Apple’s September Event: iPhone Duo, Apple Watch Series 12, and AirPods 5 #1877

In this episode, Ray Cochrane devotes the whole show to Apple’s fall event, the first under new CEO John Ternus. He starts with the iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable iPhone. From there, he covers the Apple Watch Series 12, the new Health Age score, the Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5 with noise canceling at $129. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens from his father’s studio in Michigan, fresh off a trip to Saugatuck Dunes State Park. Lake Michigan stunned him because it looked like the ocean. He had hoped to spot Wisconsin across the water. However, overcast skies and fog hid the far shore. He also apologizes for the hum in the previous episode, his first video session in the studio. Without headphones on, he took the noise for ordinary background sound. The culprit turned out to be a line-level cable plugged in at one end and loose at the other. After tracing it, he rewired the whole desk so every cable is neat and out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, he is still learning the studio’s TriCaster switcher and working on keeping his eyes on the camera. He invites listeners to send suggestions. Additionally, his grandmother had trouble finding the video version on the site. As a result, a site update is coming that uses the alternate enclosure feature, so listeners can switch between video and audio. Time with his grandmother has been a highlight of the trip. Cochrane reflects on how little time he spent with this side of the family after his father moved to Michigan. Next, he flies home to Oregon after some time in Detroit. As the move comes together, he also wants a better way to get recordings off the TriCaster than a USB drive. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. iPhone Duo: Apple’s First Foldable Arrives Seven Years After Samsung Instead of a spread of headlines, the whole episode covers Apple’s fall event, much like Chris’s recent D23 episode. The event streamed Wednesday as a pre-recorded film. It was also the first event under CEO John Ternus. He took over from Tim Cook, who became executive chairman, on September 1st. It took Apple seven years to answer Samsung’s first Galaxy Fold. Even so, the price barely moved, since the Duo starts at $1,999. Cochrane admits he hoped for something closer to $1,400. Still, based on the marketing alone, the Duo is the upgrade he is most excited about. The Duo is a book-style foldable that opens along a vertical hinge. Closed, it has a 5.4-inch outer screen and is roughly the size of a passport. Open, it reveals a 7.6-inch display, the largest Apple has put on an iPhone. Both screens share the same proportions, so apps simply scale up to fill the bigger screen. Opened flat, the Duo is just 5.2 millimeters thick, which makes it the thinnest iPhone Apple has built. Closed, it measures 11.3 millimeters and weighs 254 grams. By comparison, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 is lighter and thinner at 201 grams and 4.5 millimeters open. The Crease, the Hinge and the Return of Touch ID The crease was Cochrane’s biggest worry, since it is the most common complaint about folding phones. Apple layers the inner screen with a flexible plastic cover, thin glass, and a titanium plate underneath. Custom adhesives let those layers slide as the phone bends. On top, a microscopically etched matte finish scatters reflections to hide the crease. However, Apple only claims the crease is harder to see, not gone. Early hands-on reports split down the middle. Chance Miller at 9to5Mac found it “hard to notice a crease at most angles.” In contrast, Andrew Romero at 9to5Google, working from early videos, said it looks “just as visible” as on Samsung’s Fold8. The hinge uses more than a hundred parts and a row of magnets to hold the phone shut. Cochrane says it snaps open cleanly, which a $2,000 phone should. Notably, the Duo carries an IP68 rating, surviving six meters of water for up to 30 minutes. That matters on a foldable, because dust in the hinge is a classic way these phones die. The Duo also has no Face ID. Instead, a Touch ID fingerprint reader sits in the side button and works open or closed. Cochrane offers his own theory for the switch. With AI now able to generate convincing faces and video, a fingerprint may simply be the safer biometric. Inside the Duo: Chip, Cameras, Software and Battery The Duo runs the A20 Pro, the same chip as the iPhone 18 Pro, built on a two-nanometer process. A vapor chamber carries heat away so the phone can hold full speed