Apple’s ‘Wonderlust’ event: Type-C takes the spotlight
Apple has finally moved from its proprietary Lightning cable to a universal USB-C port for iPhone, completing their transition to Type-C connectivity across their ecosystem
Apple's September event, dubbed 'Wonderlust' by the tech giant, saw the unveiling of several new products, including the new iPhone and watch line-up.
The 80-minute presentation started with the introduction to the Apple Watch Series 9, which, other than the slightly tinted colours, looks unapologetically similar to the older generations. However, on the inside, Series 9 got a more capable and efficient S9 SiP chip with faster and more secure on-device processing for requests made to Siri.
With a peak brightness of 2,000 nits, the new Apple Watch series also comes with twice as much brighter screen than the Series 8 from last year. The edge-to-edge display can also get as low as one nit, making it suitable for bedroom and theatre environments.
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Feature-wise, the new watch series has a brand-new gesture that allows one-handed operation. The "Double Tap" gesture, as they are calling it, works like a customisable phantom crown or home button.
But the biggest claim to fame for Series 9 is being the first carbon-neutral product from Apple, which seemed to be one of the recurring segments for each presentation.
The more expensive Watch Ultra also received the same set of features and upgrades as the Series 9 but with the brightest Apple Display ever, peaking at 3,000 nits.
On the iPhone side of things, Apple announced a brand-new iPhone 15 series lineup that looks, in a typical Apple move, very much like every iPhone since the iPhone 12. All four variants, iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, are shaped identically to the previous generations. The only design change that came to the non-pro 15 series is the inclusion of Dynamic Island from last year's Pro models.
For the Pro models that already had the dynamic island, the change came to the ring-silent switch, which now turned into a customisable action button.
However, one thing that changed significantly and, without taking a closer look, could go unnoticed is the charging port. Apple has finally moved from its proprietary Lightning cable to a universal USB-C port for iPhone, completing their transition to Type-C connectivity across their ecosystem.
On the inside, there have been several functional changes on both pro and non-pro phones.
The A16 bionic, with a custom image signal processor, photonic engine, 16-core neural engine, and more memory bandwidth, makes things like on-device processing and SmartHDR much more efficient on 15 and 15 Plus models.
On the camera side of things, the non-Pro models now feature a new 48 MP camera for better portrait and low-light photos. The new camera setup also enables a 2x telephoto lens and bakes the focus and depth mapping for portraits right into the photo mode, allowing users to turn regular photos into portraits and change focus on a photo after it has been captured.
The new iPhone line-up, along with the watches, also features a 2nd gen Ultrawideband chip that allows for more precise navigation to your other Apple devices or even friends with an iPhone.
Drawing from the positive feedback from Emergency SOS via Satellite and Find My via Satellite on the previous iPhones, Apple has introduced Roadside Assistance via Satellite in select locations in partnership with AAA.
The display also upgraded to a brighter screen with a max 2000 nits, which, along with all the other upgrades, made it to the Pro and Pro Max models this year.
Despite having a tougher and more durable Mars-Rover-esque Grade 5 Titanium built, the iPhone Pro models are the lightest Pro phones Apple has ever built, thanks to the Aluminium inners for weight reduction and better thermal diffusion.
However, Apple made excellent strides in terms of performance on their Pro phones. With the industry's first 3nm chip, the A17 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max output the fastest single-thread performance on any phone.
The new chip features 19 billion transistors, 6 Core GPU, two high-performance cores, and four efficiency cores, allowing the phone to run 35 trillion operations per second. The 6-Core Pro-Class GPU and Hardware accelerated Ray Tracing make them arguably the best phones for mobile gaming.
For pro photography, the Pro models feature a mode advanced 48MP main camera with a larger sensor and a 12MP 3x telephoto. On the Pro Max model, with a larger area to use inside the chassis, the new camera arrangement also allows a pro-grade 120 mm lens depiction on 12MP with 5x optical zoom and supports 4K60fps videos even while tethered to external storage, making it the best phone for pro photo-videography.
Other announcements from the event include a USB-C 2nd gen AirPods Pro, EarPods, and new 6TB and 12TB iCloud+ Subscription tiers.
