After months of speculation, Apple will finally take the wraps of its new iPhones at 1pm ET on Sept 12, and if you believe the latest reports, there will be three options: the iPhone 8, the iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X.
The iPhone X will likely get most of the attention, as that's the handset that's expected to get the all-new design with a nearly edge-to-edge OLED screen. Given all the leaks, are there any surprises left? It doesn't seem like it, but there are some last-minute tidbits that are a bit surprising.
iPhone X Could Come Even Later (for One Color)
We've heard about possible production delays with the iPhone X, and it's very possible that it could ship later than the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. But now comes word that a particular color may be the most fashionably late.
A report from 9to5Mac, citing analyst firm KGI, says that the OLED iPhone isn't even hitting 10,000 units a day in terms of production, which probably means shoppers will see a later ship date than hoped or very limited availability (at least at first).
Things look even worse for the so-called "Blush Gold" model, as that seems to facing additional issues and may see a staggered release date compare to the other two hues.
A11 Chip Will Be This Mighty
Update: The first real benchmarks have leaked, and they're nuts. If you've been following Apple for the last year, you might know that it now makes the fastest mobile chips in the land, so there's no reason to expect that the new A11 chip won't smoke the competition. In fact, if early A11 benchmarks are to be believed, the Galaxy S8 doesn't stand a chance.
Based on the latest leak from famed developer Steven Troughton Smith, as reported on by CNET, the iPhone X will have 3G of RAM (more than the 2GB in the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus) and its A11 chip will have "two high-power Monsoon cores and four lower-power Mistral cores." AppleInsider has the inside scoop on the specs.
MORE: iPhone 8 Will Be a Smash Hit Even at $1,200
A New Breed of Emoji
Many people use emoji to communicate instead of words, but they're not that personal. But the leadked Animoji should change all that. According to 9to5Mac, this new feature will let you create custom 3D animated emoji based on the expressions you make into the new iPhone's camera. The handset's 3D face sensors will play a major role in making this magic happen.
iMore's Renee Ritchie believes that Animoji will simply sell more iPhones, and it's hard to argue that shoppers won't be swayed by this novel feature. We're just not sure how much they're willing to pay for it.
Camera Specs Revealed (Plus IR camera)
Just when you thought Steven Troughton Smith was done leaking iPhone info, he wasn't. He has also revealed what seem to be camera specs for the iPhone X, saying that the back camera is a 12-MP sensor that can crecord 4K at 60 frames per second and that the phone can record slow-motion 1080o footage at 240 frames per second.
Interestingly, Troughton Smith says the dedicated IR camera up front, the one that will presumably aid in rapid-fire 3D face scannng has a resolution of 1312 x 1104 pixels.
MORE: Best Camera Phone - Top-Rated Smartphone Cameras
USB-C to Replace Lightning? Really?
This one is very hard to believe but CNET also found a tweet from a user named Longhorn (@never released) that says: "usbc-fw-personality, usb-flash update and then The iPhone X might actually use a USB Type-C port."
This would be a huge departure from the Lightning port. But if Apple is going to do it, it would have to make this change for the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. There's no way Apple would support two different ports for all three new phones.