longer. Cochrane welcomes that, since his own phone runs hot while charging or running demanding apps. Two 48-megapixel cameras sit on the back, a main and an ultra-wide. The outer screen unlocks the new tricks. For example, you can shoot selfies with the rear cameras, and Duo Preview lets your subjects see the shot. Smart Take snaps the photo when everyone is posing, and Kid Cue plays Peanuts animations to get kids to look at the camera. On the software side, the Duo ships with iOS 27.1. The Dynamic Island now runs vertically along the side, and Split View puts two apps side by side for the first time on an iPhone. Netflix, Zoom and Slack already support it. The Duo carries two batteries, one in each half, and Apple rates it for up to 24 hours of typical use. Charging to 50 percent takes about 20 minutes with a 60-watt adapter. However, that adapter is sold separately, which Cochrane calls out as a raw deal for first-time buyers. MagSafe and Qi2 wireless charging run at up to 25 watts. Storage starts at 256GB for $1,999 and climbs to $3,199 for 2TB. Preorders open October 16th, and the Duo reaches stores October 23rd. Ternus called it “the most transformational change to iPhone since the original.” Cochrane still wants one, though the price gives him pause, and he asks listeners whether they plan to buy. Apple Watch Series 12 Checks Your Heart Every Five Seconds Next, Cochrane turns to the Apple Watch Series 12 and its new Health Sensing System. The watch reads your pulse by shining green light into your skin and measuring what bounces back. After wrestling with the technical term, photoplethysmography, he notes that everyone sensibly calls it the optical sensor. Apple made those lights bigger and more efficient. As a result, the watch now checks your heart rate every five seconds, all day. It also measures heart rate variability, the tiny wobble between beats, as often as every five minutes. A bigger wobble generally means your body is rested and recovered. Cochrane loved Apple’s swimming ad, where a swimmer finishes his swim and checks his heart rate. To him, it feels far more futuristic than the rugged adventure watches of twenty years ago. Swim tracking itself isn’t new. What changed is the constant background check and a live heart rate readout on the watch face. All of that feeds a new daily readiness score from zero to ten. It weighs your recent activity, training load, vitals and sleep, then updates through the day. Engadget points out that competitors already offer readiness scores and faster sampling. In Cochrane’s view, Apple is catching up to the market, but doing it in a big way. Apple’s Heart Rate Accuracy Study Apple claims no wearable reads heart rate more accurately, and this time it published the study. Testers wore a Series 12 on one wrist and a rival on the other, with a Polar H10 chest strap as the reference. The rivals came from Garmin, Google, Huawei, Samsung, WHOOP and Oura. Across 1,254 people at five sites, Apple led in 139 of 159 comparisons. Eighteen were too close to call. The only two losses went to Google’s Pixel Watch 4 at rest, by less than half a beat per minute. Cochrane appreciated that a fifth of participants had the darkest skin tones, where optical sensors have historically struggled. The Series 12 comes in 42- and 46-millimeter sizes, including a new ceramic version. Battery life holds at 24 hours, and fifteen minutes of charging now buys up to twelve hours. Pricing starts at $399 for aluminum, $699 for titanium and $899 for ceramic. It reaches stores September 18th. Health Age and Apple’s Rebuilt Health App Cochrane admits he first misread this feature, and he is glad his initial read turned out wrong. Apple is rebuilding the Health app around Apple Intelligence, its umbrella name for its AI features. The app adds an Insights tab, a For You section, and a Longevity tab covering seven areas of health. Sumbul Desai, a physician who runs health and fitness at Apple, framed the goal. She said pairing the watch’s sensors with Apple Intelligence lets Apple “translate complex biometric data into clear guidance for users.” In other words, nobody wants to scroll through a spreadsheet of their own heartbeats. Inside the Longevity tab sits Health Age. It weighs your VO2 max, resting heart rate, sleep, and heart rate variability against your real age. You can also add lab results like A1c and LDL cholesterol. Apple’s sample screen shows a body running 3.9 years younger than its birthday. Cochrane finds the feature interesting, and he hopes the data stays private, much like health records at a hospital. However, Apple didn’t share the math behind Health