It’s September, so we all know what that means? Its the annual iPhone Keynote, where we are set to see quite a lot of evolution rather than revolution this time round, but what exactly should we expect to see?

USB-C / Thunderbolt

Wether its solely down to EU legislation which comes into force next year, or a somewhat drawn out transition across all of Apple’s devices, this year will see all iPhones transition from Lightning to USB-C. Unlike when the iPhone transitioned from the 30 Pin Dock Connector to Lightning with the iPhone 5 in 2012, I’m expecting much less of an uproar as USB-C has become the standard charging port for devices and most people already have a charger.

The USB-C port on the iPhone 15 is set to keep the same USB 2.0 speed of the current iPhones which maxes out at 480 Mbps, while the iPhone 15 Pro will feature Thunderbolt/USB 4 speed allowing for up 40 Gbps, which will make moving large amounts of data back and forth such as 4K Videos a lot less painful.

All of the iPhone are set to come with braided colour matched USB-C cables, but somewhat ironically the iPhone Pro will not come with a Thunderbolt cable, you will have to pay extra for that!

Action Button

The iPhone has feature a Ring/Silent switch since it was introduced in 2007, and this year it is set to be replaced with an Action button. Although the default action will still be muting the iPhone, it will be customisable like the Apple Watch Ultra’s Action button, with a number of out of the box options including running a Siri Shortcut.

Titanium

The iPhone Pro has featured a surgical grade stainless steel band since the iPhone X was introduced in 2017, and this year it is set to be replaced with aerospace grade titanium. Titanium will offer a different look to stainless steel with a reduction in the bezel size around the display, and the brushed finished will thankfully be much less of a finger print magnet. More significantly as most people keep their phones in cases, is that it will be much lighter, although not as light as aluminium bands found in the no Pro models.

Dynamic Island

The Dynamic Island that was introduced last year on the iPhone 14 Pro, is set to be made available across the entire line. There won’t be any physical changes, but the increased availability across will hopefully see more functionality unveiled in the future and greater adoption.

Periscope Camera

The iPhone Pro Max this year, which is set to be renamed to iPhone Ultra, will see it differentiation itself form the smaller iPhone Pro by making use of its size to incorporate a periscope lens, which will double the optical zoom of the telescope camera to 6x.

Wireless Charging

The iPhone 15s will support Qi2 charging, which like MagSafe uses magnets for alignment to enable 15W Wireless charging. Not to be outdone, the iPhone 15s will support up to 20W wireless charging using MagSafe, and while this is backwards compatible with the current generation of MagSafe in terms of accessories it will the require purchasing of new chargers.

AirPods Pro

To coincide with the iPhone’s all moving to USB-C the AirPods Pro 2 will be refreshed with a new USB-C charging case, but there won’t be a revision to the AirPods Pro themselves.

Apple Watch

The Apple Watch and Apple Watch Ultra are set to receive only a SoC update this year to the S9 (the first real update in terms of CPU cores since the Apple Watch Series 6 was introduced in 2020), with the Apple Watch Ultra also gaining a black titanium option.