2026 iPhone Event Impressions

Posted on September 09, 2026

Pre Ramble

I'm going into Apple's 2026 iPhone event having had the first feeling that my Galaxy S20's battery isn't lasting quite long enough.

Nothing I do phone-wise is particularly strenuous, given that I track workouts via my watch, metro or bike where I need, and don't even text much on my phone if I can help it¹. Nearly none of my computing is done on phone. It instead acts as alarm, alerts, audio player, and otherwise digital swiss-army knife.

But, I've had a busy few months full of long travel days² with uneven access to an outlet, nor time to sit and recover some charge from the laptop. Long drives with spotty service, searching for and connecting to cell towers for a few seconds before starting again. I have had a few days where the phone was barely scraping by and one day of admittedly mild travel misfortune³ it was dead well before the day was done, making coordinating plans a challenge.

I'm expecting to need a new phone in the next year or maybe two, pending further device decay and limits to spare parts⁴.

An iPhone is Unlikely

At the moment I don't anticipate my next phone being an iPhone.

I've got a few use cases where easy access to the file system is necessary⁵, as well as preference for some options exclusive to android, primarily the thumb print sensor, as well as off brand apps for things like YouTube⁶. I don't expect Apple to add these features, nor do I see anything coming out that truly draws me in.

The industry tends to copy what Apple does, but the industry has changed a bit since my Galaxy S20 purchase. New variable phone shapes have been tried by many of the major brands. Apple has a history of being slower to adopt gimmicky features, but 5 years is a long time to go without trying something. It is now them playing a catch up, which is kinda fascinating. Will they come in with the obviously better software and hardware design decisions? Or will they be releasing a flop far too late into a mature category of folding device?

I've written this preamble (pre-ramble?) prior to the event, to give us both a sense of where I'm coming from in the world of mobile computing devices. Apple has smart engineers who have worked hard on this new device and the software that runs on it, not to mention their other devices. Their production team do wonders to make the kinda gross, inherently political, situation that is the modern tech industry in which they operate seem distant. At the very least it's an enjoyable bubble, even if it usually bursts when it meets reality.

Today's Event

We open with not an ad for Apple TV, but a build up to "Hello" , which just doesn't hit the same as "Good Morning".

The Pro

Beginning with the new Pro, the only interesting feature is the variable aperture. Very cool and opens up a lot of custom control and artistic decisions that I don't think is available in any other phone camera system. I'm still fairly new to photography but I know that this is a part of the exposure triangle for a reason.

It does seem like there's only a few aperture settings, but more options in the camera that people always have on them is good. Peeping closely on the credits for the photos I spotted f1.48, f1.8, f2.8 f4.0.

I am curious about Apple Reference Image tracking being baked into iPhone photos. It seems like for better or worse, it could be used to track a photo back to the iPhone, and it's user, that took it. Printers come with built in tracking dots, and life has continued on as expected.

There's also a note about it not being available in the EU and China. I suppose that's something to do with how you authenticate these photos their cloud service. They compare it to a digital negative of the shot, but in that case only you have the negative. This relies on a trusted third party to have signed off on it, and presumably be able to verify it later as well. I'm no expert in this area, and look forward to learning a bit more as real experts look into it.

AirPods & Watch

Nothing much to say about either. This was basically coffee break time. I'll probably have more to say about my used set of AirPods, and their issues and oddities being paired with an old version of Mac OS and Android.

For the watch, didn't see any features that I really felt like I needed. The battery life of mine seems better than the Ultra, but again I use it for fairly basic running, biking, and morning alarms. That's about it.

I would like to better understand how "Siri Recap" works, my main concern is it's the lack of consent in always building a recap of the audio around you. Ambient processing of audio is already happening on Google's pixel, for detecting music playing, so I can't say this is pushing that boundary. Live transcribe too, seems to lack this consent, and both features encourage anti-social talk to the tech, not the person in front of you behavior. It might be slightly better than nothing for accessibility, but the demo with the waiter still felt off.

I do like that they set the AirPods in a train station. With 50% more effective ANC, Air Pods 5 will let you walk in front of a train so much better. It's OK though, your new watch can still call an ambulance for you.⁷

iPhone Duo

As mentioned in the preamble, there are a few key preferences I have in my search for a new phone. Things they could bring back that could get me interested again, and they actually did it with one!

