The folding iPhone Duo is finally here | The Vergecast Livestream

Live from Apple Park, Nilay Patel and Victoria Song join Jake Kastrenakes, Dominic Preston and Cameron Faulkner to talk about the iPhone Duo and the new Apple Watches. We also talk about the new iPhone 18 Pro's variable aperture and the AirPods 5. Further reading: All the news from Apple’s ‘Surprise and shine’ event Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:07Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of none other than folding phones. I'm Jake Kastrenakis, executive editor of The Verge. Joining me today, editors Dom Preston. Dom, how's it going?

• 1:18Speaker 03

  Good. I'm tight, but I got a glass of wine. So I'm ready to go.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Oh, perfect for a podcast. And editor, Cam Faulkner.

• 1:26Speaker 04

  How's it going? I'm not day drinking, but I kind of wish I was.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  It's 8:00 PM here. Yeah, it's not day drinking. I'm night drinking. I'm allowed.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Oh, it starts at 8:00 over there? Okay. Apple just wrapped up its big hardware event, the iPhone Duo launch, the long awaited foldable phone. We're going to talk about everything. This is actually a fascinating event, even beyond the fact that Apple now has a foldable phone. We're going to talk about all of that. There's the iPhone Duo, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max with their variable aperture camera. There's two new Apple Watches, the Series 12 and Ultra 4, and sort of two new AirPods 5 models, too. There's also a new Apple CEO, and that's actually where I want to start. This is the first event for John Turnus as Apple CEO. He actually came out before the video started. So for the folks who were in

• 2:18Speaker 02

  the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, he spoke for a few minutes, said some words that were, I would say, similar to what he said at the start of the event video, but not one for one. Kind of introduced his philosophy on Apple and then did the same thing for the video that went out to the public. So that's where I want to start. Dom, I'm curious. You've watched a million Apple event videos. How do you feel that John Turnus did in his first presentation as Apple CEO?

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think he handled it well. I mean, it's always going to be a kind of daunting thing, stepping into this for the first time. And this was a big launch in a lot of ways, as you've already said. Lots of hardware, a big new category for Apple. So this launch really had to go right. I think he handled it pretty straightforwardly. He kind of kept things pretty simple and understated. I don't think they made a really, really big kind of song and dance of, it's the Turner show. Everybody be excited about Joe Turnus. Like, they kind of know the average person is just like, oh, cool. It's the new Mr. Apple. Let's move on and find out about some phones, please.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Very much. And I think we've got a lot to talk about when it comes to Turnus. But actually, we've got some breaking news right at the top of the podcast, which is that editor-in-chief Neelai Patel is also about to join us. He's there in person in Cupertino. And he has had a chance to look at the iPhone Duo in person and give us a little bit of some impressions on what that is like. So he's still getting set up, but I'm very excited. Stay tuned. He will be with us in just a moment or so. So let's, I guess, start by just teeing up the Duo before Neelai gets here, which is, this is Apple's first folding phone. Dom, you've touched, I think, most of the folding phones on Earth.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Tell me, where are the big differences? Where are the big similarities? Just let's go high level for the moment.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. So high level, I think the really obvious thing is this looks a lot like Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8, which launched this summer. And that's partly just the big thing, which is this has that same passport size and shape design that we kind of all knew Apple was bringing. And we've seen Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi all introduce phones in that shape this year. And it kind of all looked like they were lining up because they knew what Apple had coming. That does seem to borne itself out. But I think it's kind of similar to that Samsung phone in more ways than that. But it's also a slightly lower spec device in some ways, particularly the cameras. You know, it's got the dual camera here. And really, once you dig into the details of the camera specs as well, this is not an iPhone Pro level camera setup.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  And it's the same on the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Samsung has the difference because it's got the Fold 8 and the Fold 8 Ultra. So it has that distinguishing kind of point there in its lineup. But this is not Apple trying to say, hey, this is the absolute best iPhone Pro model, and it folds. It's saying, you can get a kind of base iPhone experience, and it folds. But if what you really care about is cameras and Pro features, and maybe better battery life, you might want to go for one of the two 18 Pros we've launched alongside it. And Samsung has basically pulled the same kind of move with the way it set up its lineup.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So we've got a 5.4-inch outer display. When you open it up, it's a 7.6-inch display. Like you said, it's sort of passport-sized. And it's in this interesting position where it's both leading the industry and everyone has beaten them because they all thought Apple was going there. I'm curious. Cam, you're, I think, not a folding phone person, or at least have not touched all of them the way that Dom has. When you look at the iPhone Duo, does this look like an appealing shape to you? Right? Like, is this a form factor that you can imagine feeling natural? Because I think that most humans have not held these. They're going to look at a photo and say, I can imagine myself using that and spending $2,000 on it? Or I can't?

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, you're right. I have not touched a lot of folding phones out there. But you know, this one seems appealing in its size. Like, it doesn't seem too big, which I guess I would like as someone who's only ever had like a slab phone. You know, folding phones have existed in some shape or form for, you know, I guess, over five years at this point. So, you know, landing on this form factor, I'm sure there's been a lot of like test studies done to, you know, the thumb movement across the screen like they've done for all of the phones out there. Like, it has to be optimal, like, for Samsung and Apple to arrive at this form factor. So it's appealing for me. I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing

• 7:00Speaker 04

  that I would opt for over a slab phone at this point, but I definitely want to try it.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I mean, I'll say, like, when Apple's showing off these videos, I'm looking at this, and it looks far and away like the most polished foldable I've ever seen. That's in the videos, right? Apple is very good at that. You look at the photos, right? Allison, Neelai, they're there in person. Antonio is there. They're taking some phenomenal photos of these devices. And it still looks very, very good in person. But you can also see the areas where it looks like a typical foldable, right? Like, there is still sort of that interesting little layer above the screen that's sort of holding it in place on the inside. It's still like a little big around the rails in ways that, you know, a standard slab phone is not. I do suspect that in some ways,

• 7:49Speaker 02

  the software may be what sets it apart here. iOS just looks very, very good. Dom, you've used the Samsung Fold 8 very recently. How optimized have they made Android for this experience? Does it feel more powerful in the way that you need it to yet?

