At the start of September Apple officially announced the next iPhone reveal event. It sent out invites suggesting "Let's meet at our place," for the first ever event at the Steve Jobs Theatre, in the new Frisbee shaped Apple HQ. At the time sources close to Apple reportedly said launch event highlights would include an anniversary edition iPhone plus two new incrementally updated iPhone 'S' models. Just ahead of the weekend the naming landscape seems to have shifted and firmed up thanks to details revealed in the iOS 11 GM (Golden Master) software release.
So what has been discovered in the mobile OS Golden Master release? It's such a big news story for the likes of 9to5 Mac that the site has squeezed out at least three articles on what has been unearthed. Many of its stories come from nuggets revealed by programmers Steve Troughton Smith and Guilherme Rambo on Twitter. For simplicity I'm going to bullet point the main discoveries:
iPhone X
- This is the 10th anniversary iPhone with almost a whole 'True Tone' OLED screen front.
- It includes an A11 hexacore processor with four high-power Mistral cores and two low-power Monsoon cores.
- 3GB RAM
- Front includes speaker, IR camera for facial recognition and iris scanning (Face ID), and 7MP camera for selfies etc.
- Twin 12MP rear cameras for AR / depth sensing etc. Capable of 4K video at 60FPS and 1080p video at 240FPS.
- Animoji debuts - animated emoji characters chosen intelligently to replicate the user's expressions.
- It includes wireless charging tech.
- It is IP68 water resistant.
- The iPhone X will retail at approx $1000.
iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus
These are incremental improvements over the existing iPhone 7 designs. It seems like the iPhone 8 will feature 2GB, while the iPhone 8 Plus (and iPhone X) features 3GB RAM. That's the same as with the existing iPhone 7 models. However if the iPhone 8 models come packing the A11 hexacore (4 high performance + 2 low power cores) processor they should offer quite a step up in performance compared to the previous generation (2+2 core config).
There will probably be some more info mined from the iOS 11 GM in the coming hours but the official unveil will let us know everything we might be interested in, direct from Apple, tomorrow evening.
