Apple's new iPhones and Watches are better than the last ones

Senior reviewers Allison Johnson and Victoria Song trade host and guest duties in a Vergecasting ouroboros that's never been attempted before and will probably never be attempted again. Allison talks about the iPhone 18 Pro's new camera, Victoria talks about the Watch 12 and Ultra 4's new sensors, and they both give their verdicts on who should upgrade. Further reading: The iPhone 18 Pro’s big camera update is all about the small gains The Apple Watch Series 12 is the start of a new wearable era Your ‘health age’ is fake 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

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of variable apertures and going back in time 15 seconds. I'm Senior Reviewer Allison Johnson.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  And I'm Senior Reviewer V Song.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  And today, we are each the host of the show and the guest.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's how it's gonna work.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Dual roles.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're gonna be talking about our iPhone 18 Pro review. That would be me and the new Apple Watches.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Apple Watches. I only got one of the Apple Watches on me right now, but it's the Series 12 in radiant gold.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Radiant.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  It's not just gold, it's radiant gold.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Gorgeous.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  It radiates.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  So that's what we're gonna get into, but right now, here's what's happening today on The Verge.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  I'm Josh Kahas, and this is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, September 17, 2026. The Verge's Jay Peters tested out the Specs Snap's new $2,200 smart glasses. With these glasses, you can play dominoes in augmented reality and watch YouTube videos while people are talking to you. And with how big these frames are, they'll know this for sure. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says he's looking to create computers that support more natural human interaction. Jay's not so sure that the Specs achieve that vision. Snap Specs launch some time this fall. Next, shit is getting real. That's according to Marius Haban, the CEO and co-founder of the third-party AI safety and evaluation firm Apollo Research. This is just one of the many warnings AI researchers shared with The Verge's hidden field in her feature

• 1:33Speaker 02

  on the explosive world of AI safety. It seems like OpenAI's hugging face hack back in July was just the tip of the iceberg that we could see from the outside, with related incidents having happened for a while inside OpenAI. If that's not bad enough, Andrew Webster sat through and reviewed a two-and-a-half-hour AI-generated odyssey movie this week. His thoughts: It's pretty bad. And finally, have you ever wondered where you can get a colorful shirt of an Apple co-founder? Steve Wozniak launched an online merch shop just for you, stocked with t-shirts, $500 carry-on bags, and Waz Chardonnay, vintage 2019. Now that's Waz up. You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, September 17, 2026.

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• 3:20Speaker 01

  iPhones. Alison, you reviewed the iPhone 18 Pro and the 18 Pro Max. Um, you know, I have a very discerning eye. But my discerning eye says that these phones look very similar to the 17 Pro and the 17 Pro Max. So what's different?

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Well, you are not wrong.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  They are very physically similar. The insides are very similar, too, with a couple of exceptions. So inside the main camera on both of the phones, there's a new mechanical aperture, like a variable moving-

• 4:04Speaker 01

  The six-blade aperture from the keynote, right? Where it was like, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, six blades.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Real James Bond stuff. So that has all kinds of camera things, you know, that I spiraled about. But other than that, which you can barely see from the outside, like if you go looking for it, you can, very, very similar phones to last year. And they both have the A20 Pro chipset. They both have a slightly bigger battery, which is like nothing to sneeze at, but also probably nothing to write home about. And just the little, like, quality-of-life stuff. They're shipping with iOS 27. They have a new Siri. But yeah, not too much. I did do the important test of trying to put

• 4:54Speaker 00

  an iPhone 18 Pro case on the 17 Pro.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  That's what I need to know.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  And they fit. Like, it's fine.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Thank you for your service. Because the people need to know whether that's going to... Because, you know, some of us may have bought the blue... I can't get this case off, but look. May have bought the dark blue iPhone 17 and then seen the burgundy color and felt massive envy. Like, it's a fine blue.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  It is.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  It's a fine blue.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  That's the one I've been carrying around.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  It's quite fine. It's a nice blue, but it's no burgundy.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  It's no burgundy. You are decked out in the burgundy today.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I didn't even realize that I was wearing burgundy today. Wow.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very on theme.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Subconsciously, I don't want to get rid of the case.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  But I would like maybe... Normally, I don't upgrade, but yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Cameras. Cameras are the main feature of this. And like you mentioned it, the variable aperture for a photo-taking dum-dum, where I just go me-point-me-shoot. What is a variable aperture? Why do we care? Like, are we excited about this?

