battery life. That’s not the case, as despite the size, Apple says you’ll get a full day on a single charge. (And it sells an equally thin $99 battery pack if you want a little more.) Available in five colors, prices start at $999 for the 256 GB model; the iPhone Air is eSIM-only and ships Sept. 19.

iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max

Introducing the Pro devices, Apple said the focus was to redefine the pro range through performance, usability, and capability. MacBook Pro performance in a device you can pop in your pocket suggests Apple achieved all three targets. But one aspect of the design is likely to generate the most interest: the new cooling system.

That’s because the Pro range gets the vapors — an Apple-designed vapor chamber to enhance heat dissipation and performance. Deionized water is sealed inside the vapor chamber, which then moves heat away from the powerful A19 Pro chip, allowing it to operate at even higher performance levels. The heat is carried into the forged aluminium unibody, where it is distributed evenly through the system. You end up with a device that is extremely powerful and cool to the touch.

We’ll wait to find out what these promises mean in real life, but Apple did say the new Pro phones offer 40% better sustained performance than iPhone 16 Pro. And the company made a particular point of mentioning how this makes these smartphones champions for AI.

Other specifications: the 6.3-in. (Pro) and 6.9-in. (Pro Max) have always-on Super Retina XDR displays, providing ProMotion up to 120 Hz, 3,000 nits peak brightness, and twice the outdoor contrast. You do, of course, get Apple’s N1 chip, and triple 48 MP Fusion rear cameras: Main, Ultra-Wide, and an all-new Telephoto lens, for up to 8× optical-quality zoom (4× at 100 mm, 8× at 200 mm). These will take fantastic photos and videos. (You also get ProRes RAW for video, so there’s that.) The 18MP front camera delivers the same benefits also offered in the iPhone 17.

There are many reasons to believe these models will maintain the model’s track record of being the most popular iPhone sold, even with the arrival of the iPhone Air. These models also promise the longest battery life in any iPhone — up to 39 hours of video.

So were iPhone users wowed? I believe so.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.