By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
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Everything Apple announced, and how close the rumours actually got
The Apple Surprise and Shine event finished a little over an hour ago, and it was a full one: a first folding iPhone, two new Pro models, two watches, new AirPods and a release date for iOS 27. Below is the whole round-up, with UK prices and dates read off Apple's own site tonight. This is also the follow-up to what I said to expect two days ago, so I have marked my own homework as I go: what the reporting called correctly, where it missed, and the one thing I got plainly wrong. Meanwhile the number everyone will repeat is £1,999, which is what the foldable iPhone Duo costs here.
The follow-up
Did it meet expectations?
Broadly yes on the hardware, no on the name, and nobody guessed the bill.
Since this is the sequel to what I said to expect, the short answer first. The shape of the evening was close to what the reporting promised: two Pro models, no standard iPhone 18, a foldable arriving later than the rest, and prices going up because of the memory shortage. All of that landed. However, the single most visible thing on my pre-event page was wrong. I called the foldable the iPhone Ultra, because that is what several outlets said Apple called it internally. It is the iPhone Duo.
The rumour mill was closest on dates and furthest off on money. MacRumors nailed the pre-order and release days to the day, while the analyst chorus that put the foldable somewhere between two and two and a half thousand dollars was right at the bottom of its range and nobody translated it into a UK figure. Consequently the £1,999 headline, and the flat £100 added to every phone Apple kept, are the parts nobody had pinned down. There is a fuller scorecard below.
Section 01 / The foldable
The iPhone Duo, and the two-grand question
Apple's marketing line is "Hello, hello." The UK price is £1,999.
First, the headline product. Apple has finally made a folding phone, and it is called the iPhone Duo. So: not the Ultra, and not the Fold. Apple's own copy calls it "the largest display of any iPhone. Foldable. Poseable. And durable." Meanwhile the price does most of the talking: £1,999 for 256GB, rising to £2,199 for 512GB, £2,599 for 1TB and £3,199 for 2TB. Two colours only, Star White and Night Sky.
The iPhone Duo opens to a 7.6-inch inner display. Image: Apple.
What is inside the iPhone Duo
The specifications are on Apple's own tech spec page, so these are settled rather than reported. Inside there is a 7.6-inch folding OLED with a nano-texture finish; outside, a 5.4-inch display. Both run ProMotion at up to 120Hz and both carry a Dynamic Island. The body is titanium with Ceramic Shield 2 on the front, it weighs 254 grams, and it measures 5.2mm open against 11.3mm closed. In addition, it is rated IP68 to six metres.
Furthermore, there is no Face ID here. Apple has put Touch ID into the side button instead, which is exactly what the leaks said. The chip is the A20 Pro, the camera is a 48MP Dual Fusion system with a 26mm main lens at f/1.6 and a 12MP two-times telephoto crop, and battery life is quoted at up to 44 hours of video on the outer screen or 31 hours on the inner one. Naturally, MagSafe works. So, for that matter, does the Apple Pencil, which Apple lists under both displays.
£1,999 to £3,199
Pre-orders open at 1:00pm UK time on Friday 16 October, and the Duo goes on sale on Friday 23 October, with the UK in the first wave. That is five weeks after the Pro models, which is roughly where Ming-Chi Kuo said supply constraints would push it.
Cheapest way in: £1,999 for 256GB
Section 02 / The flagship
iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, and a 2nm chip
£1,199 for the 6.3-inch Pro, £1,299 for the 6.9-inch Pro Max, and a new 2TB tier on both.
Meanwhile the iPhone 18 Pro starts at £1,199 for 256GB and climbs through £1,399 for 512GB, £1,799 for 1TB and £2,399 for 2TB. Similarly, the Pro Max starts at £1,299. That 2TB rung is new to the line, and it is the first time an iPhone has been offered with that much storage.
Burgundy, Glacier, Silver and Black. Image: Apple.
Inside sits the A20 Pro, which Apple is calling the first 2nm chip in a smartphone. Even so, the more interesting change is not the silicon. Specifically, both models get a variable aperture, not just the Max, and Apple says it built the thing from six laser-cut blades each thinner than a human hair. In a dark room the aperture opens to let in around 50 per cent more light.
Equally notable, the Dynamic Island has shrunk, and it now handles three Live Activities at once rather than two. The four colours are Burgundy, Glacier, Silver and Black. Pre-orders open at 1:00pm UK time on Saturday 12 September and the phones arrive on Friday 18 September, with the UK in the first group of countries and another twenty following on 25 September.
