The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Epidode # 749 – Live from an Uber talking iPhone Duo!

Two Blokes Talking Tech
Episode: TBTT #749 — Live from an Uber talking iPhone Duo!
Date: 2026-09-10
Hosts: Trevor Long & Stephen Fenech

[00:00:00] Trevor Long: Two Blokes Talking Tech has recorded in some pretty crazy places over the years, and we’ve done the back of a car before. BMW on the way to Spartanburg, Stephen. But we’re doing something very different this time, and our loyal listeners know exactly what’s going on. I am minutes away from a family holiday and I’m in Cupertino. You’re in the Tech Guide studio. The only time I could arrange to meet up with Stephen was essentially on my drive to San Francisco to meet my family. So here we are, remote recording Stephen Thank you for making the time. I appreciate it.

[00:00:34] Stephen Fenech: All good, mate. Yep. We go out of our way to provide the podcast every week for our listeners. And today being a big occasion, the Apple launch, which we’ve been talking about for months, it’s finally happened. And here we are to talk about it.

[00:00:50] Trevor Long: Are you able to ascertain what episode number this is?

[00:00:54] Stephen Fenech: It’s 749, I believe.

[00:00:57] Trevor Long: That’s right. Yes. Because remember last year. We kind of pushed back for a week or so to avoid the 700. Yes, that’s right. So that makes a lot of sense.

[00:01:07] Stephen Fenech: Yes, yes, it is. It’s 749, mate.

[00:01:11] Trevor Long: Episode 749 of Two Blokes Talking Tech. Thanks to the great people at Arlo and Netgear. We’ll tell you more about them shortly. No pre-show, no preamble. We’re getting right into this because it is a massive, massive day. Um, Stephen, I just want to— before we get into the actual details, Yeah, for, for context, from someone who’s seen every iPhone launch, you’ve witnessed this product go from where it started to where it is today. Is this the biggest Apple event or only the biggest Apple iPhone event or not since 2007?

[00:01:44] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I’d say biggest iPhone event for sure. Biggest Apple event, that’s arguable. But yeah, this is a a massive, uh, massive launch for iPhone. A whole new form factor, whole new direction, and a whole new way of using iPhone and, and iOS 27 and, and moving forward. Yeah, for sure. I think, uh, I’ve had so many people, and not just radio stations but just punters, like friends and readers, asking about this and saying, oh, what do you think of that? I said, well, look, it’s great, but you know, start, uh, it’s how expensive it is later. And I called it, by the way, that was the figure that I called weeks ago.

[00:02:30] Trevor Long: But I think we agreed it wouldn’t be more. I said it wouldn’t be more than that. I’m gonna call, I’m gonna call even on that one. Um, before, before we dig into the way it was announced and all that kind of stuff, I want to say, if I could do anything, if I had a genie giving 3 wishes I think you’d agree with me here. I want Mark Gurman’s contacts. Mark Gurman from Bloomberg. Yeah, the bloke, the bloke 24 hours ago started dropping the name iPhone Duo with great confidence.

[00:03:00] Stephen Fenech: I think it was sooner than that. A few days ago he was mentioning Duo, like it was last week.

[00:03:05] Trevor Long: Yeah, isn’t that remarkable? Isn’t that remarkable?

[00:03:08] Stephen Fenech: What is he on the payroll?

[00:03:10] Trevor Long: What’s he doing?

[00:03:10] Stephen Fenech: How come he gets all these little leaks?

[00:03:12] Trevor Long: Well, it’s interesting because he also suggested there was going to be a million other products and they weren’t. So there’s a few furfies sent, sent along. Now, we’re not going to talk about this in the order they were announced because we think the iPhone Duo, the foldable iPhone, is the headline. So let’s unfold that right now. You know, this is a form factor we’re now familiar with. We knew this was the form factor. There’s nothing unexpected in that. But in watching the keynote, you would have watched all the videos of, you know, them opening and stuff. Did you notice it looked fake? It looked like when they would open it, there was this kind of, um, this blurred effect when you open it like a book, and like one, one half of the page would look like it was kind of shining through to the other side. It was this weird effect, and I thought, hang on a minute, this is a bit disingenuous, isn’t it? Did you notice that and think, surely it doesn’t look like that?

[00:04:02] Stephen Fenech: I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what I did notice. I reckon that the actors holding it in the video were just holding a block. They were just holding a piece of wood or something And I reckon it was all put on their hands. You look closely at it. I reckon that they would’ve done that weeks ago. There’s no way that they’ve had the actual product in their hands when they were filming it. So however they did that, it was genius how they did it.

[00:04:28] Trevor Long: Well, here’s the thing I thought, hang on guys, can we, can we be real? And then I went out and you know what it’s like, you get 5, 10 minutes with the bloody thing. Yeah. So busy. I went out. And was utterly blown away by how that effect worked in the hand. And we’re going to make a lot of enemies here with Samsung fans and the Samsung company. I’ve got no doubt I’m going to get texts and emails from our good friends there, but it’s just done better. I’m sorry, but when you feel this in your hand, when you open it, you feel it’s premium, it’s, it’s Apple. And the software is what makes it work. And, you know, that’s, that’s Apple’s, you know, that’s their strength is, is doing software and hardware together.

[00:05:15] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I agree. I think, um, we called it. I was saying that when this comes out, it’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be— the software is going to be amazing. Every app is going to look just brilliant. And the fact that Apple, as we know, end-to-end software, hardware, of course it was going to be like that. Of course it was. Now, hardware to hardware, you can argue which is, which is better, or how it— however it feels in your hand. But the software and that finishing touch, those little touches, are where Apple obviously— that’s— they’re playing to their strengths.