• 6:05Speaker 00

  It's like a big deal that's actually a small deal, I think. An aperture is a thing, it's like an opening in a lens in any camera system that lets light in. And it opens up, traditionally opens up and closes down. That's how you kind of change how much of your scene is in focus. It's letting in more light or less light. Smartphones, smartphone cameras are teeny-tiny. They're little babies, and they almost exclusively have an aperture that doesn't move. It's just fixed at one F-stop, F1.8 in the case of the iPhone for many years. And then it changes all the other exposure controls

• 6:49Speaker 00

  to like change the brightness of your situation. So a couple of other companies have tried this before. Xiaomi, most recently, I think, had a variable aperture that moved. Samsung, ways back, had one that was like two different stops. But the kind of perplexing thing is like, an aperture that moves makes a ton of sense. You need one on a bigger camera system. You could be dealing with a very small amount of depth of field, which is the range of your photo that's in focus. So if you think of like a beautiful portrait that has that like nice dreamy background,

• 7:31Speaker 00

  and there's not much in front of them or behind them that's in focus. It's like just them. That's an aperture, like a wide aperture. And you stop that down, close it down, to get more in focus. So that works on a big camera with a big sensor. On a little camera with a little sensor, you're already working with a ton of depth of field. There's just like, the way you can compare it and think of it is as if you had like an F5 lens, like just from the get-go on your iPhone. So everything, like, most things are in focus most of the time. Like, this is probably not a problem for you

• 8:15Speaker 00

  where you're walking around, you're like, "Oh, I wish the background of my photo was more in focus." Like-

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  It usually is.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  And there's like usually different, like, features where you press and you can autofocus the area you like a bit more. So it's a little more point-and-shoot-me-dumb-me-take-photo friendly.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  But then, you know, there was a chance while we were in Cupertino where I got to play around with some of these, like, features. And I was like, "Oh." Everyone was so excited about these variable apertures. Let me play around with them. And to my very trained and discerning eye, I was like, "I can't tell the-" Difference between these different photos that I took.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  You are not wrong.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  This is the reality. So this is kind of my question going in. I'm like, it's such a small sensor. There's already so much in focus. How much change would there really be? You know, the other thing about this aperture is that it goes a little wider.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Um, so it's a little brighter, F 1.48 and then goes down to F4. So you get those four stops. And you have to look very close, especially if you're taking a photograph of a scene where the subjects are farther from you. If you're like real close on something, then you can start to see like things in the background will sharpen up. If you go to F4 or get a little blurrier, F 1.48. But again, like you, it's kind of the extremes where you would even really notice it.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's sort of like, oh, my gosh, there's a whole new like, like hardware mechanism on this phone camera, on the iPhone camera for the first time. Like, that's cool. It's, they did all that stuff where it's like the, the blades were cut by lasers and they're as thin as a human hair. Like, it's objectively like a cool thing. But the, the benefits are kind of marginal. And the, the whole thing is automatic. Like, you don't have to know about apertures. You don't have to go in there. By default, it will be changing to accommodate different scenes.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  But it's, it's a very subtle thing. It's like, if you have people kind of lined up in a group shot, it'll drop down to a smaller aperture. So the person in the back is a little bit sharper than they would have been.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Okay. So it's sort of just like, if you're a pro, maybe you'll catch it earlier. But if you're just me point, me shoot, like me, you're probably not going to think about it too hard. That sort of, okay.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  And you don't need to, which is.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And you don't need to.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Good.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Okay. And so the one question I have is like, um, we have this laser thin as a hair blade, six blades on there. Does, do we have any durability concerns about that? Because you are adding a new kind of mechanical component to this camera.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's what I wonder about, honestly. And I, I know that, um, you know, iPhone cameras and, and phone cameras in general, the, the glass that they put on those lenses is super, super durable. I think it, it's all sealed up in there, you know? So I don't think there's any more risk of like dust getting in and jamming it up than there was with, you know, it's, it's all pretty airtight to begin with. But yeah, I think it, I mean, it has to add some level of complexity to putting this phone together. And to it operating correctly for the next seven years or so, you know?