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Yes and no. I think you've seen a spread of different responses to the way this is handled, which is both the way different OEMs have handled it and the way Google and Android have handled it. And then I guess there's a third thing, which is app developers. Google, I think, has been taking very slow steps to figuring out multitasking and kind of tablet and foldable friendliness in Android itself. And it's been a bit sluggish. We've seen some of the OEMs go a lot further. Samsung's got quite good multitasking with its folds. I'd actually say the leader in the category right now is Oppo, and formerly OnePlus. They've kind of got this point where you can have very dynamic multitasking with multiple apps open, which you kind of slide around the screen so that some slide off the screen partly, and you can pull them back in when you want. And you can have floating windows as well.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  So you can kind of have these dual layers of multitasking. And you can have an awful lot going on at once and a lot of flexibility in the way you want to multitask. What we've seen so far from the Duo is just two apps side by side. So in that sense, in that kind of, I want to use two phones at once. This looks a lot more basic than what we're seeing some of the Android OEMs do. I think the big change, I'd say that there's been two big changes. One is, on the OS level, we've seen these much bigger switches to how Apple is changing iOS itself to suit this. We've got this kind of shift of pulling the dock and the dynamic island and the status bar all into the right-hand rail. This whole new right-hand rail, which is a totally different way of building the OS. Google has not done anything that kind of comprehensive in changing the way Android

• 9:41Speaker 03

  should feel on a phone like this. So I'm really curious to see how that feels and how it works. Apple kind of emphasized it's about making it feel consistent, whether the phone is shut or open. All the controls are exactly where you expect them to be, rather than shifting around in place. And then the other big Apple thing is Apple's influence. They've already said they've got kind of big apps, like Netflix on, who've already optimized their apps for the foldable screen, and a lot more that they're going to work with to do that. Foldables have been niche. They have stayed niche. In 2025, they were 1.6% of all global smartphone sales. That is a small category of smartphone. And so, take that, throw in the fact there's Android, and you can see that why many app developers have basically said, it is not worth my time to mess around with my code and figure out how to make my app work

• 10:26Speaker 03

  on the 1% of phones that might run it. But Apple comes in, and everyone's going to jump.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  And speaking of people coming in, we now have editor-in-chief Neelai Patel, who looks like he's right outside the Steve Jobs Theater. Neelai, thanks for joining us.

• 10:40Speaker 05

  Look at this place. I'm usually in the broadcast risers over there, but they don't allow live streaming inside. So I came outside. How you doing?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  We're doing great. We're just talking about the iPhone Fold. You're there in person. What's the energy? What's the energy in the room?

• 10:54Speaker 05

  The energy is a million people correcting you for calling it the iPhone Fold. It's the iPhone Duo, bro. It is really exciting. It is, I mean, the two most shocking things about it. The screen is matte, which you could not tell from the video, but it is nano texture, which they said several times. So it is a matte display. And then, you know, they said that the crease was perceptually not there. And it's not there. You can feel it, but you cannot see it, which is pretty rough.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  So I, this is one thing I'm really curious about. They went into like, they have the multi-layered display technology. They have some Apple design coding to make it stronger. But ultimately, Apple says the iPhone Duo, you can use the Apple stylus or the Apple pencil on it as a stylus. Does that mean that the inside screen is sturdier than all the other foldables that can crease with your fingernail? Because that's a big deal.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  It is, it definitely feels sturdier. It's hard to tell if it is sturdier. Notably, I did not see any demos with the pencil. I think they announced the pencil support becoming later. So nowhere in the room was anybody using pencil that I saw anyway. Maybe we'll see it later today as we move around the campus, but I don't really know. I did try to push it, you know, you can't, you can't try to break their stuff too much on launch day. So I did, I did give it a little scratch with a fingernail. Nothing happened, which is to be expected. It doesn't feel soft the way that like first generation folding displays felt soft. It feels pretty, pretty sturdy.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  The phone overall, right? You got a chance to hold it. They said it's the thinnest iPhone ever when you open it up. How does it feel? How does it look? Does it, does it feel and look like a more polished version of a foldable than the folds of the world?

• 12:44Speaker 05

  In the software, maybe not in the hardware. So in the hardware, because they've done so much work with the hinge, you know, it's debatable. I think Dom could probably tell you more about the Android foldables of the world and like whether they've solved that hinge problem, which they all claim to have at this point. And you just saw some at IFA, some of the newer ones at IFA. Yes, it's polished, but the remarkable thing about it is that they have reworked iOS. So all the controls on iOS are on the side. You know, they can tell apps hinge position. The Netflix demo is really cool. The, depending on how you move the hinge when you've got it and that's sort of like L shape. The reflection on the bottom screen changes because Netflix is detecting the hinge position to manage the perceived reflection on the bottom. This is just silly Apple stuff, right?

• 13:27Speaker 05

  When you open it, the blur effect going from one screen to the other is very thoughtful. They, it is really not just opening into an iPad the way that, at least my experience with Android phones is they open into Android tablets, right? It is opening into something, something meaningfully different than a regular iPhone. That said, I think we're going to see a bunch of apps that are lazy and just do the auto layouts. And it is going to feel a lot more like an iPad. But of course, the demos we saw today are a little more thoughtful.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Did you have a chance to use it in both the slab mode and the unfolded mode? I, I'm curious how, how distinct that it, like, is it, is it just a standard iPhone on the outside?