[00:05:48] Trevor Long: I’ll give you two software examples that just jump to mind straight away that, uh, prove that Apple’s doing this at a level far beyond Samsung. And that’s somewhat insulting to say to Samsung, but bear with me. You know, Samsung, even on a standard S26 Ultra, you can split screen, you can group apps, you can pair apps, all that kind of stuff, right? But the way Apple’s done it is when you’re in that open book format, the unfolded, you swipe up an app and you just slide it to the left and it becomes half the screen. You open up the next app and it’s on, on the right of the screen, and then you just tap in the middle and they join together. And they stay joined together in the app dock. So that— I know that you can do it on Samsung. I know people will be shouting at the radio and the speaker right now, but I’m telling you it’s done better. And then the other one is we’ve been doing foldable phones for 7 years with Samsung. I remember that YouTube was an example they used early on about how you could, you know, watch— have it in a kind of half-open state and the YouTube would be on the top half and whatever. That was cool. Floating, mate. Netflix has fully customized their app for the iPhone Duo to the point where when you’re on the closed screen, the front screen, you can essentially swipe through like TikTok promo videos, right? Open up like a book and go to the back to the menu and start playing a show. And then if you half fold it, so imagine you’re on a plane, you sit it in front of you folded like a laptop, if you— if that makes sense to people. So the, the inner screen is facing you, but it’s upright. The Netflix show will appear in the top part of the screen and on the bottom part of the screen controls forward, backwards, pause, play, brightness. It’s— there’s controls built in. And when those controls are not shown, there’s a reflection. It looks like a reflection of the actual TV show, but it’s actually built into the software. They’re actually creating a project, mate. Netflix hasn’t done that for Samsung. Yeah, like, this is, this is where their power is.

[00:08:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, I think on the Fold, do you remember, like, there are controls to do that on the Fold, but the, the Fold 8, they didn’t— I haven’t noticed those controls. Yeah, and have a mate, like, on the Fold, there was ways to do that and watch YouTube and and have it like a little mini laptop. But the Fold 8, the, the similar shape to the iPhone Duo, somehow didn’t, didn’t get that. But look, it just goes to show, and I reckon Samsung— sorry, Apple obviously were talking to Netflix about this and to have this ready for this launch, and, and as they were probably other companies, to make sure that their apps were, were, you know, tip-top shape. But, um, it’s But again, it just goes back to just the power of the pool that Apple’s got of getting it done and having it ready. And look, Samsung, years ago I said that they were a big enough company to have their own software, but they decided just to, you know, hitch up to Android. But look, this is paying dividends to Apple now, the fact that they’ve been having their own software, so they’re controlling how everything looks and feels without having to rely on anyone else. And look, look at paying— it’s paying off big time right now.

[00:09:13] Trevor Long: So Samsung moved away from S Pen support on the foldables, and here’s Apple with Apple Pencil support. Boom!

[00:09:20] Stephen Fenech: You know what, I reckon that’s probably one of the best features. That’s a top-line feature to do that. And funny that they’ve, they’ve waited for the Duo for that to happen. They didn’t do it on the other iPhones. It’s only this iPhone where they’ve decided to do it. Fans, you Users have been calling out for this for years, but it makes sense that it’s— it works not only on the, on the big screen but also on the front, on the front screen as well. Yes, that’s going to come to the other iPhones then eventually, or what?

[00:09:47] Trevor Long: They’ll make it a, a Duo and tablet thing only, and then that’s the way it gets done. Probably right. The other one that I found interesting was, um, think about Fold 6, um, had the, um, under screen selfie camera on the inside screen.

[00:10:04] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:10:04] Trevor Long: And it was, mate, it was so well done that you could actually, if you looked hard enough, you could see the pixels were essentially further apart and you could tell where that camera was, right? Mate, I had no idea there was a camera on the inside of this thing.

[00:10:17] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:10:17] Trevor Long: I’m looking at it. I didn’t notice it, right? When it’s off, when the screen’s off and it’s black, you can see that there’s a little dot there. Yeah. You cannot see that at any other time. And then it just made the way you open a camera app or FaceTime and it just appears this little black dot and the orange slide for recording. It just works. It’s just there. You’re like, wow, this is crazy the way they’ve done that.

[00:10:40] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got a couple of questions around that. Number one, we’re going to talk about the smaller Dynamic Island on the 18 Pro later, but they’ve proven they can do an under-screen camera really well. Do you think that that might be something they carry through to the other iPhones?

[00:10:56] Trevor Long: It makes sense, doesn’t it? Because the way they’ve done it, as I understand it, is they’ve half the number of pixels in that specific area for the infrared sensor.

[00:11:04] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:11:05] Trevor Long: And so if they can do that for the infrared sensor, if they could do this for the under-screen camera, why do we need the Dynamic Island at all? So yeah, it feels like 20th anniversary could be screen, you know, edge-to-edge screen.

[00:11:18] Stephen Fenech: And what about too on the front screen? I noticed they got a little hole punch camera. So they’ve proven that that’s a, that’s a, an Apple feature now too, where other brands have been doing it for quite a long time.

[00:11:28] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:30] Stephen Fenech: So let me ask, let me ask you then, like, what, what is the— I understand that you, like, holding it in your hand and seeing a picture of it is completely different, I guess. So holding it in your hand, I, I guess you just feel the premium quality, good build. Does it feel solid or like it does feel rugged, isn’t it?

[00:11:48] Trevor Long: It feels, it feels like you wouldn’t want to drop it, that’s for sure. Uh, it feels like you want to buy a case for it. It feels like it’s worth a lot of money. So it feels premium in every way. The mechanism, the hinge is Samsung-esque. And, you know, they’ve got 7 generations of that. So, you know, they’ve nailed that hinge. And I think Apple has learned definitely from them and done different things. But it feels good the way it opens. It doesn’t, it doesn’t lock to one spot. You can, you can kind of move the hinge to wherever you want it to be.