• 11:58Speaker 00

  So, um, it's one of those things. It's like, we will kind of just have to see and find out if it, if it ends up failing for some people.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  And so Antonio, who's the other camera nerd on the, on the reviews team, wrote that the variable aperture isn't the cool part of the iPhone 18 Pro's camera. The new F 1.48 lenses. What? What does this mean?

• 12:24Speaker 00

  So that is the, um, the ability of this aperture to go a little bit brighter. And I totally agree with Antonio. So the old, the, the aperture on the previous iPhones is F 1.8. This one goes a little wider. For the, all the reasons we talked about earlier, that doesn't make a huge difference to what's in focus and what's not. But it is a benefit in low light, um, to be able to let more light into the sensor. And more light just helps, you know, even if you're using, um, night mode, you can get away with like, it'll, it'll, um, do maybe like a two second night mode instead of a four second one.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  So better chance of like people being, uh, like freezing motion in your photo, less noisy maybe. I mean, phones, it's again, it's a marginal improvement. Like if you compare between an F 1.8 photo and an F 1.48 photo, I'm like, these are both pretty good, honestly. Like, we were doing a good job with F 1.8 in night mode. Like, there's so much computation magic happening anyway. But it's a, it is just a little bit better for those reasons.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  A little bit better. Uh, so another camera question, since I feel like probably the camera is the big thing with these phones, is, um, Pro camera controls. Like, um, uh, again, I was playing around with the little sandbox demo that they had us have. And, you know, you can, it seems like there's more controls that I can do now, like white balance, um, shutter speed, focus. Is that exclusive to the 18 Pro? Is that coming to older phones? What's, what's the dealio? Do they work? Are they good? Are you, are you like, wow, this has changed my shot on iPhone life forever? Or you're like, eh, fine.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  It's, it is, this is so annoying, but it is a big deal and a small deal, I think.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  It is like, they've been a long time coming for the main, for the native iPhone camera app. So it is cool that you can finally like change the shutter speed yourself. You can change, um, focus manually, um, in that way and white balance. The, you, you've been able to download a third party app and a lot of people have favorites, that will give you those same controls.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  So it, it, it's a little bit of like, oh, people probably already go to like a particular app for that kind of thing. But it's nice that it's baked into the actual camera app now. My complaint is that they are teeny tiny. So the actual, they kind of sit in this little bar at the top of the screen, which is actually an iOS 27 feature. Like, everybody's going to get that. And you can customize what controls go up there. So if you're turning your flash off, if you want to like force night mode on, all that stuff will go up there. If you have the 18 Pro or the Pro Max, and it does seem to be just those two phones,