• 14:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, when it's, when it's folded, it's iPhone. It's just, it's 90% of the area of like a 17 Pro. So it's definitely smaller and squatter. You know, but it's still an iPhone. It's just a smaller iPhone. The verge looks great on it, I have to tell you. Like our cover is perfectly sized for that outer display. And then when you open it, I think a really interesting experience just now is it really rewards you for moving it around. So because it spends so much time thinking about its rotation centers, the angles of the screen. It, it kind of compels you to rotate it and fold it and move it around. It's all of its notes. Part of that could just be, I'm in the demo environment and I wanted to try everything and that's very curious. But there's a part of this where you're going to unfold it and immediately rotate it into portrait.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  Because it is seamless to do it in a way that, you know, I think it's just like reflects Apple's level of polishing.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Well, we were just talking, oh, go ahead. We were just talking about that with Dom about how the Android world has not quite polished the design yet. And how multitasking is still a bit of a free for all. Dom, I'm curious, did you see things on the iPhone that felt new in the software? Because to Neil's point, that does feel like what is most polished here over all the other foldables of the world.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. But I mean, really the same two things Neil I just called out, like the redesign to the iOS kind of dock and setup. Just rethinking the whole structure of how you should access the OS and apps and the status bar and all this stuff. To really make it be something that is not the same as an iPad, but is not the same as an iPhone either. And that idea of apps reacting to the hinge position in Android, an app is basically just like, oh, are you on the cover screen? Oh no, you're on the inner screen. And that's all it really ever seems to know. You get a little more with some of like Samsung's own apps, you know, on their Z foot phones. They can do this kind of camcorder style filming setup when you have it half open. So there's clearly like the ability to do this and Samsung on its own apps has baked that in a little bit.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  But even, I can't think of anything other than Samsung's camera app that does this. And it sounds like Apple's going to push for people to do a lot more of it. How, how much that will work will say.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  I'm curious, what, what software experiences is Apple demoing there on the floor? You mentioned Netflix, but are they demoing the camera features? The dual, what dual screen capabilities are they trying to show people are the most valuable here?

• 16:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's everything you can think of. So they are showing Netflix, that's obviously just a Halo app, given that Netflix has the new TikTok mode. So the like, use the TikTok on the cover display, open it up, play a video, fold it over, see the reflection, see the control. Like that is just a very seamless demo. Everyone seems very happy about it. The camera features are all being demoed. The really, you know, fun one is the Snoopy mode for kids. So you just push the button, it has a kids mode, you push it. Snoopy starts doing stuff on the, on the cover display to keep your kids' attention focused on it. I'm going to use that, obviously going to use that. The preview, the selfie preview, so you can take selfies with the rear camera, they're demoing that. All that's happening, they're demoing multitasking, which in my limited experience, just here trying the phone,

• 17:06Speaker 05

  is going to require learning a lot of moves. Like everything you loved about classic iPad multitasking, swiping up and pinning over and swiping to the side. Like it's all back with a vengeance on this phone. I really wanted to get a demo. They showed it several times in the keynote of pinning a video to the top while you use an app at the bottom. And I could not figure it out. And the people around me were like, maybe that's not supported. Like there's stuff to be worked out in terms of what these moves are and how they work. But pretty much every major software experience is there. They're, they're not being shy about them. And a lot of the app developers that are milling around, you know, they got this preview at W W C. And we, and we saw those previews about automatic app layouts and stuff at W W C.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  So a lot of apps have been reworked already for the demos today. And they got it on a month, right? This thing isn't shipping until October 23rd. So I think a lot of app developers now are going to be able to use the actual simulator, get hands on actual devices. And I bet we see a bunch launched like Zoom and Slack and others that were in the keynote that I didn't necessarily see today.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, Apple is very specific about calling out the fact they actually have support from real app developers, which feels like a big deal. It's interesting, you mentioned the iPad and honestly, the, the story of iPad multitasking feels a lot like Apple changes it a little bit every year. And so on one hand, it's like, okay, so they have something different for the iPhone Duo. But that's kind of just par for the course, that, that we're going to learn something new because it's a new year. You, you tested it a little bit. It didn't immediately feel obvious. Is that what you were saying? Or it's, it's like, it's halfway, right? Like it's like, you swipe some stuff and you kind of get there eventually. That's sort of how the iPad works.

• 18:51Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, it has been. I would say the iPad Pro multitasking is like headed to the Mac, right? It's headed towards free form windows and mouse support. I mean, that thing is just turning into a laptop. And so it's interesting to see the iPhone Duo turn itself into like an iPad of two years ago or three years ago. Like these are, these are moving targets on a gradient. So all of, I think the early moves on the iPhone Duo, they, they felt like a version of iPad multitasking that eventually just ran into the reality of people wanting their iPads to be Macs. I don't know if people want their phones to be Macs, so this might be where this sits.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  It's not Stage Manager, fortunately. We're not, we haven't gone that far.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  There, there is, there are some vibes, dude. You can put two apps in a set and move sets around. There's, there's some, like I said, you're going to, it's a lot of moves and a lot of what, at least to me, feels like hidden UI. Now, I didn't get a chance to use this thing very long. Maybe it's not so good. But just in the moment, trying to set up two apps at once. It's like, what am I, what am I doing? And then you kind of get it.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  We have a question from the chat that I wanted to throw to you. Folks are curious if you had a chance to use any apps that were not optimized in both the folded and unfolded modes.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  Not really. I mean, the, the phones are preloaded with what they want you to see. So not really. There are, there were a lot of apps on these devices, so I didn't use them all. But everything I saw, I mean, the iOS auto layout is pretty good. So even if it wasn't optimized, it filled the screen in a way that didn't seem completely broken.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  Like if you just think about, if you think about like what's really happening here, it's just your, it's a regular iPhone in landscape mode with a taller vertical area. And iOS is able to handle that pretty easily.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting because Apple spent, Apple referenced a bunch of times the fact that they supposedly revisited all of their apps and redesigned them and customized them for this experience. Did, did you see that? Did you see, does Notes look like a completely new app? Or are just some buttons moved to the side? Like to your point, like most of these apps are already capable of scaling to different sizes of displays.

• 21:04Speaker 05

  Sorry, I see V's song right here. What's up?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Hello, V.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  And now I've done something to this this interface to make it go bad. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It is it's iPad stuff, right? There's a there's a list on the left and then you see the content window on the right. You can resize that. If you have two apps on the thing, it's it's two iPhone windows. It is in the in the best way. I don't mean this to sound like I'm denigrating the experience. In the best way, it's what you expect. There was nothing there that was particularly surprising. And it shouldn't be surprising, given that we're like 40 years into landscape computer displays. Like, it's just the thing you expect.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  That that that both makes sense. And also, you don't know, right? Like, I think the Android world has had a lot of growing pains, particularly when it comes to expanding different sizes of displays. Apple, on the other hand, has spent years priming their developer community to make sure this stuff works. And I think it makes a lot of sense that in this environment, they're showing, you know, their Halo partner apps so that you know that Netflix is going to work perfectly. Did you have a chance to look at the the Pro, the the new watch? Is there anything else else while you were in the hands-on area?