[00:12:15] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:12:16] Trevor Long: But the, like, the number one feature of this phone is you can’t see the crease.

[00:12:22] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. So the nano screen is what? That was a masterstroke.

[00:12:25] Trevor Long: Nano screen. It’s so simple. It’s, you know why you see the screen, that you see the crease on an Oppo? Because it’s a reflection. And, and I, I can tell you, I saw the crease once when I was looking at someone holding it and the screen was white, like let’s say it was a text pad or it was a white website, right? I could see it. Now that’s essentially because of shadows, um, to under the, under the finger to touch you, you know, your fingers in the middle of the screen. But it is, dude, it’s, it’s the best. It’s the flattest screen, no question in my mind. But then taking the flattest screen and adding that nano texture, and you’re like, well, here we go, they’ve nailed this. It’s so good, mate. If Samsung doesn’t add a matte nano texture style screen next year, they’re insane, because it just works.

[00:13:17] Stephen Fenech: Let’s talk about Samsung and how they were— did you hear the trash talk that they were sort of during the announcement? They were trash talking looking on, on Twitter, on X?

[00:13:26] Trevor Long: Oh, I saw something from Samsung Canada, um, saying this is my favorite.

[00:13:31] Stephen Fenech: My favorite was, uh, look, looks like they’re reheating our leftovers. It was my favorite line.

[00:13:38] Trevor Long: So see, oh, you got to be careful, Samsung. I just—

[00:13:41] Stephen Fenech: I agree.

[00:13:43] Trevor Long: Let the rising tide lift all the boats. Yes. And you know, people— mate, there wasn’t a single live cross today that I did where I didn’t mention that Samsung’s been doing this for 7 years. Of course, what they’ve got to do is accept competition and just run with it. Just say, we welcome it, we’ve been doing it for a while, but we, we’re excited, welcome to the party, that kind of thing, right?

[00:14:02] Stephen Fenech: Exactly. Yeah, that’s what I would have done, mate.

[00:14:03] Trevor Long: Be better, be bigger, I think.

[00:14:05] Stephen Fenech: But let me ask what I would do then. You, you’ve been— you’ve used the, the Fold 8 for a while.

[00:14:11] Trevor Long: I loved it, love it.

[00:14:12] Stephen Fenech: And so how does it compare, like, feeling your hand size? It’s very similar, isn’t it?

[00:14:19] Trevor Long: Feels very similar. There’s something that Apple does on their screens that makes them look better.

[00:14:25] Stephen Fenech: I’m sorry, it’s called Super Retina XDR, it’s what it’s called.

[00:14:29] Trevor Long: It’s— it just looks nice, mate, it really does. So in the hand it looks good, feels good. Um, to open it up, I think the inner screen— I, I’m a big fan of nanotexture. I’d get it on everything if I was buying stuff, uh, you know, in MacBook, on a monitor. I think it’s— I think it’s a no-brainer. Um, So there is a just a pure premium feel to it and in every way. And I think that I don’t think the pre-orders will be amazing for it. Obviously they’ll do very well at pre-orders. Yeah, but I think they’ll probably sell more of these from launch day for 2 weeks than they normally do on any other phone in terms of percentage of pre-sale versus in-store purchases, if you know what I mean. Because I think people need to see it and feel it.

[00:15:14] Stephen Fenech: See it and go, wow, yeah, I’ve got to have this here.

[00:15:16] Trevor Long: Assuming you can find a way to fund it, which we’ll get to. But so putting price aside, if you’re in the market, they’ll pick it up, they’ll feel it, and they’ll go, oh, oh my God, like, put— take my money. That—

[00:15:28] Stephen Fenech: you know what Samsung does? When Samsung released their, um, Fold 8, they had them in store that day. So people bought a week and a half before they were— they were launching. Do you think Apple might do that with this one and have them in the Apple stores for people to look at ahead of October 23rd, or they’ll wait?

[00:15:48] Trevor Long: Okay. That’s a really good point. I think, yeah, that’s an excellent point, mate. I think that if, if pre-orders are October 16th, it should be there to touch and hold so that people can pre-order, get them out.

[00:16:01] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, even if it’s behind glass, like, have it there.

[00:16:05] Trevor Long: Yeah, even, but like, even if it’s on appointment or something, you know what I mean? Like, just create the hype. Like, create the Vision Pro. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes. Um, like, we get to play with a lot of stuff. We get to— you get, you get to see things first often. It’s a great part of our job. I genuinely think that when you pick this up for the first time, your, your reaction is wow. And that, that’s not something you can say for a lot of products, mate. And so I was— so what happened was, um, Stig was able to come into the keynote and he sat with me. We kind of got a back row seat so he could run out to the hands-on, but I hadn’t I hadn’t gotten the pricing yet for Australia, so I couldn’t leave the keynote until I’d kind of finished typing my story with the pricing, right? So I said, mate, you go get a spot, I’ll come. Now, he did get a spot. He got the thing, you know, because all these people waiting behind him, I just crammed in to get it. And I kind of looked over his shoulder at first, just watching him get a demo. And I was like, in awe. And then he moved to the side. I picked it up and went, oh man. And the thing was, you can watch a keynote. But then you have someone— think of it like a retail staff member— explain things to you and just show you a few things, and you’re like, oh man, what the hell’s going on here? This is crazy good. Um, there’s just so many positives to it, both in the hand and in performance. And when you play with the software, that— it’s unquestionable. But at $800 more than the Fold 8 and $500 more than the Fold 8 Ultra, Might. It’s a lot of money.

[00:17:40] Stephen Fenech: It’s a lot. Um, one other— a couple other things. It’s, it’s eSIM only. Yeah, so no, no SIM cards.

