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Tech News
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple's long-rumored foldable phone will be called the iPhone Duo rather than the previously rumored iPhone Ultra. The device is said to start at $2,000 for 256GB storage and reach about $3,000 for 2TB, shipping as early as October in white and dark blue.
Apple's September 9 event, dubbed 'Surprise and shine,' will mark John Ternus's debut as company head following Tim Cook's move to executive chairman. Analysts widely expect Apple to finally unveil its long-rumored foldable iPhone at the Cupertino event, set for 1PM ET/10AM PT.
9to5Mac's daily podcast episode for September 8, 2026 rounds up recent reporting on rumored HomePod developments and anticipated changes to the App Store. The episode is available across major podcast platforms and is sponsored by productivity app Stuff and device-management tool iMazing.
Apple's iOS 27 update overhauls the Home app with Apple Intelligence features, letting it summarize alerts from doorbells and smoke detectors instead of flooding the lock screen with notifications. Cameras gain improved AI-based detection of faces and animals, can stitch together footage of a person moving through multiple rooms, and now record in 4K with AI-generated video descriptions and searchable events. The update also lets users update all Apple TVs at once from the Home app and improves overall app reliability.
Apple CarPlay includes a dedicated Settings menu where drivers can adjust the interface to their preference, including switching between light, dark, or automatic display modes based on ambient light. Users can also change the background wallpaper from a set of Apple-designed options, swap between dark and clear 'Liquid Glass' icon packs, and increase text size through the Accessibility menu.
Ahead of its 'Surprise and Shine' event, Apple has quietly added nearly 40 hardware identifiers to its backend systems, covering iPhones, Macs, iPads, Apple Watches, Apple TV, and a HomeAccessory category. Notably, seven iPhone identifiers appeared even though only six models are currently expected in the iPhone 18 lineup, suggesting either an unannounced variant or a surprise new device.
Apple's iOS 27 update expands the Clean Up feature in the Photos app with a new Auto control that lets users choose between two processing modes. A Fast mode uses a smaller AI model for quick edits like removing background clutter, while a High Quality mode uses more advanced AI for complex scenes, such as removing multiple people from a photo, at the cost of speed and battery life.
UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced plans to introduce legislation forcing Apple and Google to build device-level safeguards preventing children from taking, sharing, or viewing nude images on phones and tablets. The move comes after a three-month voluntary compliance deadline given in June, which Nandy says produced only partial improvements from the companies.
TrendForce reports Apple's smartphone production rose 14% year-over-year to about 52 million units in Q2 2026, giving it a 19% global share behind only Samsung's 62 million units. The overall global smartphone market fell 8% to 275 million units, a smaller drop than analysts had expected, prompting TrendForce to raise its full-year 2026 forecast to 1.07 billion units.
A project called ARGODRIVE Deltafin, forked from gavamedia/deltafin, streams the complete, unpruned 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 model off four SSDs to run on an Apple Silicon M1 Max laptop. The latest benchmark shows throughput of about 0.29 tokens per second, roughly 2% faster than the prior measurement, with earlier logs showing the speed climbing from 0.0141 tokens/s in late July to current levels through iterative optimization.
Counterpoint Research's Q2 2026 report found global smartwatch shipments fell 4% year over year, even as Apple, Huawei and Garmin posted gains. Apple grew 14% to capture a 20.1% share, trailing only Huawei's 21.8% share, with the Watch Series 11 and Watch SE 3 driving over 80% of Apple's volume. Huawei's growth was concentrated in China, which made up about 80% of its shipments.
Samsung reports that combined US purchases of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra are running 30% ahead of last year's Z Fold 7, which itself was the most pre-ordered Fold model ever. The two Fold devices now make up about 80% of total Galaxy Z8 series purchases, with the Z Flip 8 accounting for the rest. Samsung also says roughly 30% of Flip 8 buyers switched from rival brands, most of them first-time foldable owners.