• 22:18Speaker 05

  I did have a chance to hang out with the Pro. There's nothing to say. Like, they

• 22:24Speaker 02

  It's a nice color.

• 22:25Speaker 05

  It looks exactly like the old Pro.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  You know, I'm very excited about the variable aperture system. It is perfect lighting in there. There is not a phone camera in the world that isn't going to look good in Apple's demo environment, so who knows? I did my very best to, you know, make reflections sparkle with the close like closing on the aperture. I don't know, man. That stuff, you gotta you gotta take it home and you gotta you gotta put it under some stress to to really see it. Every year, you know, I see Apple's camera people and they literally say things to me like, we meet again. So I'm excited. I'm excited for that one. I did not get a chance to see the watch, but V is right here. If you want to talk to her about the watch.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  I I'm very excited to talk about the watch.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  We actually, we haven't started chatting about the watches yet.

• 23:13Speaker 06

  Okay, yes. What do you want to know about the watch? I can't hear what they're saying.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  All right. We have Verge senior reporter V Song surprise dropping in with us.

• 23:20Speaker 06

  What's up?

• 23:21Speaker 02

  We haven't started talking about the watches, so I should I should just lay out that Apple Watch Series 12 was announced. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 were announced, both of them. I think small, small hardware updates, right? It's like better sensors, better battery life. The big thing was AI. And I I am very curious for your thoughts because they announced that these watches are going to listen to you all the time.

• 23:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I'm actually gonna go have my little, you know, briefing on Apple Watch in a 20 minutes. But so I don't know exactly about that stuff yet. I do think that it's kind of, you know, Apple coming out and being like, hey, we're in on the AI wearable game, too. But the difference is we're not choosing a different form factor. We're doing a form factor that you already know and are familiar with, which is the watch on your wrist. I will say I was really surprised to see that. I shouldn't have been, considering what my beat has been this past year. But I was kind of surprised that Apple was coming out and doing this.

• 24:24Speaker 05

  I see my impression of Apple. We're gonna murder Whoop, Apple.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. He was out, he was next to me in the live blog going whoop goop. Is that a thing? And I was like, oh, my God. Yeah, okay. Whoop goop. Yeah, so the new sensor, looking at it up close, you can see what they are talking about. It is the same size, but they have something called a 32 pedal design.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  So you're talking about the the the big sensor bulb on the bottom of the Apple Watch was upgraded.

• 24:52Speaker 06

  The sensor array that it's like the first major upgrade we've seen to that array in, I think, since the Series 6. So, you know, six Apple Watches ago was the last time we kind of saw that.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  There these are, it's not new sensors, it's improved versions of the existing ones.

• 25:08Speaker 06

  Yes, so the electrode that does the EKG sensors that has 32, like, what they call them pedals, but they look like spokes on a wheel. That's an increase of 30 because the preview, the current watches only have two. So supposedly that will help with increased accuracy. And also, the light emitting optical sensors are much smaller and much more densely packed in the thing. You could see a comparison photo in my hands on that's up on the site right now.

• 25:38Speaker 06

  And that's supposedly going to stop light leakage. So you're going to get better skin contact with your wrist. And these things do matter. They do matter. Like, sometimes we're like, oh, not that exciting. But they do matter in terms of accuracy. And that's one thing I'm going to be really curious and testing to see is the battery life. Because previously, Apple has always limited the sensors to sampling your heart rate once every five minutes. And, you know, the Whoops and the Aura Rings and the Fitbits, they are sampling much, much, much more frequently. And the one reason why the Apple Watch didn't do that in the past was to preserve battery life mainly. So the fact that they're going to be doing it once every five seconds, which is a 60 times increase, that's interesting.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  And we'll see what it enables, the readiness feature, which a bunch of other Whoop

• 26:26Speaker 06

  companies have had for years. That's going to be limited to the Series 12 and the Ultra 4 because it's going to require the new sensor array and the hardware that that enables. So we'll see. We'll see. More surprising updates than I expected after a bunch of iterative ones over the last couple of years. But I am very curious to learn more about the AI intelligence audio stuff. That that stuff, I was like, oh, oh, no.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  On the sensor array, if if those improvements work, does that negate the need for a Whoop? Right? Like, does that just eat their lunch when it comes to that kind of, you know, detailed sensing?

• 27:09Speaker 06

  Maybe. I always say with wearables that it's not accuracy, it's consistency. As long as it's consistently inaccurate by the same amount, you're still getting a very good experience because the main benefit of wearables is measuring your baseline over a long period of time.

• 27:26Speaker 06

  So maybe it depends on like what future health,

• 27:31Speaker 06

  advanced health features are enabled by the more the bigger accuracy. Like, the big one on my mind is non-invasive glucose monitoring, the much higher stakes with those kinds of features. And so when you have the higher stakes, the accuracy matters more. And we'll see. Will Whoop get killed? I think the thing killing Whoop right now is their ridiculous subscription, right? So I think the other screenless devices are a much bigger danger than an Apple Watch would be to Whoop. But we'll see. Based on the comments I've seen so far, our readers are not a fan of the audio features or what that might mean for privacy. So we'll see. That that is the thing that I'm trying to wrap my head around most at the moment. So, yeah, yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Yes, we actually have not gotten to the the audio stuff yet.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  And we have it, we have a reader question, which is, how do you feel about the Apple Watch being an always-on transcription device? I should just, so high level, the Apple Watch now has an optional feature where it can listen to you at all times. And then you can press the dial, the crown in twice to get a 15 second rewind of what you've been hearing. And otherwise, it will, I think, basically all day summarize what's been going on in your life. V, can you, are there other devices like this? There are AI devices, but not like fitness devices.