[00:17:48] Trevor Long: Like the iPhone Air.

[00:17:49] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, so that, that was— and Apple was saying that the, the design didn’t have the room for a SIM tray. Is that right? It was— it’s pretty— what is it, 4.5mm when it’s opened?

[00:17:57] Trevor Long: It’s thinner than the iPhone Air. So wow, whatever they did there, they said, they said it’s the thinnest iPhone ever. And that was the air.

[00:18:06] Stephen Fenech: So yeah, and also battery life, they’ve done the split battery thing, eh? So the batteries across both sides, so cross both sides with battery life.

[00:18:15] Trevor Long: And, and they— I’m, I’m sure— so as I understand it, there, you would have noticed today they quoted this, um, you know, 24 hours on a charge thing, and then they quoted some video numbers. So, so I think they’re shifting from just that video number, which is kind of a stupid arbitrary thing.

[00:18:32] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:18:35] Trevor Long: Time, real, real usage. Um, and this thing has the same usage as an iPhone 14 Pro. So while, while the iPhone Air definitely was compromised on its battery because of its thinness, the iPhone Duo has the two batteries and therefore isn’t compromised on its, its battery performance. Obviously it’s somewhat compromised on camera because there isn’t the pro-level cameras, but this is not a pro-level device.

[00:19:01] Stephen Fenech: It has the wide angle, it has the standard Cameras, 48-megapixel Fusion is pretty good.

[00:19:08] Trevor Long: Yeah, and the 2x zoom using the Fusion lens on the main lens, uh, and ultra-wide is all you need. So, so that’s a win. That’s, that’s all good. They make— the only compromise here is price.

[00:19:21] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, let me just— while I’ve— while we’re talking about price, so the prices are $3,499 for the 256GB, $3,599 for the, uh, 512GB. That’s probably— well, that’s probably 512 is, I think I’ve written down $3,599, probably more than that. You jump up, see, I know the big price jumps come, and even with the 18 Pro, I noticed that the price jumps come when you go to a terabyte. So terabyte’s $4,699, and tell them the price of 2 terabytes, $5,899.

[00:19:53] Trevor Long: Imagine spending that—

[00:19:54] Stephen Fenech: that’s MacBook Pro money.

[00:19:56] Trevor Long: That’s a secondhand car.

[00:19:58] Stephen Fenech: Well, you know what, mate? I think there’ll be generous, uh, um, trade-in deals ahead of it. And, and we were kind of half right too about it not being launched with the i18 Pro. I’m happy that we did it at the same time.

[00:20:14] Trevor Long: Yeah, I was stoked.

[00:20:16] Stephen Fenech: I’m happy about that. October 23rd. Yeah, that’s when that’s released.

[00:20:20] Trevor Long: Yeah, so pre-sales October 16th, on sale October 23rd. So I think that’s a good result. And actually, I don’t think that’s anything to do with supply. I think that’s a strategic move to ensure that— think about how we operate, right? It’s the review program, right? If this was being reviewed at the same time as the 18, do you think I’d be giving the 18 much time? Not at all. You know, so everyone’s going to get the 18 Pro done and then, you know, a month, 3 weeks later, you’ll start seeing the reviews of the Duo. So I assume that’s how it’ll work and that’ll be a global thing. So it’s a second bite of the cherry. It’s a second bite of the cherry PR-wise. Um, and I mean, I think there will be a— not a— not queues around the block, but I think there’ll be a crowd at the Apple Store.

[00:21:03] Stephen Fenech: I, I agree. Yeah, I think this is going to bring, uh, bring the line back, I’d say. Uh, but just before we move on, I want to ask about— like, I, I obviously not there, and I watched the— just the, the feed. There was no onstage viewing of John Turner. So I understand at the live event he was onstage chatting before they rolled the tape.

[00:21:24] Trevor Long: Just like pretty much every event now, Dub Dub or others, they— someone will come out and have a chat beforehand. And now, a couple of things: Tim Cook was in the front row, uh, he got a big cheer when people realized he was there. Um, Ternus got a huge reaction when he walked out. Um, so yeah, he came out and, you know, he just— he said pretty much the same thing he said at the start of the video, which was, you know, that he was proud and, you know, looking to maintain the focus and all that kind of stuff. And you know what, mate, 10 out of 10, he nailed that. He did a great job. It, it felt different. It felt a little different, don’t you think? Um, there was that one moment where he was in the anechoic chamber and he bent down to the camera and swiped it to the right. I actually thought, I thought Tim Cook would never have done that.

[00:22:08] Stephen Fenech: Oh, he has done similar things in the past though. He has done, he has done. It just, it just felt he was a bit more playful, you reckon, eh, mate?

[00:22:15] Trevor Long: Yes. Yeah, I think, I think there was a little, just a little pizzazz to him. But I also, I wouldn’t have predicted the handover. In the video, you know, all those silly videos at the start which ended with Tim Cook, the main player, and then he goes, no, no, that’s him.

[00:22:29] Stephen Fenech: You know, I thought that was a nice, a nice little handoff, nice gesture for sure.

[00:22:34] Trevor Long: So look, the Duo is the highlight, no question. Big price tag. Hello, mate.

[00:22:39] Stephen Fenech: Tough to just choose which color would you get? What color?

[00:22:42] Trevor Long: Ah, I’d probably get the white one. Yeah, just the lighter color.

[00:22:46] Stephen Fenech: What’s the colors? It’s, uh, Night Sky or Star White. Give me— I’ll put me down for a Night Sky.