• 15:37Speaker 00

  you get the aperture control, of course, and then the shutter speed and all that stuff is up there. They are, but they're little, little tiny baby icons. And I keep having to be like, and I'm on the Pro, maybe the Pro Max is a little better. I don't know. But you have to really focus on like, okay, that one's a shutter speed. And then you're doing your little shutter speed and then it, it like takes you out of it a little bit.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Right. And most people are just using these to me point, me shoot, me get photo.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  I don't know why I've turned everyone into a caveman photographer, but that's just kind of how I use my phone a lot of the time. So.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  It's all right.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Okay. So, you know, obviously Siri AI is big. Is there anything notable in your time testing that you're like, ah, yes, Siri AI, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. This is going to change how I do everything from now on.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  I wouldn't say change everything. It, it has gotten to that point where I'm like, it is good. I will trust it with certain things. And, you know, we've kind of been testing it all summer with the betas. It's, it's finally like out, out now.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  The, the way that it, uh, kind of has access to information across the system, does all that indexing of like your messages and your emails and stuff. And if you have like decades of worth of that, it takes days and days to do that.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  The initial beta over the summer took over a week to index.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  We're, we're at the bleeding edge with the betas. But it, it changes the things. I'll do that kind of mental calculation where I'm like, think of a question. I'm like, all I need to sit down and like Google it or whatever, or like check my calendar. Like, no, actually, I can ask Siri. And I give it a shot and it works.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  And, uh, I don't have to like babysit it, you know?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  I'm like, okay. And it turns into like a little bit of a feedback loop of like, I'm, I'll go do that more. I haven't, uh, I haven't relied on it a ton for searching messages, but I hear that's like a killer use case.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Especially if you're in the car. So in, in testing, I think the time I've used Siri the most is one, with CarPlay. And two, there was a situation where, um, my spouse was supposed to pick me up from a place. And then I was like, actually I have to go, they're kicking us out. So I have to go to a different address. And, um, they were driving and they just asked Siri to like update the driving directions to the place where I texted them. And it was able to do that. And we were afterwards, we were like, that's cool. That's awesome. That's, that's, you know, quite helpful because when you're driving in New York City traffic, you don't want to have to like look at the thing and put in the, you might get someone going, I'm walking you.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  If you do that. So that was actually quite, uh, yeah, because we all do that in New York.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  I have experienced this every single day.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  That I think has been the most useful thing that I've seen.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Okay. Have you had this where it's constantly suggesting that you send money to people?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  No. Oh, my God. That's so, that's hilarious.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Be like, someone will mention, we'll be answering a question about like how much something costs, but it's tangential. It's not like, let me send you that money now. And Siri will come up with send with Apple Cash, send $5 right now. I'm like, no, no, no. Like, calm down.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  That hasn't come up for me, but the Gen Moji prompts are very aggressive. Where it's like, would you like to create a Gen Moji for this very cursed thing? Because I say cursed things in my texts, apparently. And I was like, one, I don't think that you were going to allow this to actually be generated. And multiple times it was like, it did not turn Jalen Brunson into Hello Kitty, uh, despite multiple attempts. But yeah, so AI.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's in there. Real mixed bag. There's some real promising stuff that I think maybe Siri can earn some trust from people. We relegated it to like, it's going to set timers and that's about it.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  But, you know, it's, it's coming back, I think. It's, it's, uh, I've definitely found it more useful for sure.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think our listeners should absolutely write in for what they find useful with the new Siri AI as it gets out there. Because, I don't know, I think it's interesting to hear how other people are using it. Like, um, the new Siri AI shortcuts. My spouse is like, babe, babe. I just created a shortcut that deletes all the random ass screenshots I take during the day at the end of the night.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  And I was just like, can you share that with me? That sounds smart. Oh, I think of that. So in that spirit, I think it's cool if some of our very smart listeners

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  tell us how they're using Siri AI. But to that point, this is the almighty question every single time we do review season. Who should upgrade? Is it, is it those of us who were like, maybe phone better if burgundy? Or who, who should, who should upgrade this year?

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Um, well, the bad news is they are a hundred dollars more expensive.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you're starting at eleven ninety-nine for the Pro, twelve ninety-nine for the Pro Max. A lot of people love the Pro Max for big screen size. So it's, it's just wild to be like, yeah, your baseline is thirteen hundred dollars.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  That is.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, you know, we pay for our phones through mystical means with our carriers and all that stuff. I think the, the gains are really marginal. They're good. They are better phones. We're not getting just nothing for a price increase, for sure. The aperture is cool. Underrated thing you can do with it is to, you get little sun stars if you stop it down. Cause there's real aperture blades now, so you can do, or see little things like that. If you're someone who's like way into that and that sounds super cool, like you'll have a good time with this.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  I don't think just anybody should run out. It's not a drastically better camera. It's not, um, you know, for, for any reason that you would be like, well, my old phone is kind of on its last legs. Like, yeah, it's probably time and you will enjoy a lot of things about this one. The, you know, last year's model as a refurb is always gonna be a, a good deal, a good find. You know, obviously very much the same as the last year's model, same shape. But the usual upgrades, there's an A20 processor in both of them, Pro and Pro Max. They both have a slightly bigger battery, which is nothing to sneeze at. That's always gonna be good.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  And the dynamic island is a little bit smaller, which is something that I constantly forgot. As I was using the phone and I've been jumping back to the, um, seventeen Pro. Hasn't, hasn't occurred to me a single time, but.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  You can fit an extra live.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  There is. Yes.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  I guess it's for people who are really on the go, right? They're like, I need my plane and my Uber and my sports.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  And a.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Core.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Three, three live activities rather than two.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  The multitaskers.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  The serious multitaskers.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Serious multitaskers.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, the camera is the, the big update and there's a lot to unpack there, but there, there are a few other things, you know, to consider.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  But I, I don't have any, I don't have any concerns or complaints. And, and if you're more than like three years out from your old phone, you have my blessing to, to start looking at this one.

