Apple's foldable is real, it's called iPhone Duo, and it costs $1,999

Apple's "Surprise and Shine" keynote is done, and the headline the rumours got mostly right with one correction: the foldable is real, but it's not called iPhone Ultra. It's the iPhone Duo, it starts at $1,999, and it's the first genuinely new iPhone shape since 2017.

Everything below is confirmed, taken directly from Apple's own press releases. This was also John Ternus's first keynote as CEO — more on what that signalled at the end.

iPhone Duo — the foldable

The big one. Apple's first foldable, and the company is framing it as the most transformational change to iPhone since the original.

The design: a 7.6-inch inner display that folds down to a pocketable 5.4-inch outer screen. Closed, the outer display gives you 90% of an iPhone 18 Pro's screen area; opened, the inner one is 50% larger than an iPhone 18 Pro Max. Both screens share the same aspect ratio so content flows between them, and there's a nano-texture finish Apple says minimises the crease. It runs the same A20 Pro chip as the Pro phones, with a battery on each side and Touch ID in the side button rather than Face ID.

The genuinely new stuff comes from the fold itself: Split View puts two apps side by side on an iPhone for the first time, and the outer screen enables camera tricks the rest of the range can't do — like previewing a rear-camera selfie, or propping the phone up for hands-free shots.

iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max

The workhorses, and the bigger sellers.

The marquee feature is the camera: a 48MP main camera with variable aperture — a first for iPhone, using six laser-cut blades to physically adjust the opening, the way a real camera does. There's also a new Apple Reference Image feature that cryptographically signs photos at the sensor so their authenticity can be proven later — aimed at photojournalists in an AI-image era, and a genuinely interesting move given how much of the event was about AI-generated everything.

Beyond the camera: a smaller Dynamic Island that now shows three Live Activities, a redesigned vapour chamber for the "highest sustained performance in iPhone history," and Apple's biggest-ever battery jump on the Pro Max — up to 45 hours of video.

The split launch is real

Notice what's missing: there's no standard iPhone 18 here. Apple confirmed the Pro models and the Duo, and the two launches are staged weeks apart — Pro phones on 18 September, the Duo on 23 October. The cheaper, non-Pro iPhone 18 wasn't part of this keynote at all.

That matches the pre-event reporting that Apple is splitting its iPhone line into two launches, with the affordable models coming later. It's a real change to how Apple sells its most important product, and it means if you want a new iPhone this month, your only options start at $1,199.

Also announced

Briefly, because they each deserve their own look: Apple Watch Series 12 with a new health-sensing system, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5 with open-ear noise cancellation (covered separately here). Apple also leaned hard on Siri AI — the long-delayed, Apple-Intelligence-powered Siri — rolling out in beta with iOS 27 on 14 September. Notably, Siri AI won't launch in the EU at first, which Apple blamed on the EU's interpretation of the Digital Markets Act.

What Ternus's first keynote signalled

This was the first Apple event not led by Tim Cook in fifteen years, and the tell wasn't in the words — it was in the products. A hardware engineer took the stage and led with the iPhone Duo, the most hardware-ambitious iPhone in nearly a decade, and with a camera-authenticity feature aimed squarely at the AI-trust problem. Cook's Apple was operations and services; the first Ternus keynote was engineering-forward, betting the company's next chapter on doing hard physical things — a fold done right, a sensor that signs its own photos — rather than catching up on chatbots.

Whether that's the right bet is the story of his tenure. But the opening statement was clear: Apple's answer to "you're behind on AI" is to change the subject to hardware only Apple can build.

The dates that matter

Everything here is from Apple's own newsroom. If any of it changes, we'll note it.