[00:22:52] Trevor Long: Well, put me down for Star One. Uh, you can, uh, you can read all the details, the specs and everything that Stephen unpacked at techguy.com.au, and some of my thoughts at eftm.com. Here at Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:23:03] Stephen Fenech: Alrighty, and Two Blokes Talking Tech is proudly supported by Arlo. Arlo is your go-to if you’re after a security system, cameras ranging from well under $100 all the way through to wired floodlights. And you can set up a whole ecosystem one at a time, or if you want to go to the Arlo website, there’s a bundle bundle and save option as well, where you can put together a few and, uh, you spend over $1,000, I think you get up to 20% discount. So if you are starting from scratch and wanting to put a system together, best head over to arlo.com and see what you can do. But the choices are plenty. You can get your essential cameras, there’s the— your video doorbells, the wired floodlights, the pan and tilt and zoom cameras for inside and outside of your home. And of course, they’re all brought together by their Arlo Secure plans that add smart notifications and any other safety features to, uh, your cameras as well, including 30 days of cloud storage. So you’ve got that secure up in the cloud, uh, and we’re— and you can access them and also search through them using AI. So it’s really easy to find what you’re looking for. So if you’re looking to improve your security around your place, head over to arlo.com.

[00:24:17] Trevor Long: And while you’re improving things, improve your Wi-Fi. If you’re paying for, uh, NBN, that gives you great speeds like 500 megabits per second, uh, with the new NBN speeds that we’ve got in the last year or so, but you’re not getting those speeds throughout your home, you need a better Wi-Fi system. Uh, Netgear can offer you that with their Orbi range. It’s a mesh system, so one box, the, the router, sits with your NBN connection, and then the satellites sit throughout your home to give you a dome of Wi-Fi over your entire home and give you the best speeds everywhere, so that every device gets equal treatment and every device gets the best, so that you’re not buffering in one room and streaming hard in the other. Everyone should get full speed everywhere in your home, and a mesh system from Orbi can give you that. You can buy them and check them out at netgear.com.au. Stephen, the show started today with, with the iPhone, iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. And obviously just to touch on it, but we’ve mentioned plenty of times on the show here that the widely held rumors were that there wouldn’t be an iPhone 18. And in fact, that’s likely to come early next year alongside an Air 2 and an 18e. So, I mean, it’s an interesting one because these phones look the same, just different colors. Burgundy, a really deep purple. Glacier, which is a light blue, silver and black, deep black, I think they call it.

[00:25:35] Stephen Fenech: They—

[00:25:36] Trevor Long: so aesthetically it’s just a color change. There’s not much else that changes. But dude, the variable aperture camera means very little to the average punter, but it does add some serious clout to the camera functionality. And what I was impressed was It’s a physical motion, it’s a physical mechanism on the lens that actually opens and shuts the aperture. Dude, that’s wild.

[00:26:00] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, there’s—

[00:26:00] Trevor Long: there’s—

[00:26:01] Stephen Fenech: they’ve got 6 laser-cut blades that I think thinner than a human hair that allow that transition between the various apertures. And you know what, this is just like camera porn to a photographer, right? Hearing all this coming out of a— this is from a phone. Having this sort of, uh, these sorts of features and just, you know, satisfies that customer because we know that the pro customer, the content creator, is going to gravitate towards these devices to create their content. And obviously the quality of the photography is superior. So, uh, yeah, of course they’re just playing, playing to the crowd here with the camera improvements. And of course we should mention too the chip, the A20 Pro chip chip, which is also, uh, powering the Duo, is also, uh, adding some pretty— some decent clout as well. There’s like a 40% gain in graphics performance and even greater power efficiency as well. There’s new memory packaging as well, so they put the silicon side by side with the memory as well to allow the chip to directly connect to the vapor chamber to keep everything cool.

[00:27:08] Trevor Long: And the vapor chamber, they spend a lot of time talking about that. Something that you normally get from others, but the, the concept of a vapor chamber is aloof to most people, but it’s a pretty impressive thing to think that across basically the whole back of this phone is this tiny, thin piece of equipment that has water flowing through it that actually allows them to cool the phone when it’s under load. So gaming and things like that, basically you can game for longer because the phone won’t heat up. I mean, that’s a challenge.

[00:27:37] Stephen Fenech: Very awesome. People are going to try to sort of overclock this thing with games and their, and their apps. And if it— if it— the one— the consequence of high pro fast processing is heat. So that they can keep that down, that maintains performance, maintains battery life as well. So everyone wins there. Uh, the other change they mentioned too was the slightly smaller Dynamic Island. Did you notice that, or—

[00:28:02] Trevor Long: honestly, I didn’t get a good look, but it’s, it’s noticeable. It’s, it’s smaller because what they’ve done is they’ve moved the infrared, the Face ID, under the pixels of the screen. So the only thing the Dynamic Island is needed for essentially is the camera and I think a light sensor. So it’s smaller and that allows you to run— because if you’ve ever got live activities happening on your phone, you can have 3 live activities happening around that Dynamic Island instead of just the couple that you could have now. And I believe the infrared sensor is actually over on the left of the screen. But you wouldn’t know where it is because it doesn’t matter. It’s just, yeah, basically there’s a small area of the screen where the pixel density is lower, like half. Yeah. And that’s how they’re able to fire the infrared through that.

[00:28:45] Stephen Fenech: And they’ve said that you can still run up to 3 live apps through the Dynamic Island, so it’s not really affecting it at all. Let’s have a chat about the— obviously these, these devices are going to have iOS 27 installed. The Duo apparently is going to have iOS 27.1 installed. Because it’s, it’s 6 weeks away.

[00:29:03] Trevor Long: It’s got the— it’s probably got the, um, that 27.1 is the one with all the fold features.