• 23:46Speaker 04

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• 25:56Speaker 06

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior light beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  So we're back and I'm going to take off the host mantle. Beep boop, boop, boop, boop, ba, ba, ba. And you are now the host.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Thank you. It's great to be here with you.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  I am going to ask you the same question in that I can never remember what, uh, model watch I have until I take it off and look at it. Cause they, they all look, seem to be very visually the same. But I know there are new things going on here. So what's new on the series 12?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  So really to see what's most new on the series 12, you kind of have to take it off and look at the sensor array, which is on the bottom here. Let me just get this Milanese loop to not.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  So pretty.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  It is. So this is the radiant gold for the series 12, which Apple said is the most gold that they've ever gold.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  The gold.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Golded. It's the goldest of the golds, um, which, you know, sure, I'm, I'm more of a silver girly, but, um, like if you have the, if you look at this new sensor array here, you can kind of tell that it's very different from the old one. And I'll just show it to camera as well. There is something that they call a thirty-two pedal design for the electrode. So instead of, um, if you have an older watch, it's just two of the electrodes that come out. And now there's thirty-two. The arrangement of the optical sensors, so like the photo diodes, which receive the light and the, um, light emitting diodes, which shine the light down. They've kind of been concentrated into this center section, which is supposed to be more energy efficient.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  And less light leakage, uh, which I, I can say I have noticed slightly less flashing from this side of my body. At night versus the Oura Ring five, which I see flash green quite frequently when I sleep.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just, it depends on how sensitive you are to things like that. Some people are and some people aren't, but this new sensor configuration,

• 28:32Speaker 01

  purportedly will allow more frequent heart rate sampling. So instead of every couple of minutes, it's now once every five seconds, which is a sixty times increase for how much heart rate data they're, they're pulling. And, um, they're saying that there's a twenty-four times increase for heart rate variability. Uh, because of the new sensors, they have a new type of heart rate variability metric, which is they're calling, um, recovery HRV. And so that's your HRV when you sleep. They're saying that's going to be kind of a better gauge of your daily stress as opposed to the regular HRV metric, which has been around for a while. It's just more of your baseline stuff. There is a new S11 chip,

• 29:16Speaker 01

  which features a secure exclave for some features we will be talking about in a hot second. And there's new colors.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  In addition to radiant gold, there is a dark bronze, which, in my opinion, in person, is less bronze and more of a shiny chocolate. Ceramic is back, which, you know.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, people are losing their minds over that one.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  I don't blame them. They were, you know, like, I've had a ceramic or a ring for the past year. Not this one, but a different one. And there's something about the heft to it. The color doesn't fade. It's not as susceptible to like scratches and whatnot. The, there's like a dark blue ceramic, which is very nice. But I thought the white ceramic was very fetching.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  I was like, ooh.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  It did look nice.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  It looked quite nice. It's a little hefty. It's more expensive, but it's, it's a nice material. Yeah, and the Ultra 4 gets kind of a big bump in battery life. I think it's 50 hours now, up from 42, I want to say. So decidedly, decidedly, decidedly over the 48 hour mark. And there's a new extended workout mode. So if you are like in the last legs of your triathlon, I guess, and you're like, I need this watch to track the last bit. You can go into an extended workout mode and that'll extend the battery a bit more. But yeah, there's some hardware updates.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the main one being this new sensor configuration and the new chip having a little, little tiny thing called a secure exclave.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  That's an intense word.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Exclave is like real sci fi, right?

