Apple unveils iPhone Duo foldable alongside iPhone 18 Pro and AirPods 5 with noise cancellation

Apple's September event marked a hardware milestone: the iPhone Duo, the company's first device with a folding screen, appeared alongside a new iPhone 18 Pro lineup and updated AirPods. According to The Verge, active noise cancellation is now standard on the least expensive earbuds, the AirPods 5, and the Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 are getting a Siri Recap feature. One widely rumored product stayed in the wings — AirPods Pro with cameras — which Mark Gurman at Bloomberg reports have been pushed to 2027.

A foldable iPhone, and a familiar name

The Duo makes Apple a latecomer to a category Samsung and Google have championed, and The Verge observes that the name itself carries a long history. Microsoft shipped a dual-screen device called the Surface Duo in 2020, skipping flexible displays in favor of two OLED panels joined by a hinge; Google ran a Duo video-calling service from 2016 until it merged into Meet in 2022; and NEC's TurboDuo console reached North America in 1993. Apple has used the name before, too: the PowerBook Duo of 1992 was an ultraportable that shed built-in ports in favor of optional docks, and the MagSafe Duo charger was retired in late 2023. On the new phone, The Verge reports, the folding panel uses a nano-texture display finish designed to keep the crease from standing out.

iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max

The Verge's spec comparison puts both new Pro models on sale September 18th, 2026, running iOS 27 and priced from $1,199 for the 6.3-inch Pro — a $100 bump over last year — and $1,299 for the 6.9-inch Pro Max. Inside is the A20 Pro, whose 32-core neural engine doubles the 16 cores of its predecessor, and storage now extends to 2TB. The camera system pairs a 48-megapixel main sensor with a variable aperture alongside 48-megapixel ultrawide and telephoto modules, keeps 8x optical zoom, records up to 4K at 120fps in Dolby Vision and carries an 18-megapixel front camera. Apple rates video playback at up to 36 hours for the Pro, up from 33, and 45 hours for the Pro Max, while fast charging now reaches 50 percent in 15 minutes instead of 20. The rest holds steady: 120Hz OLED at up to 3,000 nits peak brightness, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, USB-C at up to 10Gbps, IP68 sealing, dual eSIM, and a Ceramic Shield 2 screen over an aluminum unibody, in black, silver, burgundy or glacier finishes.

AirPods 5 get ANC, cameras stay rumor

Beyond noise cancellation reaching the entry-level AirPods, the earbud storyline was an absence. Rumors through the year described an AirPods Pro with low-resolution cameras not intended to shoot photos or video, but to feed what they see to Siri and Visual Intelligence for tasks such as walking directions or recognizing text and objects. In an opinion column, The Verge's John Higgins welcomed the reported 2027 delay, arguing that cameras in earbuds this ubiquitous create privacy risks that indicator lights do not address, and recalling cases of Meta smart glasses owners concealing that they were recording. He concedes such hardware could aid people with visual limitations through better situational awareness, or help hard-of-hearing users read lips, but says that demands trust the industry has not yet earned. The Watch's new Audio Intelligence, which The Verge calls a likely forerunner of the visual system expected on a future AirPods Pro, signals where this is heading. Apple's support documentation states that audio is never stored and recordings cannot be accessed, that data used for Siri Recap is unreadable even to Apple, that anything saved — a recap or Live Rewind text — is end-to-end encrypted, and that individuals are not identified in summaries.

Why it matters

Apple's arrival legitimizes foldables for buyers who wait for the company's take on a form factor, and it puts direct pressure on Samsung and Google in a segment they have owned. The quieter through-line is sensing plus AI: a neural engine that doubled in cores, audio analysis on the wrist today and camera-based visual analysis rumored for the ears in 2027. Whether that vision lands depends less on silicon than on whether Apple's no-storage, end-to-end-encrypted privacy architecture can convince a public already wary of camera-wearing wearables.