[00:29:08] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, right. Oh, uh, so a lot of the features they spoke about, obviously Apple Intelligence, Siri AI, really seriously looking, you know, this, this is now is knows, knows everything about you, all the, all the sort of context information. Like you, you make a call to about your flight and then your, your ticket information is, is there on the screen as well. I think you mentioned on the TV about the hotel, real World—

[00:29:34] Trevor Long: yeah, I mentioned it, didn’t I? Um, you know, I literally— because, you know, the kids are arriving and I thought I want to make sure that the hotel’s paid for, it’s all sorted for them, you know, because I can’t be there. And we had 3 rooms, 3 bookings, 3 confirmation numbers, right? And I didn’t have the number saved in my phone or anything like that. I just went to Google, Googled the hotel name, typed the phone number in, put it on speakerphone. And so the phone number’s at the top of the screen, and almost instantly, in a big bold font, the confirmation numbers, all 3 of them appeared on the screen. And what do you think the first thing that the person answering the phone asked for? The confirmation numbers. Yeah, that’s pretty— it was unbelievable. You know, it’s going to be— it will be different for everyone what it is that makes them go, oh wow. I don’t think it’s cleanup on your iPhone photos and stuff like that. I think it’s more of these personal context things that will impress people. Um, and it’s going to be awesome. But, you know, really it’s just an iOS feature, it’s not a, um, 18 Pro feature. But yeah, it’s gonna, it’s gonna launch with that, with those devices.

[00:30:36] Stephen Fenech: And what do you think of the— are you a burgundy man or are you a glacier man?

[00:30:41] Trevor Long: The burgundy is a really deep purple, it’s very nice, but I feel like I’m a glacier man. I feel like I like that blue. Burgundy’s going to be the new orange, do you know what I mean? Like, that was so popular.

[00:30:52] Stephen Fenech: Orange is the new— yeah, burgundy is the new orange.

[00:30:54] Trevor Long: Burgundy is the new orange.

[00:30:56] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, is there a TV show called Orange is the New Black?

[00:31:01] Trevor Long: And black is back, by the way.

[00:31:03] Stephen Fenech: So yes, I’ve heard of that, mate. That’s right, that’s right. Black is back.

[00:31:06] Trevor Long: Yeah, aesthetically very, very much the same. And yeah, let’s talk pricing, because I think you would have expected a much bigger jump, but $100 is a good jump given The global pressures.

[00:31:20] Stephen Fenech: Let me just, let me just stop you right there, right? The iPhone 18 Pro, uh, $2,099, $2,299 for the Max. So it’s $200 extra. So $2,499 for the 512, $2,699 for the, for the 512 Pro Max. Then if you want to go the 1TB, that is, I, I believe, $500 more than last year, which is $3,200.

[00:31:43] Trevor Long: Hang on, hang on, go back to the bottom.

[00:31:45] Stephen Fenech: The, you know, they’re $100, they’re $100, $100 more than last year. That’s at the base level.

[00:31:50] Trevor Long: At the base, pretty good.

[00:31:52] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I’m saying that’s it. But I said once you go to 1TB, you’re looking at $500 and $900 increases.

[00:32:00] Trevor Long: Increases on the, on the one below, or increases on last year?

[00:32:04] Stephen Fenech: On last year.

[00:32:05] Trevor Long: Right, right. Yeah, of course, because it’s more memory, right?

[00:32:09] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah. So it’s— I think that if the message is if you want a heavy, you want high, high memory it’s going to cost you. You’re going to pay for it no matter what, no matter what device you’re paying for, because the memory shortage, it’s affecting everybody.

[00:32:23] Trevor Long: Yeah, so yeah, we knew that was going to happen.

[00:32:26] Stephen Fenech: And this is out as we predicted, uh, pre-orders are on Saturday, the Saturday, September 12th, 10 PM. I love how they put it late at night so it doesn’t— everyone’s not rushing, I guess. I suppose they’ll be rushing.

[00:32:37] Trevor Long: Well, I think, uh, I think it’s because what they wanted— well, hang September, uh, 10 PM. Yeah, it’s a very weird time because I knew that what they wanted to avoid was a September 11th being a date in the calendar, right? They don’t want to say anything’s happening on September 11th. So, so you’re saying, I don’t know why they’re making it late at night.

[00:32:55] Stephen Fenech: Ah, so in America it’s like first thing the 12th then?

[00:32:58] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, right? Yeah, 10 hours. Yeah, that, that kind of makes sense. And then on sale September 18th.

[00:33:07] Stephen Fenech: So that’s Friday week, it’s on sale. Um, and no doubt on Friday night, Saturday morning, there’ll be all the telco offers, uh, with this as well. So yeah, stay tuned for that. Bring it on. It wasn’t just iPhones, don’t forget. We also have—

[00:33:24] Trevor Long: I feel really bad for anyone that works on the Apple Watch or the AirPods team. Let’s be— let’s just all be honest now. Imagine trying to get someone to talk about this when there was a folding phone.

[00:33:34] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s, that’s a, that was a bummer. I think they knew what they were, what they had in for though. Although look, I got to say, the watch improvements, we’ll talk about the watch last, but let’s talk, let’s do AirPods. And this is a case where you’re getting more for less. Like, you work it out, you’re getting AirPods, the AirPods 5, which are the open AirPods. So not the Pros are the ones with the silicon that jam in, sort of have you, that give you the seal. These are open earphones and now come standard with active noise cancellation.

[00:34:07] Trevor Long: It’s crazy.

[00:34:08] Stephen Fenech: If you recall, last year was $299 for that model. Remember, there was a $299 just an open ear, $219 the open ear, $299 for the ANC.

[00:34:19] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:34:19] Stephen Fenech: So now they’re bas— the, the, the, the new AirPods 5 with ANC, still $219. $219. And then the other upgrade would be if you want to get the slightly better model, which is an extra $30. You get the better 5 hours of ANC over 4 for the entry-level, wireless charging case, uh, and you get the stem, the swipe controls for the volume on the stem as well.