Age. He would like Apple to publish its formula, because people will take a number like that seriously. The new app also adds at-home movement evaluations using the iPhone camera and the watch. Users can book a $119 blood panel covering more than 50 biomarkers at roughly 2,000 Quest Diagnostics locations. Cycle Tracking gains perimenopause and menopause support. The redesigned app arrives later this year, while watchOS 27 lands September 14th. Finally, Cochrane raises a concern about all this monitoring. He hopes Apple built strong safeguards around the health data, because a leak of data like this would bring serious lawsuits. Apple Watch Ultra 4 Can Outlast a 100-Mile Race The Apple Watch Ultra 4 shares nearly everything with the Series 12, from the sensors to the S11 chip. This year, what sets it apart is stamina. Normal use now reaches 50 hours, up from 42, and Low Power Mode stretches to 84. Meanwhile, fifteen minutes on the charger buys up to 18 hours, where last year’s model managed 12. A new Max Extended Workout mode tracks up to 45 hours of running or hiking, with GPS logging every second. Apple says that is typically enough to finish a 100-mile race. The watch also uses dual-frequency GPS, which listens to two satellite signals to reject readings bounced off tall buildings. DC Rainmaker came away impressed with both watches. As Ray Maker put it, “I’d argue they’re the biggest leaps in Apple Watch hardware and features since they launched the Ultra series back a few years ago.” The Ultra 4 holds at $799 and ships September 18th. Audio Intelligence and the Always-Listening Question Both new watches also gain a set of listening features Apple calls Audio Intelligence. Sound Recognition alerts deaf or hard-of-hearing users to sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a crying baby. Shazam names nearby songs without being asked. Then come the two raising eyebrows: Live Rewind and Siri Recap. Live Rewind shows the last fifteen seconds of your conversation as text with a double press of the Digital Crown. Siri Recap hands you a title and key points after a conversation, leaving out financial details and ID numbers. Both arrive in beta later this year, in English first, and need an iPhone 16 or newer. Cochrane saw the pushback coming. To replay fifteen seconds, the watch has to be listening before you ask. Apple answers with privacy promises, including that everything is opt-in and raw audio is deleted after processing on the chip. Still, he argues that opting in means choosing to give up privacy, and he has a hard time believing the processing stays on the device. AirPods 5 Bring Noise Canceling to $129 AirPods 5 comes in two versions, and the headline is price. Until now, noise cancellation in the regular AirPods cost $179. Both AirPods 5 models include it, starting at $129. Noise canceling is harder in the regular AirPods, because they lack the rubber tips that seal your ear. Apple’s AirPods marketing director Eric Treski admitted as much in 2024, calling it “really, really hard to create this great ANC quality in a non-ear-tip product.” Nevertheless, Apple says AirPods 5 removes up to 50 percent more outside noise than AirPods 4 with noise canceling. Interestingly, the chip and microphones are unchanged. The gain comes from reworked vents and ports in the shell, plus smarter software. For perspective, Apple says AirPods Pro 3 still cancel up to three times more noise. Gizmodo found AirPods 5 “did a good job silencing the background noise, but not entirely.” The $129 model charges over USB-C. For $149, you add a wireless charging case, a Find My speaker, a volume swipe on the stem, and an extra hour of listening. Both models also carry an IP57 rating and support Live Translation. They reach stores September 18th. How Apple Filmed the Event Cochrane closes by praising the production itself. Apple built different scenes and backgrounds throughout the film, and Six Colors noted a Hollywood backlot segment with a fake rainstorm, Roman soldiers, and astronauts. The closing card read “Shot on iPhone. Edited on Mac.” He still hopes to get an iPhone Duo, though he isn’t sure about paying two grand. For now, he may stick with his current phone. Cochrane wraps up by pointing listeners to the GNC Insider program, the newsletter, and podcastapps.com, adding that he likes Pocket Casts. Listeners can reach Ray or Chris at [email protected]. He flies back to Oregon next, with another audio episode planned for Monday and a video site update coming this week. The post Apple’s September Event: iPhone Duo, Apple Watch Series 12, and AirPods 5 #1877 appeared first on Geek News Central.