Section 03 / The scorecard
How far off the mark were the rumours?
One clear miss of my own, several hits for the leakers, and one hedge that should have been a call.
The name. First and most obviously, I got this wrong, and it was the most prominent thing on the page. My pre-event piece led with "iPhone Ultra" as the best available guess and noted that MacRumors preferred "iPhone Fold". Both, therefore, were wrong. It is the iPhone Duo, and Apple had said nothing to point anyone at that.
The size of the rise. Second, I said prices would go up and then declined to put a number on it. That was a hedge, and the honest verdict is that it left the most useful part unanswered. A flat £100 across four phones and a £1,999 foldable is a much bigger move than "things cost more than they did".
The Dynamic Island. Third, I wrote that some leakers reported a smaller one and others pushed it to a later phone, so nobody knew. In the end it shrank, and it now runs three Live Activities. Splitting the difference there was the wrong call.
The full scorecard
| Call | Whose | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| No standard iPhone 18 this autumn | Mark Gurman, Bloomberg | Right |
| Pre-orders 12 September, on sale 18 September | MacRumors | Right, to the day |
| Timing not settled, carrier source doubtful | AppleInsider | Wrong |
| Foldable supply tight, may lag the Pros | Ming-Chi Kuo | Right, by five weeks |
| Touch ID rather than Face ID on the foldable | Aggregated reporting | Right |
| 5.5-inch outer and 7.8-inch inner screens | Aggregated reporting | Close: 5.4 and 7.6 |
| Two 48MP cameras, no telephoto | Aggregated reporting | Half right, there is a 2x telephoto crop |
| Prices rising because of the memory shortage | Apple, 25 June 2026 | Right |
| Called the foldable "iPhone Ultra" | Me | Wrong |
Overall, the call I am happiest with going into the Apple Surprise and Shine event was the memory shortage, because that one came from Apple rather than from a leak. In June Apple said in writing that it had "never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly" and that it needed to "begin raising prices on a number of products". Therefore a rise was the reasonable expectation, and £100 a phone is what beginning looks like.
Section 04 / Everything else
Watches, AirPods and a lot of heart-rate data
Three products, one date: Friday 18 September.
Apple Watch Series 12
Starting with the watches, the Series 12 runs the S11 chip and an all-new Health Sensing System, which Apple claims is the most accurate heart-rate sensing in a wearable. In practice that means an optical sensor reading every five seconds all day, more frequent heart-rate variability readings, and a personal readiness score telling you whether to train or rest. There are eight finishes, and two of them are ceramic: Pearl White and Night Blue.
Apple Watch Ultra 4
Apple is selling the Ultra 4 on battery above everything else. It quotes up to 50 hours of normal use and up to 45 hours of Max Extended Workout tracking, with a fast charge in 15 minutes. Likewise, the same Health Sensing System and readiness score carry over from the Series 12.
AirPods 5
Finally, Active Noise Cancellation has reached the standard AirPods rather than staying a Pro feature. They run the H2 chip and pick up Live Translation. Apple has not published a UK price on the overview page yet, so I am not going to guess at one.
Section 05 / The free bit
iOS 27 lands on Monday, and most people get it free
iPhone 11 and newer, plus the second-generation SE and later.
For most readers, this is the most useful line in the whole keynote. iOS 27 arrives on Monday 14 September, and the compatibility list is identical to iOS 26: every iPhone from the 11 onwards, plus the iPhone SE from the second generation. If your phone runs iOS 26 today, it runs iOS 27 on Monday, and it costs nothing.
Specifically, what you get includes a more capable Siri, new photo editing tools such as Spatial Reframing, a Siri mode in the Camera app for visual search, and a set of child-safety controls letting parents set time allowances by app category. iPadOS 27, watchOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate were dated at the same time.
In addition, and usefully for older handsets, Apple has extended free satellite access by another year for people on an iPhone 14, 15 or 16, provided the device was activated in a supporting country before midnight Pacific time on 9 September. That is at least the third extension for iPhone 14 owners.
Section 06 / The money
Every iPhone Apple kept went up £100
The cheapest new iPhone moved from £599 to £699 overnight.
Meanwhile, behind the two launches, Apple quietly repriced the phones it is keeping. I had the old figures written down from 4 September, so the comparison is direct. The iPhone 17e went from £599 to £699. The iPhone 16 went from £699 to £799. The iPhone 17 went from £799 to £899. The iPhone Air went from £999 to £1,099.