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  We're in the, we're in the sci fi future, exclave.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Does it have anything to do with the AI features?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  A one hundo, 100%. Spot on, bang on.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  We should get it. We should get into those because they sound wild. I know that they are not available yet, so you haven't been able to test. But can you remind us what they are?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Right, so there's, not only is Siri AI coming to the wrist, there are a new series of features called Audio Intelligence, which is another acronym for AI. But the Audio Intelligence features, there's four main, like, mini features that go up under that umbrella. Not all of them are available, but two that people seem most freaked out by are Live Rewind, which lets you go back in time 15 seconds and you get to see a transcript on your wrist of what was said. It has to be manually activated, so you have to double press the crown twice. And then it goes, rewind's time for 15 seconds. And then you see a tiny little transcript on your wrist.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  And then, you know, either you don't do anything with it and after the watch screen dims and whatnot, it just goes and deletes itself off your wrist. Or you can save it to the Siri app. And then it'll go to your, to your phone at that point. There's also something called Siri Recap. So, you know, this, there is a difference, and I want to point it out, between always listening and always recording. It is not always recording, but it is always listening, just as your phone is always listening or your smart speaker is always listening for a particular conversation. So it's listening for conversations. You can kind of set the parameters, so only at work, never at night.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  So you can set certain parameters for when your Apple Watch is listening. And then you'll get kind of high level summary notes of the conversations that have been going on. That's Siri Recap. Both Live Rewind and Siri Recap are not available as of yet. So I was not able to test those particular features. Apple is very, you know, they released a privacy white paper and they're very like keen to emphasize that there is no audio recording. Everything gets sent to this secure exclave, which is discreet and separate from all the other processing that goes on device. So basically it sends the audio, the raw audio file to this secure exclave.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Magical processing happens on the device. And then stuff is generated and then the raw audio is immediately deleted after that. Whatever Siri Recap transcript gets generated supposedly, because again, the feature is not live yet.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  There's no attribution. So there's no Allison said, there's no V said.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  It's, the names may come up, but it's going to be presented in a more kind of factual way. So like, if you, if in a transcript, it would be Allison comma,

• 34:21Speaker 01

  the iPhone 18 is fine.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  I do believe I said that.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not gonna, like, if you look up the transcript of this podcast, it might say your name and you say the iPhone 18 Pro is fine. In the Siri Recap summary, it's just going to be like, that might not even make it. That you said that, that thing. It might say like Allison gave opinions of this. It's not gonna really attribute anything to anyone.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  But like I said, those are not available. What I was able to somewhat test is the two other features, which are less creepy.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  It's improved shazaming.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  So there's something called a Smart Stack, where if you pull it up, you get these little widgets on the, on the device. You don't even need to press it. It'll just auto recognize music that's playing. This is something you have to go into settings and enable. It's music detection. Basically, it turns, it listens to the music that's ambiently happening, turns it into an audio signal and then matches that signal from whatever's in the Shazam database.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  The other is sound recognition, and this is more of an accessibility feature. You have to enable it in the accessibility settings on your iPhone. And that'll tell you if a doorbell has rung, because you may be deaf or hard of hearing, and then it'll be like a doorbell ring. You should go check that. As far as I know, it's not easily tripped up by fake doorbell noises, which might be good, because if you're watching a TV program and there's a doorbell, you don't want to be told that there's a doorbell.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  So.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  You know, yeah.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  There's a few things going on, some creepier than others. But yeah, I'll be real curious to see like how, how the AI features go down, especially when, when they sort of break containment and other people realize that, that Apple Watches can do these kinds of things now.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  So I'm not sure the scenarios where Live Rewind will be most pertinent. Maybe in a lecture? Or I could see us live blogging for a tech event going like, oh, what did he say?