They brought back the finger print sensor. It seems like they're using the same style sensor system as used in the iPad mini. I do wonder if they'll keep making that tablet, given that ignoring the price the Duo checks almost all of the Mini's boxes. The Duo's screen is slightly smaller, so maybe that will be enough to differentiate it?

Closed, the Duo has a 5.4" screen. This is the same size screen as the best iPhone ever made the 12 and 13 mini⁸. I hadn't considered that it would be smaller closed than the standard iPhones. Given the width it probably won't feel too much smaller, but it'll be smaller. Looking closer at the screen sizes of the Galaxy Z Fold8, I shouldn't be surprised by this. But the thought of using one of these, always closed as a mini phone is too fun.

There's a few small things, like the inner screen blurring on the one side when the phone angle is being adjusted. The main controls pushed to the right feels obvious now that they've done it and reminds me of the Samsung's Note Edge, with it's one curved edge and controls. I bet that will be copied as default on the other passport style phones going forward. I do wonder why the pen support is "coming soon". Does it support charging the Pen? Maybe an external wireless charger is coming for it.

The real trick that I think will make this device stand out atop the rest of the folding phones is the matching opened and closed aspect ratio. It is kinda genius and probably makes designing apps for it quite a bit easier than for any other folding phones. It's similar to A4 paper, (well, all A-series paper), everything can scale to all of the other sizes. There's only one new size that has to be built for, the rest is technically optional⁹.

Theoretically you could get one of these intending to never open it and use it as a mini phone. At it's full $2000 starting price that would be ludicrous, but if/when the inner screens start going bad and this phone pops up on the used market, it could be a fun option. They could have made half of this phone and ended up with the basically best phone for me. But, they made this instead, and that's alright.

Conclusion

I'm not getting any of these any time soon. Perhaps someday refurbished, used, or through some serious discount if I can find it. None of it is too exciting to me, otherwise I'd already have a folding device.

But for a lot of people, this is their first time considering a folding phone as possible at all. On today's run with a friend in a non-tech field, I learned that their coworkers were watching the event and excited about the Duo (or, at least thought it was cool). They may have reset the tone around folding phones. I'm a bit curious how that will translate to sales, and the real world adoption of them.

The presentation did have a lot of discussion and demonstration of features that I have an active disinterest in. I've left out any thoughts on those features, other than where they are going to affect the people around them.

There were a couple neat features I'd like other phone manufacturers to steal though:

• Variable Aperture in the next year's android phones would be cool. Manual control of them seems like a must for that feature, which could open up more manual options in the camera systems as well.
• Power Button Fingerprint Sensors should make a return Under screen ones are fine but feel finicky. Neither beats the ideal location from the Nexus 6P: on the back, where your fingers already rest.
• Mini Phones! Technically it's got a small display. Samsung's flip is probably as close as I'm going to get to that dream, and their Fold8 is near enough the duos to work for me to consider it as "mini". I don't personally want anything that folds though, so the existing small options are basically all out.
• Under Screen Front Facing Camera would be interesting on Apple's other phones. I suppose it must be a serious downgrade in quality in camera or possibly that portion of the screen for them to justify the top cutout still everywhere else. That seems to be the case with the android phones that have gone that route.

Not a feature of the phones, but I appreciate that every photograph featured in the presentation cited who shot it, as well as the specs. Until recently I've been content with my phone so haven't been following the announcements too closely. As such, I'm not sure if other companies do this. If they weren't I hope they begin to do so going forward, just so I can be a nerd about the specs and appreciate the photographers work. Pictures don't take themselves.

There should probably be a credits roll at the end of this production too, given the obvious scale they're operating at now. I know they like to advertise that this whole thing was shot "on iPhone" but it was shot by people who are obviously very skilled at what they do. The thank you at the end was something but they deserve some more credit.

Apple and the rest of the manufacturers have all of the bits to make the perfect phone hardware wise, and software is fairly malleable, so I could probably get things working close enough to how I prefer regardless of what I go with. Maybe over the next year someone will actually do it.