• 28:56Speaker 06

  Not fitness devices, no. So it's very interesting that Apple is kind of cramming that into your to the little wrist computer. But, you know, I've tested the B. I've tried Claude, Note, Pins. I've tried various AI wearables that are listening to what you do. It was fine. And one thing I will say is that transcription, a lot of these devices struggle to differentiate your voice between broadcasts. So the B thought I was a elementary school teacher at Abbott Elementary. And a lot of the transcripts and recaps were just like, make sure the septa strike doesn't affect your students. And I was like, oh, huh. So I'm kind of curious to see how it'll handle real life environments where you have ambient noise, where, you know, there's multiple people talking.

• 29:40Speaker 06

  How intelligent is the intelligence?

• 29:44Speaker 06

  We'll find out. I've in my experience, a lot of times, this is not the intelligence. I am a little relieved that it's not storing audio clips on the watch. So that's good, I think. But, you know, if if you are someone who is interested in those kinds of transcription features, that might not also be good because, again, I wore the B. It didn't store the audio and I read the transcripts. And I was like, there is no way anyone in this office was talking about a cow in Poughkeepsie. But also, it was recording my office coworkers talking about something in Poughkeepsie. So, you know, it's it's a can of worms. I don't know how I feel about it.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  You bring up a really fascinating point, which is like, there's actually two parts to this. And one is, it's just like, it's kind of creepy and and maybe useless to record all this. And the other is, we don't even know if it can record it accurately, right? Like, this is a thing on your wrist all day long. It's not positioned.

• 30:46Speaker 06

  It's not positioned right here, right? So ideally, when you want a most accurate transcript, it's going to be closer to the mouth or the speaker. And if you are someone who gesticulates a lot, like I do, you know, sometimes the mic is not going to be anywhere near what you want transcribed. And if you're in a restaurant and it's noisy, like, how how are we getting these transcripts? How are they going to actually work in a real life environment? Oh, we'll see. Like, I

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Are you going to get a transcription of like The Odyssey? Like, if you like, go to the movies, is it just gonna be like?

• 31:16Speaker 06

  Oh, that actually is a problem.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Odysseus has some problems.

• 31:19Speaker 06

  That actually is a problem about how how well do they transcribe audio? I think in the keynote, they say that it'll you can like program it for to to be at certain times or at certain places and so that it won't necessarily be 24/7 on all the time. That might actually be useful because ostensibly you want this for meetings. But, you know, it also brings up legal questions. Can you subpoena? I don't know. We have the lawyer here. Can you subpoena your Apple Watch recording transcript if it's always on?

• 31:50Speaker 02

  I believe I heard a probably from Neelai off camera.

• 31:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, he said, yikes. So you know, these are the brave new scary AI wearable world that we're entering.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Well, so Apple, Apple, I think, made a, made a point of saying this is super secure, super private. They have some new hardware built in to make sure of that. V, thank you so much for joining us on the ground. Neelai, thank you as well. It's fantastic being able to get your impressions hands on. Those two have got to go. They've got to check out more stuff and be sure to check out theverge.com. We'll have more fun.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  I barely have a job.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Oh, just V.

• 32:30Speaker 05

  What are you talking about?

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Neelai, you're still here?

• 32:32Speaker 05

  I'm just a mascot. I just run around being congratulated for working.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Well, that's great. Okay. Well, you know what? I've got some more reader questions for you that have been submitted in the chat. One of the ones that I wanted to, to go in on is you saw the, the inside screen on the iPhone Duo. The under display camera, that is a first for Apple. Did you even notice it?

• 32:54Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, it's there.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Is there? It's, yeah, they haven't solved it. Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 05

  It's, I mean, you know, what it is, is there's, there's a layer of screen over it. So when the screen is over it, it, it's there, but it's screen. So you're not, you can see it. It's not like you have to go looking for it. It's there, but it is, you know, when you're watching a video or whatever, it's, it's, it's, I don't want to say imperceptible. It's, it's there, but it's not a bother.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Dom, the Android world has, I think, taken a couple of different approaches to this. Have they gotten better on the Android side? Have they just given up?

• 33:28Speaker 03

  I think it's still about in that same space. They're there, but you can kind of forget it's there, but kind of in the same way people have gotten there with the creases on foldables. You, you sort of eventually just notice that little weird glitchy spot on the display and you, your brain starts filtering it out because it's always in the same place. I'm curious, Neelai, if you actually got to try it and see what the camera quality is like, because that's been the bigger headache. I think it's just generally the, the quality of the footage is terrible on a lot of these things.

• 33:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. They refer to the camera on the, on the cover display as a center stage camera and a camera on the inside is a FaceTime camera. And I think that tells you everything you need to know about what, what these cameras are for. So, you know, it's, it's hard to tell on even that size screen, but it is just very clearly the, the outer display, front facing camera is better. Like you can just tell it's better. The inner display is there for video conferencing, if that's what you're going to use it for. And then I think what they're really trying to get you to do is use the rear cameras for selfies. Because everything about that interface is like, why don't you flip this around a little bit? And then you're obviously getting the best quality. So I think that inner display is very much for Zoom, FaceTime. I don't think

• 34:37Speaker 05

  they're expecting you to run around actually taking photos or videos with it. You have, you have not only the center stage camera, but you have the rear cameras, which if you've unfolded the phone, you should be using for anything that you'd be taking for this with.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  It's also worth noting while we're talking about the cameras, there is no Face ID on the front of the iPhone Duo. This is the first Touch ID phone in, in quite a while, I think, since, since one of the iPhone SE models. Neelai, I, I know they don't let you set up a Touch ID account while you're in there. Any quick thoughts on how that feels?

• 35:15Speaker 05

  You know, if it's folded, it's fine, because you're just picking up and your thumb is right there. And they mentioned several times, they were very insistent on this, that you can enroll multiple fingers, which is just one of those dystopian phrases we've all gotten used to. You can enroll multiple fingers to your phone. Neat. Super consumer friendly. The other thing that they were talking about a lot was you can pair it with your watch. And if you've got your watch unlocked, this thing will unlock. So, you know, the speed to unlock with Face ID is there. I didn't, obviously didn't get it. All these phones are totally unlocked. So there was no demo of paying for something or any of the million other things you might want to use Face ID for. Password entry into multiple apps. Like, that's going to be a change. But they were very quick to make

• 35:58Speaker 05

  sure, you know, just unlocking the phone, just getting to it, your, your thumb is going to be in that spot when it's folded, which is pretty, I think, pretty familiar to how other iPhones and iPads.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  This is also very standard in the foldable world. Obviously, it's a little bit of a change for iPhone users, but it does seem like it's not going to be a make or break situation. All right.

