Apple's autumn event, streamed from the Steve Jobs Theater on Wednesday, 7 September 2022 under the name "Far Out", opened with the watch rather than the phone. Chief operating officer Jeff Williams introduced Apple Watch Series 8, the first with a body-temperature sensor, before Tim Cook handed over to the iPhone 14 family. Here is what was announced and what it costs.
Apple Watch Series 8, Ultra and SE
- Series 8, $399 ($499 with cellular). Two temperature sensors take readings overnight, mainly for retrospective ovulation estimates and cycle tracking; crash detection uses new high-g motion sensors to call emergency services after a car accident; a low-power mode stretches the 18-hour battery to 36. Colours: midnight, starlight, silver and red in aluminium.
- Watch Ultra, $799. A 49 mm titanium watch for divers, climbers and endurance athletes: a brighter, larger screen, a customisable Action button, dual-frequency GPS, a siren, water resistance to 100 metres and 36 hours of battery, 60 in low-power mode.
- Watch SE, $249. The cheap one, now with the faster chip and crash detection.
AirPods Pro 2, $249
A new H2 chip doubles the noise cancelling, adds touch volume control on the stem, six hours of battery per charge, and a case that can be found with the Find My network and charged from an Apple Watch charger.
iPhone 14, 14 Plus, 14 Pro and Pro Max
The iPhone 14 ($799) and the new 6.7-inch 14 Plus ($899) keep last year's A15 chip with a better camera and, in the United States, no SIM tray at all: eSIM only. The Pro ($999) and Pro Max ($1,099) get the A16, a 48-megapixel main camera, an always-on display and the Dynamic Island, a pill-shaped cut-out that grows and shrinks to show calls, timers and music, turning the hated notch into a feature. All four add crash detection and Emergency SOS via satellite, which lets a phone with no signal send a short message to rescue services; it launches in the United States and Canada in November, free for two years.
For buyers in Bangladesh
None of this is sold officially here; authorised resellers list the iPhone 14 Pro at roughly Tk 1.5 lakh and grey importers slightly less. Two cautions: the US models have no physical SIM slot, and a US iPhone 14 will not accept a Grameenphone SIM card, so check the model number before buying from a relative abroad; and satellite SOS does not work outside the launch countries. The Watch's crash detection, however, works anywhere a phone can dial 999.
Which of these became standard
Two of that evening’s novelties stopped being novelties within a year. The Dynamic Island, introduced as a Pro-only feature, arrived on every iPhone 15 in 2023 and is now simply what the top of an iPhone looks like. Emergency SOS via satellite, launched in two countries, expanded across Europe, Australia, Japan and beyond, and the free period Apple initially promised was repeatedly extended.
Bangladesh was not among the countries added, and the reason is regulatory rather than technical: satellite messaging needs the local telecommunications authority to permit a foreign operator to provide a service directly to handsets on its territory. That is the same question sitting underneath every direct-to-cell satellite proposal here.
