Key Takeaways
- Apple's September 9 iPhone event is confirmed, with the tagline "Surprise and shine," featuring a keynote at 10 a.m. Pacific Time at the Steve Jobs Theater.
- This event marks the first Apple keynote hosted by CEO John Ternus, who took over after Tim Cook's fifteen-year tenure.
- The main highlight is expected to be Apple's first foldable phone, potentially called the iPhone Ultra, featuring a book-style design with a 5.5-inch outer display and a 7.8-inch inner screen.
Mark your calendars, silence your notifications, and maybe stretch your thumbs, because the Apple September 9 iPhone event is officially locked in, and this one isn’t shaping up to be a quiet affair. Invitations carrying the tagline “Surprise and shine” have gone out for 10 a.m. Pacific Time keynote (1 p.m. Eastern, 10:30 p.m. IST) at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, and the guest list of expected hardware reads less like a routine iPhone refresh and more like Apple’s entire back catalogue decided to show up at once.
In This Article
A New Boss Takes the Wheel
Here’s the twist nobody saw coming a year ago. This will be the first Apple keynote hosted by John Ternus, who officially took over as CEO on September 1 after Tim Cook’s fifteen-year run at the top. Cook has slid into the executive chairman seat, and in his first memo to staff, Ternus promised a “huge launch” that would be “phenomenal,” which is either genuine excitement or the world’s most polite way of saying “please don’t panic about the leadership change.” Either way, John Ternus’s first Apple event as chief executive carries a weight that goes beyond spec sheets, since it is effectively his opening statement to the entire industry.
The Foldable Everyone Has Been Waiting For
The headline act is Apple’s first-ever foldable, expected to be called the iPhone Ultra, and the iPhone Ultra foldable release date finally has a stage of its own. Reports point to a book-style design with a roughly 5.5-inch outer OLED display and a larger 7.8-inch inner screen, unfolding into something closer to a mini tablet than a phone. The Apple foldable iPhone specifications being floated are genuinely wild for a first attempt, including a body as thin as 4.5mm unfolded and around 9mm folded shut, thanks to a liquid metal hinge and an optically clear adhesive designed to keep the crease from becoming an eyesore over time.
Compromises were clearly made to hit that thinness. Face ID is reportedly out in favour of a Touch ID side button, similar to the iPad mini, though front cameras remain on both displays. The rear camera setup skips a telephoto lens entirely, sticking to a wide and ultra-wide pairing instead. Power comes from a 2nm A20 Pro chip said to be around 18 percent faster and 30 percent more efficient than its predecessor, paired with 12GB of RAM and a combined battery capacity that could stretch past 5,700mAh across both halves of the hinge. Expect two colourways, a silver white and a deep near-black indigo, and a price tag that reportedly starts around $2,000 and climbs from there.
For context on just how fast this category is moving, GadgetBridge already covered how Xiaomi finally revealed its own 18 Fold and refused to play by the usual foldable rulebook, and analyst firm IDC reportedly expects Apple to ship around 17 million foldable iPhones and grab roughly 40 percent of the foldable market within its first year, numbers that would rattle a segment Samsung has largely had to itself.
iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max Get Quieter Upgrades
Sitting next to a folding phone makes even solid upgrades look modest, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max price is expected to reflect that with a $100 to $300 increase over last year’s models. Design stays close to the iPhone 17 Pro family, though the Pro Max may get slightly thicker and heavier to fit a bigger battery, and the camera bump could grow marginally to house a new variable-aperture main lens, letting the camera physically adjust how much light hits the sensor depending on conditions.
New iPhone 18 Pro Max colors reportedly include a dark cherry shade, a light blue, and silver, with black notably absent from the lineup this year. A smaller Dynamic Island, an LTPO+ display for better efficiency, a possible three-layer stacked sensor for improved low light shots, and a simplified Camera Control button round out the changes. It is a sensible, if unglamorous, refresh sitting in the shadow of its foldable sibling.
Wearables and Audio Get Modest Refreshes
Apple Watch Series 12 features are expected to include the return of a ceramic case option and an updated processor that could enable continuous, all day heart rate monitoring feeding into a revamped Health app, chasing the kind of round-the-clock wellness tracking that wearables like Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Ultra2, which GadgetBridge reviewed here, have been leaning into. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 is expected to carry a similar processor bump without major design changes. AirPods 5 are rumoured to bring an updated H3 chip for better sound and lower latency, still split between ANC and non-ANC versions.
The Wildcards That Might Sneak In
Apple has reportedly been sitting on a smart home hub with a 7-inch display, cameras, and presence sensors, waiting for its AI assistant to be ready before launching it. That moment may finally have arrived, since Siri AI is already rolling out in the iOS 27 public beta, which GadgetBridge walked through in detail here. A refreshed Apple TV 4K with a faster chip and possibly a new remote, along with a HomePod mini refresh in new colours, are also floating around as event day possibilities.
Preorders, Software, and What Stays in the Cupboard
iOS 27, along with its iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS siblings, should get its public release date confirmed on stage, with a rollout expected around September 14 based on past patterns. Preorders usually open the Friday after the keynote, but with September 11 falling on that date this year, Apple has historically shifted such orders to the following Saturday rather than risk the optics, meaning September 12 is the likely preorder date, with phones landing around September 18.
Not everything makes the cut this round. The standard iPhone 18 is reportedly being held back for a spring 2027 launch alongside the iPhone 18e and iPhone Air 2, there is no new Apple Watch SE this year, and updates like an M6 MacBook Pro, M6 iMac, an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro, and an OLED iPad mini are all expected to arrive later through separate announcements rather than share the spotlight on September 9. For a broader sense of just how packed this month already is, GadgetBridge’s full roundup of upcoming smartphones in September 2026 is worth a look too.
What We Think
Whatever exactly walks onto that stage, Apple has managed to make a smartphone event feel genuinely uncertain again, and that alone is worth paying attention to. A first foldable is a real gamble for a company that rarely takes them in public, and doing it under a first-time CEO adds a layer of tension that no amount of marketing polish can quite paper over. Whether the iPhone Ultra becomes a genuine category shift or an expensive first draft will probably take a few months of real-world use to answer, but September 9 is where that story actually begins.