• 36:21Speaker 05

  I mean, to me, it's not, to me, what it will be is literally all the other things Face ID does. Not unlocking the phone. It's password entry. It's authenticating into other apps. It's, it's all that stuff. We're just going to have to see.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  It's hitting it 100 times a day. Yeah. Okay, we've got to go to a break. When we're back, there's a whole lot more from this event that we've got to dive into.

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• 39:35Speaker 02

  That was fun. That was a, a high energy segment with folks popping in and out. Okay, we're back. Got Dom, we've got Cam. Neelai is back outside the Steve Jobs Theater and has left us for now. The three of us still have a bunch to discuss. We talked about the iPhone Duo. We talked about the watches and their interesting privacy stuff. One of the iPhone things that we did not talk about very deeply yet is the iPhone Pro, which did not necessarily get any, you know, enormous updates, right? As a new color, as a new processor, the vapor chamber is, I think, three times as big. I think the single

• 40:17Speaker 02

  most interesting thing is the camera, which they announced the main camera now has what they call a variable aperture lens. Dom, I think you are, are one of the photography diehards on staff. I'm curious for your thoughts on this. Does this feel like it's going to be a meaningful change for photographers? To me, this sort of feels confusing, but I, I would love to hear your thoughts first.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm very curious to see how this really pans out in practice. To give context, this has been around on the Android side as a slightly niche flagship feature for a very long time. I think the first Android phone with some level of variable aperture, if I get this right, was the Galaxy S9 in 2018. That only had two different stops it could hit. And so the tech has come a long way, but we've seen Samsung do this. We've seen Huawei do this. I think we've seen Xiaomi and Honor do this. So this is not something that Apple's kind of swan in and said, we've invented the variable aperture on a, on a phone camera. It's another one of the bits like foldables. So the Android guys have been doing this for a long time, figuring it out. I think what's funny about this, in

• 41:28Speaker 03

  terms of what makes me curious, is that Android OEMs have not universally said, oh, this does make our cameras better. We're all going to stick with this and this is going to go in all our flagship phones. Mostly, they've said, this feels like an expensive feature that's a lot of bother, that users don't care about, that doesn't really transform the photography powers of our cameras.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  My memory is that Samsung dropped that feature the next year. If, somebody should check me on that. It might've been like shortly thereafter, but it did not last long. So for, I should probably just break this down for those who are not like deep in the weeds in photography. The standard smartphone cameras, they're just wide open all the time. They're accepting as much light as possible, which is generally what you want on a teeny tiny sensor that needs a lot of light to get a good image. On a standard camera with a big piece of film or a larger sensor, you can close the aperture to let in less light and focus the light a little bit more. That lets you get more things in focus and a, a deeper,

• 42:29Speaker 02

  you know, degree of sharpness throughout the image. Lets you get things further in the distance into focus. I think the, the question for me is, on a sensor that's small, you're letting in less light. At, at what point is that actually just going to make the image so much worse that it's not worth using?

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, in general, setting aside variable aperture for a second, in general, when we've looked at aperture on smartphone, you've just wanted the biggest one you can. And kind of we've hit a plateau there, but mostly for a while you were just looking, and it was a big kind of level of competition in the phone world was who could get the biggest, widest aperture they could fit in. And you'd see the apertures kind of creeping up in wideness and down in number because it's measured with it. And that was the kind of, well, the sensors are small, the more light we can get, the better this will do.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Going, the ability to close the aperture a little, like you say, it's going to give you some shift in focus, it gets you more depth of field, you can have more of a natural bouquet effect, which is something we see more and more phone cameras trying to achieve, and it's kind of doing a good job with, especially on the Android side. So I think that kind of natural portrait mode effect is one of the kind of knock on effects you can get from being able to shoot with the aperture closed down a little bit. Then again, you can only go to F4 on this. And generally, you know, you're kind of pushing up to like F16 in sort of real cameras. So you're still not really closing the aperture tiny. It's not going to give you loads of depth of field, it's just a little bit more. And I think when the sensor is this small, it's rare that you're going to want to close the aperture

• 44:06Speaker 03

  any. It only really is going to end up triggering in particularly bright settings, at least on the auto mode. You know, they've added in these Pro camera controls, so people might want to play around with this manually and kind of force the aperture to do things to get certain effects. But in the manual mode, sorry, in the auto mode, I don't know how often this will actually really close very much.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember on the early iPhones that added a telephoto lens, I think this was like the iPhone 6, 7 era. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, everyone. You know, they had this 2X telephoto, and you would zoom in to try to use the telephoto, but because the sensor was so small, the phone would just secretly use the main sensor and be cropping in. And I think that situation has mostly resolved itself because the sensors have gotten bigger and the apertures have gotten wider. But I do think that's going to be a real problem here. You did mention something else, though, Dom, which is that they added these Pro controls. And I think that is very, very interesting. They added additionally, they had some more photographic style options, so that you can tune the style of the photos a little bit

• 45:09Speaker 02

  more, and they did a whole suite of Pro controls, so that you can set the shutter speed, so you can set, you know, the aperture naturally, and the white balance manually, which I think makes this a lot more powerful. I want to actually ask Cam, because you tested the Pixel 11, which doesn't necessarily have that, although I actually, I think there maybe are some hidden Pro controls, but they recently added a whole bunch of new, their take on photographic styles. You got to use that for a bit. Did that feel overwhelming to you at any point? Or is that something as, you know, I think, tell me if I'm wrong, I think maybe I'm more casual photographer, that you were able to get used out of?

