iPhone 15 launch and more: 5 biggest announcements from the Apple event 2023

The Apple event on September 12 unveiled the iPhone 15 series and the Apple Watch Series 9. Know the 5 biggest announcements made during the event.

These were the biggest iPhone 15 revelations to come from the Apple event 2023. (REUTERS)

After a long period of anticipation, the Apple event is finally over and now we have the iPhone 15 series, as well as the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 before us. The event was fast-paced and filled with awe-filled moments as some never seen before features and components were announced, validating the tagline of ‘Wonderlust'. CEO Tim Cook took the stage and took us on a 90-minute journey unveiling new products, revealing new features, and talking about the company's commitment to carbon neutrality. If you missed the event, quickly take a look at the 5 biggest announcements from the Apple event.

5 biggest announcements from the Apple event

1. Apple Watch Series 9 gets S9 SiP and Double Tap gesture: The first big announcement of the night came with the Apple Watch Series 9. The new generation of Apple Watch has been equipped with the all-new Apple S9 SiP, which the company claims to be its most powerful watch chip yet. The chipset enables the Apple Watch to process machine learning tasks via the Neural Engine twice as fast and improves the efficiency and battery life of the device.

But more importantly, it enables a cool new gesture control to the Apple Watch Series 9, called the Double Tap. With this, users can easily control the smartwatch using just one hand and without touching the display. Users can tap the index finger and thumb of their watch hand together twice to quickly and conveniently perform many of the most common actions on the Apple Watch Series 9. It starts at $399.

The company stated in a press release, “Double tap controls the primary button in an app so it can be used to stop a timer, play and pause music, or snooze an alarm. The gesture can be used to answer and end a phone call, and even to take a photo with the Camera Remote on the Apple Watch. Double tap will also open the Smart Stack from the watch face, and another double tap will scroll through widgets in the stack”.

2. Apple Watch Ultra 2 gets unveiled: One year after the launch of the first-ever Apple Watch Ultra, its successor is here. The company claimed that the smartwatch retains all the unique features of its predecessor, and they are made better and faster using the same S9 SiP that powers the Series 9. That means the Double Tap functionality also comes to the Ultra 2. The smartwatch also gets a peak brightness of 3000 nits, the brightest display Apple has ever designed. A new watch face called Modular Ultra has also been added to it. It also gets an on-device Siri, making it the first Apple Watch with this capability. The GPS + cellular variant comes at the price of $799.

3. Big upgrades for iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus: The standard model iPhone missed out on any major upgrades the previous year, but Apple made up for it by adding some big features to it this year. The iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Plus both get Dynamic Island, a feature that was reserved for just the Pro models in the iPhone 14 lineup. Users can take advantage of checking live activities, important alerts, and directions in maps, and control music through it.

Additionally, both smartphones also get a larger 48MP main rear camera with a quad-pixel sensor, bringing them up to the Pro models. Using the hardware and software capabilities, users will be able to click 2x optical-quality zoom-level photos. The iPhone 15 standard models also get a peak HDR brightness of 1600 nits, and a peak brightness of 2000 nits. Next, the A16 Bionic chipset also increases both the performance and efficiency of the device. And finally, USB-C connection ports have also been added to the devices for charging and transferring data, allowing the same cable to charge iPhone, Mac, iPad, and the updated AirPods Pro (2nd generation). The iPhone 15 starts at $799, while the iPhone 15 Plus starts at $899.

4. The A17 Pro chipset: The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are powered by A17 Pro, the industry's first 3-nanometer chip. A17 Pro brings improvements to the entire chip, including the biggest GPU redesign in Apple's history, as per the company. Apple also claims that the CPU is now 10 percent faster and the Neural Engine is now up to 2x faster, powering features like autocorrect and Personal Voice in iOS 17.

The new GPU is up to 20 percent faster, says the company, and features a new 6-core design that enables hardware-accelerated ray tracing — which is 4x faster than software-based ray tracing. iPhone 15 Pro models will offer smoother graphics, as well as more immersive AR applications and gaming experiences. The iPhone 15 Pro starts at $999.

5. The 120mm telephoto lens for iPhone 15 Pro Max: The iPhone 15 Pro Max gets the longest optical zoom ever on iPhone which offers 5X optical zoom using a 120 mm lens. Apple said that the new Telephoto camera on iPhone 15 Pro Max has a tetraprism design to fit the longer focal length within the device. As per the company, it is Apple's most advanced stabilization system with a combined optical image stabilization and autofocus 3D sensor-shift module. The iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1199 for the 256GB variant. It becomes the only iPhone to not feature the 128GB storage variant.