The Vergecast - The folding iPhone Duo is finally here | The Vergecast Livestream

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

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 [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of none other than folding phones. I'm Jake Castranakis, executive editor of The Verge. Joining me today, editors, Dom Preston, Dom, how's it going? Good. I'm tired, but I got a glass of wine, so I'm ready to go. Oh, perfect for a podcast. And editor, Cam Faulkner.

How's it going? I'm not day drinking, but I kind of wish I was. It's different. It's 8.m. here. Yeah, it's not day drinking. I'm night drinking. I'm allowed. Oh, it starts at 8 over there? Okay. Apple just wrapped up its big hardware event. The iPhone duo launched, the long-awaited full-able phone. We're going to talk about everything. This is actually a fascinating event, even beyond the fact that Apple now is 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 Ultra4, and sort of two new AirPods five 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 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? 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 is a big launch in a lot of ways, as you've already said, lots of hardware, a big new category for Apple. 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 would be excited about Joe Turner's. 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. Very much. And I think we've got a lot to talk about when it comes to to Turnus. But actually, we got some breaking news right at the top of the podcast, which is that editor-in-chief, Nilai Patel is also about to join us. He's there in person in Cooper Tino. 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. Tell me where are the big differences, where are the big similarities? Just let's go high level for the moment. Yeah, okay. So high level, I think the really obvious thing is this looks a lot like Samsung's Galaxy Z-Foldate, 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 Jalmi,

introduced 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. And it's the same on the Galaxy D Fold 8. Samsung has the difference because it's got the fold 8 and the Fold 8 Ultra, so it has that distinguishes. 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. Absolutely. So we've got a 5.4 inch 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 of fact? 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 two grand on it or I can't. 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, to, you know, the thumb movement across the screen like they've done for all of the, 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 that I would opt for over a slap phone at this point. But I definitely I definitely want to try it. 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, Nilai, they're 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 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? 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 OAMs 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 that OAMs go a lot further. Samsung's got quite good multitasking on its folds. I'd actually say the leader in the category right now is Opo and formerly One Plus.

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, which you can pull them back in, which. you want and you can have floating windows as well. 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 then 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 should feel on a phone like this. So I'm really curious to see how that feels and how it works. Apple kind of emphasize 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 that it'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 on the 1% of phones that might run it. But Apple comes in and everyone's going to jump. And speaking of people coming in, we now have editor-in-chief Nilai Patel,

who looks like he's right outside the Steve Jobs Theater. Neil, look at this. Thanks for joining us. 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?

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? The energy is a million people correcting you for going at the iPhone full. 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 nanotexture, 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 over there.

So this is one thing I'm really curious about. They went into, they have the old layer 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. 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 me coming later. So nowhere in the room that anybody 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 try to break their stuff too much on launch day. So I did give it a little scratch before. 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. 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 feel and look like a more polished version of a foldable than the folds of the world? In the software, maybe not the hardware. So in the hardware, because they've done so much work with a hinge, you know, it's debatable. I think Dom could probably tell you more about the Android folders of the world and like whether they've solved that hinge problem, which they all claim to have at this point. I know you just saw some of EFA. So the newer ones at EFA. 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. 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? When you open it, the blur effect going from one screen to the other is very thoughtful. It is really not just opening into an iPad. The way that at least my experience of the Android phones is they open into Android tablets, right?

It is opening into 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. Did you have a chance to use it in both the slab mode and the unfolded mode? I'm curious how distinct that. Is it just a standard iPhone on the outside? Yeah, when it's folded, it's an 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,

size 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 kind of compels you to rotate it and fold it and move it around and tall of its notes. Part of that could just be, I'm in the demo environment and I want 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 in the portrait because it is seamless us to do it in a way that, you know, I think it's just like reflects Apple's level of polishing. Well, we were just talking about, 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 the Newize point, that does feel like what is most polished here over all the other foldables of the world. 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, funds. 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. 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 much that will work will so? I'm curious, what, uh, what software experiences is Apple demoing there on the floor?