• 45:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it definitely seemed a little bit more geared toward casual photographers who do want a little bit more control. It's kind of interesting comparing the new iPhones to the latest Pixel phones, because they're, you know, I think there's a realization in these companies that people want a little bit more control over their, over the photos that they take, whether it's tuning Pro dials, like Apple's 18 Pro series is focusing people in on, or with Google, which is, you know, they have some of those dials as well. Can't quite remember off the top of my head which ones are offered. But it's more about the camera looks. So it's like the, you see the end result before you take the photo, rather than, you know, getting these Pro tools in your hands, like with adjustable aperture,

• 46:31Speaker 04

  which, you know, it's interesting. I definitely want to try it. Apple's use cases are always like, people look like they're shooting magazine covers and things like, I'm not, I'm not doing that in my normal life. I'm sure I could achieve great results. Like Neil, I said, you know, the room is lit just so, so that practically any smartphone camera is going to look good in there. But it did make me think about the Pixel 11 series in a slightly less generous way, because like, the camera looks feature is interesting, but nothing beats kind of the physical improvements to these sensors, like whether it's telephoto optical zoom or variable aperture, like that stuff is just really interesting to me. So

• 47:15Speaker 04

  I'm very curious to see what the results look like when we get the phone in our hands.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  I find Apple's approach to like Pro photo, Pro video stuff to be fascinating. Obviously, they think, and are, I think, like, very bullish on their phones being used as these professional photography and video tools. Their events are now exclusively shot on their phones. To me, I see this and I go, you know, obviously, these results are incredibly impressive. But that also comes when you can spend millions of dollars on sets and lighting and cinematographers and additional lenses to put around them. But they are building in these Pro capabilities for, you know, I think it's probably a small subset of people who can really make use of

• 47:59Speaker 02

  that power and would choose that over a dedicated camera. But, but, you know, on the other hand, it's something to be celebrated. Like, I'm not going to complain by any stretch, particularly, I suspect that a lot of the software features may end up being more useful, more powerful to people than the ability to close the aperture down. So, one last thing on the iPhones, the iPhone Pro model, $100 more than last year, and Cam spotted right after the event, every other iPhone that Apple sells now costs $100 more. Is that,

• 48:40Speaker 02

  yeah, Cam, tell me about what you saw. I believe this is, this is all of the old models that are still on sale that have not been refreshed.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So there's, there's a weird part of these events where everything ends, and then we just start crawling around apple.com like gophers, like looking for all these little changes when software is getting launched, you know, just things that don't, the fine print that doesn't get shared on stage. And I was just clicking around and I landed on some iPhone pages, and specifically the 17E, I was like $699. I feel like I was just considering that phone a little while ago, and it wasn't that much. And so I did a Wayback Machine search and did another one, and then I brought it to the team, and you all were just sort of like corroborating that and being like, oh, yeah, I think this kind of snuck in during

• 49:28Speaker 04

  the event. And that kind of started a search of the rest of the products. And so far, we think those are the only, the only products that have been price hiked. I personally was a little worried about the Apple Watch SE3, because that was unavailable to buy. I was like, I don't know, I hope that doesn't go up in price, but it seems okay. But yeah, no, seemingly no spec changes, just $100 price bumps. So it's a pretty sneaky way to deliver that, especially if you're someone who maybe was waiting for the base iPhone 18 to drop. It did not arrive. We don't know when it's going to arrive. Apple has not said when Apple launches.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  And, and quite the opposite. Yeah, this is, I think, the first time that a year later, it's always $100 less, this year it's $100 more. And, you know, you pointed out, nothing else got a price hike today. That is because Apple has been hiking prices all summer long. And I think the iPhone is sort of the last chip to fall. That was the big one that they had been holding for a long time. And I think the speculation was that they were probably eating a lot of the loss as these components got more expensive. You know, The Wall Street Journal had a story out a couple of months ago speculating that for this generation of iPhone Pro, they might have to raise the price by $200 to make up the costs. This is, of course, from the RAM and overall memory crunch. They only raised

• 50:48Speaker 02

  it by $100. So I think some of the speculation now is that Apple's probably still eating some of that. That's not to say that they're not still making a handsome profit here. But memory has gotten vastly more expensive. We actually have a fantastic piece from Ronnie Mola up on the virtue.com about some of the origins of the RAM crunch. It actually started before the AI boom. And that has just exacerbated, it made it so much worse. And it seems that we are still years from a solution there. So I think unfortunate news for folks who are looking for cheaper phones. I think this is a very clear sign that we have a while to go. Last thing that I think we have to talk about is the AirPods 5. This, I actually wasn't necessarily expecting this. I think it has not been that long since the AirPods

• 51:32Speaker 02

  4 came out. They streamlined this, right? The AirPods 4, there were two models. There was the AirPods 4, and these are both the, I think, open ear, they don't have the sealed ear tip. And previously, there was the standard model, and then one with noise cancellation built in. Now it's one model, the AirPods 5, and well, sort of a model, AirPods 5 with noise cancellation built in. And then there's a bonus version that has stems where you can control the volume and wireless charging. Are either of you standards, AirPod, standard AirPods people, I have used the Pros regularly for years now, but the, the open design, I think, has not been my thing.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I use a pair of Bose earbuds at the moment, but they are silicon tipped ones. I can't get on with the open air design and I'm kind of remains slightly amazed that it's stuck around so long. And then if anything, we've seen this kind of resurgence of people liking open air and non silicon tipped earbuds. I want the seal and I want the ANC to be better and ANC is bad enough on earbuds at the best of times. And you take away the silicon tip and it gets worse. And Apple is saying this is, you know, 50% better ANC than last year and the best in any, you know, non tipped version. So we'll see how that holds up. But yeah, I've never quite gotten on with this kind of style.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  I will say like, we just talked about Apple phones getting more expensive. These did not, right? They start at 129. I believe the upgraded model is 149, which is actually, I think, cheaper than the AirPods 4 with ANC.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Which I think is very impressive and I think quite aggressive in the market. I feel like Apple does not necessarily always play by the same rules as other companies. But, you know, this is a market where you can get, I think, a beautiful pair of, you know, nothing earbuds that have ANC for, you know, under $100. The AirPods look quite reasonable in comparison. And I don't know about you both, but on the subway every single morning, I see people with, you know, a colorful array of earbuds designs. And I think the AirPods are certainly, you know, far and away the majority. But I don't think the market is exclusively theirs. And it does seem like it's a space that's price sensitive.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  So none of those, none of those upgrades still are going to sell you. Like Cam, I think you cover deals very closely. I'm curious your thoughts on the positioning here. Do these AirPods, you know, feel like they are positioned to take down the rest of that market? Or is this Apple still just like kind of living in its own world here?

