Apple’s September event, titled “Wonderlust”, began at 11 pm Bangladesh time on Tuesday with Tim Cook at Apple Park and ended, as expected, with the analysts proved right. There are four new iPhones, and every one of them has a USB-C port. The Lightning connector, introduced with the iPhone 5 in 2012, is finished — not by choice but by the European Union, whose common-charger law takes effect next year. Apple did not mention Brussels once.
iPhone 15 and 15 Plus
6.1 and 6.7 inches, from $799 and $899 with 128 GB. Both get last year’s Pro features: the Dynamic Island replaces the notch, the main camera goes to 48 megapixels with a 2× crop that works like a telephoto, and the chip is last year’s A16. The back is colour-infused frosted glass in five soft colours. The USB-C port runs at USB 2 speed, the same as Lightning.
iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max
From $999 (6.1 inches, 128 GB) and $1,199 (6.7 inches, now starting at 256 GB). The frame is titanium instead of steel, making them noticeably lighter, with thinner bezels. The mute switch is replaced by a customisable Action button — camera, torch, voice memo, a Shortcut. The A17 Pro chip is the first on a 3-nanometre process, with a GPU capable of hardware ray tracing; Apple showed console games running on it. The Pro Max gets a 5× periscope telephoto. The USB-C port on the Pros runs at USB 3, 10 Gbps, fast enough to record ProRes video to an external drive. Apple calls them the most powerful iPhones it has made, which is true every year.
Watches and AirPods
Apple Watch Series 9, from $399: the new S9 chip, twice the display brightness of Series 8, Siri processed on the watch, and Double Tap — tap thumb and forefinger together to answer a call, stop a timer or change a track, without touching the screen. Watch Ultra 2, $799: the same S9, a 3,000-nit display (Apple’s brightest), 72 hours of battery, a case of 95 per cent recycled titanium. AirPods Pro get a USB-C case and, in software, Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness. watchOS 10 arrives on 18 September; everything goes on sale on 22 September.
For the Dhaka buyer
The prices are unchanged from last year in dollars, which after a year of the taka’s slide means an iPhone 15 Pro at roughly Tk1.7–1.9 lakh in the grey market and more at authorised resellers, when stock arrives in October. The cable question is the practical one: the box contains a USB-C to USB-C cable and no charger, so the Lightning cables and 20-watt Apple bricks in every Dhaka household still work — the brick has a USB-C socket — but the Lightning cable does not. Any Android charger from the last five years will charge an iPhone 15. That, more than anything Apple said on stage, is what changes for most people.