You mentioned Netflix, but are they demoing the camera features? What dual screen capabilities are they trying to show people are the most valuable here? Yeah, 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 use the TikTok on the cover display, open it up, play a video, fold it over, see the reflections, see the control. 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 kid's mode. You push it. Snoopy starts doing stuff 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 to 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, 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. 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 a lot of supportive. 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 not being shy about them. And a lot of the app developers, they're milling around.

They got this preview of WWC. And we saw those previews about automatic app layouts and stuff at WWC. So a lot of apps have been reworked already for the demos today. Now, they got 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. 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. 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 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, of just part for the course, that we're going to learn something new because it's a new year. You tested it a little bit. It didn't immediately feel obvious. Is that what you were saying? Or it's like, it's halfway, right? It's like you swipe some stuff and you kind of get there eventually. That's sort of how the iPad works. Well, yeah, it has been. I would say the iPad pro multitasking is like headed to the Mac, right? It's headed towards freeform 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 felt like a version of iPad multitasking that eventually just ran into the reality of people wanting their iPads to be max. I don't know if people want their phone speaking. So this might be more in the sense. It's not stage manager, fortunately. We're not, we haven't gone that far. There, there, there is, there are some vibes, dude. You can put two apps in a set and move sets around.

There's some, like I said, 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 doing? And then you kind of get it.

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? Not really. I mean, the phones are preloaded with what they want you to see. So not really. There are 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. If you think about it's 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 easy. Well, it's interesting because Apple's been, 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 you see that?

Does notes look like a completely new app? are just some buttons move to the side? To your point, most of these apps are already capable of scaling to different sizes of displays. Sorry, I see B song right here. What's up?

Hi, there she is. Hello, V. 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 list on the left. You see the content window on the right.

You can resize that. If you have two apps on the thing, it's two iPhone windows. it is 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. That both makes sense and also, you don't know, right? 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 their Halo partner apps so that you know that Netflix is going to work perfectly. Did you have a chance to look at the pro with the new watches or anything else while you were in the hands-on area? I did have a chance to hang out with the pro. There's nothing to say. It's a nice color. It looks exactly like the old pro. You know, I'm very excited about the variable aperture system.

It is perfect lighting in there. There's not a phone camera in the world, but 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 got to take it home and you got to put it under some stress

to really see it. Every year, you know, I see Apple's camera, 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. I'm very excited to talk about the watch.

We actually, we haven't started chatting about the watches yet. Yes. What do you want to know about the watch? I can't hear what they're saying. All right. We have Virginie Reporter V's song. Surprise dropping with us. What's up?

Oh, my God. We haven't started talking about the watches. So I should just lay out that Apple. Watch Series 12 was announced. Apple Watch Ultra 4 were announced. Both of them, I think, small hardware updates, right? It's like better sensors, better battery life. The big thing was AI.

And I am very curious for your thoughts because they announced that these watches are going to listen to you all the time. Yeah. So I'm actually going to go have my little briefing on Apple Watch in 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. I see my impression of Apple. We're going to murder whoop. Apple. Yeah. 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. So you're talking about the big sensor bulb on the bottom of the Apple Watch was upgraded. Yes, the sensor array. It's like the first major upgrade we've seen to that array in, I think, since the series six. So, you know, six Apple Watches ago at the last time we kind of saw that.

It's not new sensors. It's improved versions of the existing ones. 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 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 can see a comparison photo in my handsaw that's up on the site right now.

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 in 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. And we'll see what it enables, the readiness feature, which a bunch of other whoop 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 stuff, I was like, oh, oh, no. On the sensor array, 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? 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. So maybe it depends on like what future health, advanced health features are enabled by 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 of 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. Yes. We actually have not gotten to the audio stuff yet. And 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 I can listen to you at all times and then you can press the dial in 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, are there other devices like this? There are AI devices, but not like fitness devices.