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Live Rewind. And in that scenario, like a lecture hall or an event, you know, people are going to be a little less creeped out by a transcription thing because it makes more sense to have it there. Same with Siri Recap. If you are in a meeting where other people are probably recording via Zoom or for other purposes, or like it's more likely to have a recorder there. I think, you know, there, there may be actual genuinely helpful use cases there in a scenario where we're all more used to that. It's, it's the idea that these audio intelligence features belong in everyday life

• 37:16Speaker 01

  that I'm not fully sold on. But again, these, I think it's very telling that these features are not available at launch yet. So we'll see, there is always a chance that Apple changes how this feature gets released, if it gets released, depending on the, the public opinion of it.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think they, they tried very hard to be thoughtful about how this gets implemented. It is the most extensive privacy messaging I've seen from any of these AI wearable companies as to regards to like how the feature works, how they're protecting the raw audio file, the, the deletion policy. It's all very clearly laid out in their, in their messaging, but. It's, we're gonna see, we're gonna see how people.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  There is a huge gap between how these features work and what is kind of technically possible on these AI wearables versus how the public perceives how these features work.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  I've seen it very extensively with smart glasses. So, you know, we'll see. I'm keeping my eye on it.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Okay, so we talked a little bit about some of the health features on the watch. I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of an idiot and I wouldn't know what to do with all those numbers. Apple is addressing this kind of in, is a readiness score a kind of way to sum all these things up for you? What is it?

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Okay, so readiness is a new metric because they can now do the recovery heart rate variability. It's a metric we've seen on a lot of different devices or Aura has one, Garmin, I actually believe Garmin has one. Just a bunch of devices have this idea of a readiness metric and it's supposed to tell you how much stress and recovery you've had. So instead of individually looking at your sleep score, looking at your activity score, looking at your whatever and trying to come up with the idea of it, Apple is now going like, hey, you're ready.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  You can push, maybe take it easy, that sort of thing. It's a scale of one through 10, but you know, they've revamped the vitals feature, which like measures your overnight vital, like your sleep duration, your, your blood oxygen and all of these factors that go into this overall readiness score so that you'll be able to look at it on your wrist. And throughout the day, depending on how things update, your, your score will change. You're supposed to like use it as a sense of like, should I push today? Should I not push today? I think the average person will be able to tell that based on how their body feels.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  This is more, I think, useful to people who are training. As always, don't just go into it and be like, I have to do what my watch says. No, no, the watch is there to help you make the decision about what you should do. You don't do what your watch says. The watch helps inform decisions you make.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Wild.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  That's, yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  So, okay, I'm intrigued by this idea that it can change throughout the day because, as you know, I have a grudge with my sleep score and you're kind of locked into whatever sleep score you got overnight. You don't get like a do-over in the middle of the day. Is that like a common feature to these readiness score things?

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Um, so like the Oura ring, for example, will track your resilience, which is more of a long-term baseline trend that it says like, oh yeah, you've had a lot of stress. So you're quite not that, or like you've had a lot of stress. So you're not that resilient. Or you've had a lot of rest. So you can handle stress a little bit better. But yeah, they tend to give you a score at the beginning of the day and that doesn't particularly help you figure out where you are at during the day. But let's say Garmin has something called a body battery, which it's very funny to watch it deplete through the day.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And then it replenishes, depending on your sleep, it replenishes a lot or not so little. And then you can kind of gauge like, based on this so-called battery battery. Again, I think you will know if you are honest with yourself and listen about how tired you are, or if you get out there in a workout and you're like, ooh, not feeling it, gonna cut that short. Pat on the back for going, but this is a participation trophy day.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Like, most people, if you are in tune with yourself, you can, you don't necessarily need those features. But again, if you are in a very heavy training cycle, or you're just building that kind of bodily knowledge, it can be useful as like a, as a touch base, as an extra permission giver to be like, ooh.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  No, I really did not sleep that well last night and I feel it.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Okay, the last one I need to know about, and I'm a little worried, I will also have a grudge with it. Health age?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Okay, listen.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  What is this?