• 54:13Speaker 04

  I think it's a little bit of both. I was thinking about this before you asked because, you know, the AirPods Pro 3 occasionally drop in price. They're normally listed at 249, but they're almost never that expensive. Normally they're 199, 189. Couple of months ago, I think they dropped down to 169 or 179. So I think like Apple's MO is just offering something at every kind of price point. But the 149 price point for the Apple or the AirPods 5 with the wireless charging case, I feel like the Pro 3 offers just enough more. Of course, I'm looking at a spec sheet. It's got the heart rate sensing, better battery

• 54:55Speaker 04

  life. Not really all that much more that's improved over the AirPods 5, aside from the noise isolating tips. Yeah, I'm not sure if I would leap to the AirPods 5, but you know, if that's your budget and you're cool with the fit, it's probably, it's probably an okay way to go.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Well, you bring up a really good point, which is, I think, when it comes to the iPhone, the price is the price. Like, you're gonna pay that price. You can pay it in different ways. You can pay it in installations, but like, you're gonna pay that price. And when it comes to the AirPods, it's the very rare Apple product where the price is totally fake. If you buy it from apple.com, that's what you pay. But if you go anywhere else most weeks of the year, you're gonna get some kind of deal on it that I think, and because it's an Apple product, you're like, oh, man, that like, I feel pretty good about getting this. So I do think there's a real question here of, you know, is this the AirPods 5's price? Or is it going down? Or does this spell the end of some of these deep discounts on the AirPods Pro 3? Or does Apple just need to launch an AirPods Pro 5 to get these

• 55:59Speaker 02

  numbers on the same page? Because this is, this is too much. I think it's an interesting strategy. I think I'm very glad to see ANC become standard. That feels like essential in 2026. And at 129, even if that is the price, I think that's actually, it's quite aggressive for Apple, particularly with the set of features that they're offering. Wireless charging is a bit of a bummer to not have, but that's actually not, not uncommon at earbuds at that price point. I think those are all the big things. I'm curious, are there any other highlights that I think we didn't touch on that you guys are like, Jake, why have we not talked about this? Or anything from the chat that we should, we should pull in before we dip out?

• 56:44Speaker 03

  We didn't talk about the Apple reference image in the Pro camera, which is really interesting. This kind of synth ID related ability to verify that a photo was taken on an iPhone 18 Pro and it is like digitally signing the photograph pixel by pixel and then creating an uneditable reference image version. So you can always verify this was the original shot taken on my iPhone 18 Pro.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was wild. They announced this and I was, I, it felt like they went above and beyond. So this is a thing that's been brewing for a couple of years now outside of Apple. I remember, I think it's, what, maybe it's two pixels ago, they added a feature where the camera will sign the photos and says, and it will say, taken by a camera, which is like, feels weird, feels very weird. And that's not like a perfect system, but Apple, they, what are they actually doing here? Do we know yet? Because they said there's literally a digital negative that will prove out the veracity of your photo, which I do

• 57:56Speaker 02

  think may actually be taking us to another level beyond what we've seen from other manufacturers.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the claim seems to be not just that the file itself that you take kind of marks it as, as this was taken on a camera, this was taken on iPhone, but really that there's this, this file in your, in your iCloud or somewhere that you can kind of point to and show to someone and say, hey, look, here's this photo, here's this file, and it proves this is a real photo I took, not something I made with AI. I don't know like how you're gonna access that and use it to verify things and, and who they think is going to be in a position to do that. And whether those people, which really screams like journalists and professional contacts, are they really taking all their photos on an iPhone anyway? Maybe some, but you know.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  I get the impression there's like a very small contingent of people who care very deeply about building these features. And they're fighting the good fight. Like, this stuff is crucially important in a world where you can prompt anything and have it generate very quickly. And right now, I think it still feels so intangible in some ways because for the most part of photo, you can, you can tell what's happening. And that's not where the, this metadata often gets stripped as it gets uploaded to different platforms and shared around. I think that is one of the bigger problems. Apple's ability to, I think, give you that additional layer of evidence and proof. It's gonna be fascinating to see that play out. And if that's something that people are actually able to lean on

• 59:27Speaker 02

  and rely on. I agree, that's, that's like quietly one of the bigger deals of the software features announced at this event.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  It's actually, I'm actually not even sure it's the software feature though, although it clearly is partly. But they say that it is the sensor in the main camera that is doing this somehow. So this is, they kind of bury this slightly because I think they want to sell the idea that every photo you take with your iPhone 18 Pro will do this. It actually reads more like every photo you take with the main camera in your iPhone 18 Pro will do this. Maybe that's not true because they could obviously use the main camera to capture something kind of behind the scenes of your telephoto and shot to still use it. I don't know. But this, on some level, it's a hardware feature, but they've been, they've not gone into a lot of detail about what exactly is happening there. It just says, it's powered by the new sensor in the main camera that can sign every pixel it sees.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Oh, that is, that's really fascinating that it is a hardware level authentication. I mean, in that case, this seems like something that is potentially going to be something that we'll have to see if the industry adopts that kind of technology spreads. That, that sounds, I mean, that is kind of the level of veracity you need in order to prove that this stuff is real. And we saw Apple kind of pulling those sort of like, we're doing specialized, you know, co-processors throughout its devices today, as it talked about privacy and security. So that, that's very interesting to hear. Okay. I think that's all of the big products. This is a really, really interesting event, I think, even beyond the iPhone Duo. We're gonna have a ton more at theverge.com. If you haven't already, please head there.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  We've got hands-on coverage with the iPhone Duo, the iPhone Pro, the Apple Watches. We're gonna have a bunch more from Allison and Vee on the show tomorrow. So please stay tuned and thanks so much for joining us. This is an interesting one. That is it for myself and Dom and Cam. Remember, you can subscribe to The Verge for ad-free episodes of our podcasts, exclusive newsletters, and a whole lot more. We also love hearing from you. Email us, [email protected], or you can call the hotline, 866-VERGE-11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's show is produced by Eric Gomez and Travis Flarczuk. See you next time. Rock and roll.

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