Not fitness devices, no. So it's very interesting that Apple is kind of cramming that into the little risk computer. But, you know, I've tested the B. I've tried quad note pins. I've tried various AI wearables that are listening to what you do. 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 an 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. 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. how intelligent is the intelligence.

We'll find out. In my experience, a lot of times, it's not that intelligent. 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 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 co-workers talking about something in Poughkeepsie. So, you know, it's a can of worms. I don't know how I feel about it. 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 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.

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 and 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 are we getting these transcripts? How are they going to actually work in a real-life environment? Oh, we'll see.

Are you going to get a transcription of, like, the Odyssey? Like, if you, like, go to the movies, is it going to just be like, oh, man, Odysseus has some problems. That actually is a problem about how well do they transcribe audio. I think in the keynote, they say that you can, like, program it for 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 I believe I heard a probably from Eli off camera. He said, yikes. So you know, these are

the brave new scary AI wearable world that we're entering. 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. Nelai, 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. I barely have a job. Oh, just V. Nealai, you're still here? Fantastic.

I'm just a mascot. I just run around being congratulated. Well, that's great. For working for that. Okay. Well, you know what? I've got some more reader questions for you that have been to submitted in the chat. Maybe.

One of the ones that I wanted to go in on is you saw the inside screen on the iPhone Duo. The under display camera, that is a first for Apple. Did you even notice it? Oh, yeah, it's there. It's there. It's, yeah, they haven't sold it. It's, I mean, you know, what it is, there's a layer of screen over it. So when the screen is over it, it's there, but it's screened.

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 imperceptual. It's there, but it's not a bother. Dom, the Android world has, I think, taken a couple different approaches to this. Have they gotten better on the Android side?

Have they just given up? I think it's still about in that same space. They're there. But you can kind of forget. edits there a bit, kind of in the same way people have gotten there with the creases on Fotherables. You sort of eventually just notice that little weird glitchy spot in the display and your brain starts filtering it out because it's always in the same place. I'm curiously, 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 quality of the footage is terrible. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. They refer to the camera on the cover display as a center stage camera, and the camera on the inside is a FaceTime camera. And I think that tells you everything you need to know about what these cameras are for. So, you know, it's hard to tell on even that size screen,

but it is just very clearly that 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 at the best quality. So I think that inner display is very much for Zoom, FaceTime. I don't think they're expecting you to run around actually taking photos or videos with it. 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 photos with. 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 one of the iPhone SE models, Neelai, 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? 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 insist 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 um the other thing that they were talking about a lot was you can pair it with your watch and if you got your watch unlocked this thing won't lock so you know the speed to unlock the face city 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 city for password entry into multiple apps like that's going to be a change but they were very quick to make sure

you know, just unlocking the phone, just getting to it, 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 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. To me, 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 all that stuff.

We're just going to have to see. 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. Support for the show comes from Rippling. Imagine you just found out your sales team is at risk of missing quota. No need to panic.

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Let your morning change you. Discover coffee plus on espresso.com. That was fun. That was a high energy segment with folks popping in and out. Okay, we're back. Got Dom, we've got Cam. Nelai 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 that single most interesting thing is the camera, which they announced the main camera now has what they called a variable aperture lens.

Dom, I think you 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 would love to hear your thoughts first. 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, I think of this right, was the Galaxy S9 in 2018. That only had two different stops that could hit and sort of the tech was coming along 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 swaned in and said, we've invented the variable aperture on a phone camera. It's another one of the bits like foldable. So the Android guys have been doing this for a long time, figuring it out. I think what's funny about this in terms of what makes me curious is the 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. My memory is that Samsung dropped that feature the next year. If somebody should check me on that, it might have been shortly thereafter,

but it did not last long. So I should probably just break this down for those who are not 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 tiny, 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 deeper degree of sharpness throughout the image, lets you get things further in the distance into focus. I think the question for me is, on a sensor that small, through Letty and less light,