Every iPhone Apple kept in the line-up went up by exactly £100. Chart: CoolCuration.
In short, that is £100 on all four, and the same $100 rise landed in the United States, so this is a global repricing rather than a currency story. Meanwhile the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max have been discontinued outright. The live line-up on Apple's UK site now reads iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone Air, iPhone 17, iPhone 17e and iPhone 16, which confirms there is no standard iPhone 18 this year.
Above all, for anyone shopping at the bottom of the range, that £100 on the 17e is the change that actually bites. If it has pushed the new prices out of reach, my guide to the best refurbished phones in the UK covers which grades are worth paying up for, and the Back Market discount code page has the current code and what the warranty actually covers.
The cheapest new iPhone Apple sells went from £599 to £699 while nobody was looking at the bottom of the range.
Section 07 / The exchange rate
£1,199 here, $1,199 there
The same figure in two currencies is not the same money.
Finally, a note on the two headline figures. Apple's US price for the iPhone 18 Pro is $1,199 and its UK price is £1,199. Those look identical and they are not, for two reasons. American prices exclude sales tax, which is added at the till and varies by state. British prices include VAT at 20 per cent, which is already in the number you see.
So here is the arithmetic, using the rate on the day of the event. On 9 September 2026, one dollar bought about 73.7 pence. That makes $1,199 worth roughly £884. Add 20 per cent VAT and you get about £1,061. Apple charges £1,199, so a UK buyer pays around £138 more, or about 13 per cent above the converted American price.
Similarly, the Duo works out the same way. $1,999 converts to roughly £1,474, and with VAT added that is about £1,769 against an actual price of £1,999. Again the gap is close to 13 per cent. In short, some of the difference is tax and exchange rate, and some of it is Apple's regional pricing. I am not going to tell you whether that is fair, but the numbers are worth having before you order.
Therefore, if the upshot is that you are keeping your current phone for another year, a cheaper tariff does more for your monthly outgoings than a new handset does. My SMARTY Mobile guide covers the SIM-only side, and the best phone for every budget puts the refurbished options next to the new ones at each price point.
Apple Surprise and Shine event FAQs
When can I pre-order the iPhone 18 Pro in the UK?
Pre-orders open at 1:00pm UK time on Saturday 12 September 2026, and the phones go on sale on Friday 18 September. The UK is in the first group of launch countries, so there is no wait beyond that date.
How much is the iPhone Duo in the UK?
The iPhone Duo starts at £1,999 for 256GB. After that it is £2,199 for 512GB, £2,599 for 1TB and £3,199 for 2TB. Pre-orders open at 1:00pm on Friday 16 October and it goes on sale on Friday 23 October.
When does iOS 27 come out?
Monday 14 September 2026. It is a free update and Apple announced the date during the event.
Does my iPhone get iOS 27?
If it runs iOS 26, then yes. The compatibility list is unchanged: every iPhone from the iPhone 11 onwards, plus the iPhone SE from the second generation. Otherwise, older handsets stay on iOS 26.
Is the iPhone 18 Pro more expensive than the iPhone 17 Pro?
Yes, by £100. In fact Apple raised the whole range on the same evening. The iPhone 17 Pro started at £1,099 and has now been discontinued, while the iPhone 18 Pro starts at £1,199.
What is the difference between the iPhone Duo and the iPhone 18 Pro?
Essentially, the Duo folds and the Pro does not. The Duo has a 7.6-inch inner screen, a 5.4-inch outer one, Touch ID in the side button and a two-camera system, and it costs from £1,999. The 18 Pro has a 6.3-inch screen, Face ID, a variable-aperture camera and a starting price of £1,199. The Pro also arrives five weeks earlier.
More from CoolCuration
- Native Union Anchor cable. Neither new iPhone ships with a plug, so this is the bit you will actually need.
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- 1Blocker. Blocks ads across iPhone and Mac, which does more for battery life than most upgrades.
- Gifts for techies. For the person who pre-ordered at one o'clock this afternoon.
- Best refurbished MacBooks UK. The same logic applied to laptops, where the savings are larger.
Every price and date on this page was read from apple.com/uk on the evening of 9 September 2026. Product names, prices and availability come from Apple's UK site; supporting detail comes from MacRumors. Exchange-rate arithmetic uses the sterling rate on 9 September 2026 and is illustrative rather than a quote.
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