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I got beef with these health age.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  So it's not out yet. There's going to be a new redesigned health app that comes again later this year and it's not locked to the new Apple Watches. Readiness is because you need the recovery metric, recovery HRV metric, but health age and the new health app will come to any Apple Intelligence-supported iPhones. There's going to be a new longevity tab and this tab is going to have something called a health age. And the health age is going to compare your physiological age based on certain factors like sleep, rest, activity, to your chronological age. Now, I can't tell you about health age as Apple has envisioned

• 43:10Speaker 01

  it, but health age as other wearable makers have envisioned it, in my opinion, is a hot, stinking pile of bullshit.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  I'm getting spicy. Your age is your age.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, famously.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Your age is just your age. Like, cause what you have is a bunch of optimizers or biohackers out here like Brian Johnson, who are saying out of pocket things like, I'm 49, but an alien might mistake me for my teenage son. Real X post that he, he, he made. And it's just like, no, no one, aliens have eyes too.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  They'll be able to tell you're different. The, the intent behind this kind of feature I can understand because I think it's a way to visualize that you can be later on in life and kind of have a glow up because of the health style factors that you have put effort into. I know that I'm a lot fitter now at 38 than I was at 18. 18 couldn't run a mile continuously.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  In my 30s, I'm out here running half marathons. So I am objectively fitter at this later stage in my life than I was at 18 in terms of cardiovascular fitness. And so these metrics are trying to help reflect the ways that positive lifestyle interventions can actually make you healthier.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  So it's an attempt to kind of reward you for doing those things, but each company has different metrics that they pull into this age. If you're able to be like, do, do, do, this is just trying to flag certain areas of lifestyle choices that I can do so that I statistically better my odds of living longer. Sure, whatever. Have fun with health age. But let's be real, people only brag about their health age if it's younger and if it's older, you're going to feel like crap about yourself, even though you don't necessarily need to feel crap about yourself. And even if you have a younger health age, that doesn't mean you're healthy.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  So considering all of that, who should look at buying these updated watches?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Um, if you have a series 10 or a series 11, I think you're cool to wait. Actually, same if you have a series nine. You can live without the extra AI features. I think it'll be fine to have like a series nine or later. I think the people who have held on to a series six or a series five or older, you know, you could, you could deal with the upgrade. And, you know, as we mentioned in the phone section, you can always get a series 11 or a series 10 if the AI features are creepy to you and you'd like to wait out a little bit longer. The buying last year's model in a nicer material is always an option.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Eco-friendly too. I wouldn't really worry too much about the AI audio features and let that prevent you from getting a series 12 or an ultra four, just because they are opt-in. They are not turned on by default. It's not something you have to engage with. It's your choice to. Again, if you have just like hard line ethical qualms, you can get a series 11 or a series 10, which are not capable of that. I really would only recommend upgrading for people of a, like, a, like, a, what are you doing? It's time, it's time

• 46:41Speaker 01

  to upgrade for a series six or older, I think. Series seven or eight, depends. And everyone else, you can hold tight. It's not that serious. Like, it's not that Siri-ous.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Get it? Get, it's all about Siri AI. And then for the ultra people, if you have an original ultra, I'mma let you, I'mma let you upgrade because you've held that for four, four years. The wearable lady will turn a blind eye if you decide you want to upgrade this year. Ultra twos, nah, you can hold on. Ultra three, what are you doing? What are you doing? It's fine. That thing is fine. Don't, don't do that. Like the new sensors are great, but the ultra sensing wise is fine. You don't need this readiness feature just yet. You probably are very in tune with yourself. You're good. Just stick to the training load. Ultra original, you're allowed to upgrade. You're, you're allowed. Everybody else, hold tight.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Well, that's it for phones and watches, watches and phones, until maybe next month when there's an iPhone Duo. Sorry, Alison. Anywho, let us know what you think. Call the hotline at 866-VERGE11 or email us at [email protected]. And to support everything we do here and to get ad-free podcasts, subscribe to The Verge. We're a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Vergecast is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. See you next time, nerds.

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