at what point is that actually just going to make the image so much worse that it's not worth using? Yeah, I mean, in general, setting aside variable apertures for a second, in general, when we've looked at Appetron 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 wobbles, 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. 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 the field. You can have more of a natural bouquet effect, which is something we see more and more phone cameras trying to achieve and kind of doing a good job with, especially in 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 F-16 and sort of real cameras. You're still not really closing the aperture tiny. It's not going to give you a 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 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. 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. 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 to the photos a little bit more and they added a whole suite of pro controls so that you can set the shutter speed so you can set 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, controls. 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. 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. I 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, 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 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 and a slightly less generous way because like the camera looks feature is is interesting um 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 i'm very curious to see um what the results look like when we get the phones on our hands i i find apple's approach to like pro photo pro video stuff to be fascinating um 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 that power and would choose that over a dedicated camera.

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

Yeah, yeah. So 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, just things that don't, the fine print that doesn't get shared on stage.

I was just clicking around and I landed on some iPhone pages. And specifically the 17E, I was like $6.99. I feel like I was just considering that phone a little while ago and it wasn't that much. And so I did a way back 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, yeah, I think this kind of snuck in during the event. And that kind of started a search of the rest of the products. And so far we think those are 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, oh no, I hope that doesn't go up in price. But it seems okay. But yeah, 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 launched. 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. 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 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 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 hand on profit here. But memory has gotten vastly more expensive. We actually have a fantastic piece from Ronnie Mola up on the verge.com about some of the origins of the ram crunch. It actually started before the AI boom. And that is 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 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 eartip. And previously, there was the standard model and then one with noise cancellation built in. Now it's one model, the AirPods 5, well, sort of one 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 standard AirPods people?

I have used the pros regularly for years now. But the open design, I think, has not been my thing. Yeah, I use a pair of Bose earbuds at the moment, but they all silicon-tipped ones. I can't get on with the open air design. 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 50% better ANC than last year and the best in any non-tipped version. So we'll see how that holds up. But yeah, I've never quite quite, got numb with this kind of style. I will say, like, we just talked about Apple phones getting

more expensive. These did not, right? They started at 129. I believe the upgraded model is 149, which is actually, I think, cheaper than the AirPods 4 with A&C, 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 in a way, 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. So 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?

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. A couple 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 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 if that's your budget and you're cool with the fit, it's probably an okay way to go. 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 going to pay that price. You can pay it in different ways. You can pay it in installations, but like, you're going to 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 going to get some kind of deal on it that I think, and because it's an Apple product, you're like, oh, man, 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 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 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 A and C become standard that feels like essential in 2026 and at 129 even if that is the price I think that's actually 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 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 pull in before we dip out? Yeah, 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. Yeah, this was wild.

They announced this and it felt like they went above and beyond. So this is a thing that's been brewing for a couple 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, 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 think may actually be taking this to another level beyond what we've seen from other manufacturers. Yeah, I mean, the claim seems to be not just

that the file itself that you take kind of marks it as this was taken on a camera, this was taken on an iPhone, but really that there's this file in your eye cloud 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 how you're going to access that

and use it to verify things 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 contexts, are they really taking all their photos on an iPhone anyway. Maybe some, but you know. 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 tell what's happening. And that's not where 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 going to be fascinating to see that play out and if that's something that people are actually able to lean on and rely on. I agree, that's like quietly one of the bigger deals of the software features announced at this event. 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, although 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 telephone. and shot to still use it? I don't know. But on some level, it's a hardware feature, but 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. Oh, that's really fascinating. It is a hardware-level authentication. I mean, in that case, this seems like something that is potentially going to be something that will 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

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'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 going to have a time.

more at theverge.com. If you haven't already, please head there. We've got hands-on coverage with the iPhone duo, the iPhone Pro, the Apple Watches. We're going to have a bunch more from Allison and V 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 or podcasts, exclusive newsletters, and a whole lot more. We also love hearing from you. Email us, Vergecast at verge.com, or you can call the hotline 866 Verge 1-1. The Vergecast is a production of the Verge and Box Media Podcast Network.

Today's show is produced by Eric Gomez and Travis Larcuck. See you next time. Rock and roll.