[00:34:48] Trevor Long: I’d pay the extra. That’s really— swipe controls is worth it, let alone that, man. I can’t remember the last time I plugged my AirPods in. I just— the case, I just sit it on a wireless charger.

[00:34:58] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, you can do that with the Qi charger. The Apple Watch charger I think works with this too. If you’ve got an Apple Watch charger, just put it on top of that. Yeah, that’s what, that’s what it said, I think, in the, uh, when they were talking about it. Um, that’s a winner, that’s a winner, the AirPods 5. Let’s, uh, let’s get Apple Watch, shall we? Apple Watch Series 12, uh, which is what we expected. We can all count. Apple Watch Ultra 4 Now, the— here’s the impression I got, that this was the Apple Watch where Apple said, look, this isn’t just gonna— this isn’t a tracker anymore, this is a serious health product. So they introduced the new health sensing system, uh, there’s redesigned sensors that capture your biometric data at way better frequencies, powered by the new S11 chip as well. So AI-powered audio processing as well. But let’s talk first health sensing system. So not just another health metric here, Apple is improving the quality and frequency of the data collection. So the, the electrodes have larger surface area, so better contact on your skin. So they’re talking an increase of how often the watch is actually collecting biometric data. We’re talking 60 times more often when it comes to your heart rate measurements, and your heart rate variation sampling goes, uh, from every 5 minutes to increases to every 5 minutes. That’s a 24-fold improvement on the previous one.

[00:36:34] Trevor Long: Yeah, so it’s basically about over-egging the amount of data they’re getting from you and how often they’re getting it from you. They, they are making claims— I don’t remember exactly what they are, but they’re basically making several claims around it’s, it’s the most sensing happening on any wearable device. So I think this is a shot at, you know, your Whoops and things like that. It’s trying to show that they can build serious credentials in, but not just, you know, health tracking, heart tracking stuff, but actual fitness tracking as well would be a big part of it.

[00:37:05] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, they’re saying that compared, like, it’s for a wearable, most accurate heart rate. And, and they’re saying here they were competing against, uh, wearables using even an ECG chest strap as the reference as well. So wow, it’s pretty forward.

[00:37:20] Trevor Long: Yeah, um, and battery life too on the Ultra is, is improved, um, 2 days just kind of guaranteed there. Um, and yeah, it’s the same form factor. It’s pretty, it’s a pretty epic device.

[00:37:31] Stephen Fenech: But also too, now there’s new insights, you know how they give you a readiness score, which I’ve seen on other devices if I’m being honest. The readiness score was something that I think the Oura Ring provides and other, other—

[00:37:42] Trevor Long: yeah, the Whoop is big on this. This The idea of giving you a score instead of giving you a number, like sleep, you know, you slept for 6 hours or you ran 200 kilometers, this, like, it’s about giving you a number that you can compare week to week, day to day. That’s, that’s what these have realized. People need the simplicity of a score. So, and this is all part of a complete overhaul of the Health app, by the way, too.

[00:38:04] Stephen Fenech: Yes, it is too. Yeah. The Health app, uh, I’ll talk about in a sec, but there, there’s also a Health Age as well. So this compares your metrics like your VO2 max, your sleep, blood work results against the user’s chronological age. So they’re giving you that. And you mentioned the health— the health app has had a redesign. There’s a new Insights tab, um, that uses Apple intelligence in that health app to summarize your information and then offer personalized recommendations. So it’s like having a personal, personal health coach right there on your health advisor.

[00:38:37] Trevor Long: Yeah, look, health advisor on the, on the Apple Watch 12. Look, the one thing that should have to be— and we’ll get back to that, the Siri kind of listening things. That’s one thing I need explained to me. But I feel like they’ve gone hard on style, the number of different finishes they’ve gone with ceramic. Like they’ve really gone back to that place where there used to be a lot of choice in the look of the watch.

[00:39:01] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, true. So they’ve got aluminum, titanium, and ceramic are the finishes, uh, and the, and the Apple Watch Ultra Force retain the titanium as well. But, um, let’s just talk about the audio. So this sound recognition feature, now this is on Apple Watch, it’s powered by the S11 chip, so it can process ambient audio directly on the device. Now this is useful in a number of ways. So it’ll tell you You know, this is almost an accessibility feature as well. So let you know when you hear sirens, alarms, doorbells, a crying baby. But it goes beyond health monitoring. So there’s a feature called Live Rewind. So say you’re in a conversation and you didn’t quite catch what someone says, you can press, double-click the crown, and that goes back 15 seconds and generates a transcript of what was just said. And that transcript, you can then ask Siri about it later and it’ll give you a Siri— they call it Siri Recap as well. So this is sort of playing in that sort of Claude Pocket space where you could record something and get a recap later. So it’ll generate a title summary.

[00:40:19] Trevor Long: I get it. I get the sense. Yes, it’s always listening and I can go back, but Isn’t there going to be huge privacy questions about this? Like, well, the amount of audio that’s being recorded and who knows they’re being recorded, and I don’t know, why would you ever need to go back 15 seconds? Well, you just tell the person to go back 15 seconds.

[00:40:37] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, you might not have that opportunity, but Apple says raw audio not stored, and it’s the underlying audio is inaccessible. Speakers are not identified, so it won’t know who’s speaking. And, uh, generated recaps are end-to-end encrypted. So that, that was again playing to their privacy credentials there. But it is, I think it’s sort of semi, uh, accessibility feature, but also a feature, a handy one to have if you, you might not have caught what was happening in the conversation.

[00:41:13] Trevor Long: Yeah, I mean, uh, yeah, I feel like it’s one that needs a bit more digging and explanation. I feel like here’s an honest, honest point for us. When when we get to review it. This is the one thing I want to understand more in the briefing. I want to understand what the purpose is, who the target is, why. It’s the why. Because sometimes, just because you could do something doesn’t matter. But explain to me why, and maybe that’ll help.

[00:41:36] Stephen Fenech: And my other question too will be, why is this just an Apple Watch feature? This could be an iPhone feature.

[00:41:44] Trevor Long: Yeah, totally.

[00:41:45] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. So maybe it is. Maybe it will become an Apple Watch, an Apple, an iPhone feature as well. But I think it’s just— I think they’ve seen all these other devices in the market and think, well, we can do that. Yeah, you know how you can wear a little plaid microphone as a little wearable or carry that little—

[00:42:02] Trevor Long: that’s, that’s— it sounds like that’s going to do a whole lot more than what Apple’s doing because it’s not identifying speakers or doing any of that stuff. So yeah, um, unless they’re gonna find a way to get to that point, it’s probably not really equivalent to those things.

[00:42:14] Stephen Fenech: But still, it’s pretty good. They’re thinking about it. The Siri Recap, it’s where it can tell you what happened, that the summary of key points from the conversations, like including meetings or conferences.

[00:42:25] Trevor Long: So I think that assuming it’s, you know, kind of listening all day, or do you need to trigger it to listen?

[00:42:30] Stephen Fenech: I think you need to trigger it. Yeah, you got to trigger it.

[00:42:33] Trevor Long: Okay. Yeah. And if that’s the case, then, you know, it’s because it’ll smash the battery.

[00:42:37] Stephen Fenech: Imagine if it’s recording all day, it’ll hammer the battery.

[00:42:39] Trevor Long: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I do think my future vision is somewhere down the track we’ll wear or have some device that allows us to get to the end of the day and go, hey, what was that thing I said earlier? Or what was that thing someone said earlier? In the same way, personal context, you know, he’s able to dig up emails and things. I need, mate, I need to be able to dig up conversations. I’ve got such a crap memory, you know what I’m saying? Yeah, bring it on, I say. Absolutely. Sure. By the way, we didn’t— I don’t think we mentioned at the start, but yeah, one more thing.

[00:43:08] Stephen Fenech: It was, it was one more thing.

[00:43:10] Trevor Long: Yeah, it was one more thing. Yeah, I think he, I think he really enjoyed saying it too.

[00:43:14] Stephen Fenech: Well, it was a nice little, little, uh, memory, little, little flashback, a little little, uh, tribute to the previous, uh, one, one more things of the past. This was probably, probably the biggest one more thing in for a while in all Apple. I can’t remember really one more thing.

[00:43:34] Trevor Long: I mean, watch was pretty big.

[00:43:36] Stephen Fenech: I remember, I think the MacBook— now the MacBook Air, I don’t think was one more thing. I was in the audience for that when Steve Jobs pulled out the MacBook Air. That was pretty good.

[00:43:45] Trevor Long: I mean, I think watch was a pretty big deal.

[00:43:47] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, this is pretty good.

[00:43:49] Trevor Long: What was the other one? Watch.

[00:43:52] Stephen Fenech: Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, that was decent.

[00:43:55] Trevor Long: That’s decent. So look, massive day. Massive, massive day. And it’s strategically going to be now a couple of months of talk about it because we’re going to have the launch and reviews in the next month. Then we’re going to have Duo a month after that. And then really early next year, we— I feel like we’re definitely going to have to have a conversation about when we’re going to see the 18, the 18e, and the Air 2.

[00:44:20] Stephen Fenech: Like, yeah, just on that, that’s really— Apple separating them, that’s pretty smart, isn’t it? Because now they’ve got like a premium launch. They mentioned Samsung, so Samsung has a January launch premium, then they have a Fold launch. They don’t really have an event for the A series, but now Apple has staked out two periods of the year spaced well enough apart to have, okay, here’s another phone launch. Whether they have an event, an in-person event, which I doubt it, but that could be the case again. There might be, might be another in-person event.

[00:44:52] Trevor Long: I think it has to be. I think if they want, if they want to, you know, you know, drink from Samsung’s trough, then if you want the publicity, you’ve got to do it. And I think they need, you know, in a time of cost of living pressures and concerns about the prices of all these devices It’s a good story to say, here’s our entry-level price products.

[00:45:09] Stephen Fenech: And I’m hoping that the 18, we can say the same about the 18 that we did about the 17. Remember what we said? It’s going to be the best value phone of all time. Let’s hope we can still say that early next year.

[00:45:26] Trevor Long: Well, Stephen, thank you for keeping me company in my drive from basically San Jose to San Francisco. Much appreciated.

[00:45:34] Stephen Fenech: Very nice.

[00:45:35] Trevor Long: I’ll do my absolute darndest not to fall asleep and to upload this content for our audience and not just make it for you and I. How funny would that be? People texting us going, what’s happening? I’m like, oh, I forgot I’m on a plane. Sorry, bye-bye. A big shout out to Val Quinn, who’s going to jump in for a couple of weeks and fill the seat for Two Blokes Talkie Tech. I’ve seen him over the last couple of weeks and I think he’s looking forward to spending some time with you to Unpack the week in tech, mate. And absolutely, I appreciate the— again, I appreciate the effort you went to over the last month to— or several months to allow me to get this time with my family, mate.

[00:46:08] Stephen Fenech: So no worries, mate. In October, enjoy the time and don’t worry about anything. We’ll look after the podcast, mate, while you’re away. You enjoy yourself and we’ll talk to you in early October.

[00:46:19] Trevor Long: All right, thanks folks. Thank you to Arlo and Netgear. We’ll be back next week. Stephen and Val will be back and I’ll be back with Stephen in October. See you then, mate.

[00:46:26] Stephen Fenech: See you, buddy.