Apple's Surprise and Shine: A foldable iPhone, a 40% GPU jump and one Monster Hunter

• iPhone Duo opens to a 7.6-inch display, 80% larger than iPhone 18 Pro, with new APIs for adapting apps.
• A20 Pro's seven-core GPU is up to 40% faster, with Apple citing 'high-end games' as a design target.
• Tencent and Capcom showed Monster Hunter Outlanders running at up to 120fps, with visuals Apple says are exclusive to iOS.

Apple's Surprise and Shine event was John Ternus' first keynote as CEO and it introduced the company's first foldable, the iPhone Duo, along with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max.

For studios, the takeaways sit in three places: a new screen size and set of APIs to build for, a chip with more GPU and AI headroom than last year and a Siri that can now reach into apps. 

Introducing iPhone Duo, a foldable phone

Apple's first foldable opens out to a 7.6-inch screen, 80% bigger than the one on iPhone 18 Pro, and folds down to a 5.4-inch outer display you can use closed. It runs the same A20 Pro chip as the Pro models.

Apple spent a good chunk of the segment on heat management, which has been a real concern for consumers in the past. There's a vapour chamber inside and the company claims the foldable holds up to 35% more performance over time than iPhone 17 Pro, which it tied directly to high frame rate gaming on the big screen.

Rather than following most existing foldables, Apple went with a wider outer display, which gives the unfolded screen a more usable shape than the squarish panels rivals have ended up with. Apple made the point itself in the keynote, arguing that square inner screens make vertical scrolling feel cramped.

The part that would be of interest for developers is that Apple has new APIs for adapting apps to the two screens and iOS 27 reacts to how the device is folded, angled or flipped, including a partially folded state where content slides away from the crease. 

Apple's new foldable phone will retail from $2,000 to $3,200.

A20 Pro is a big jump

The A20 Pro, the chip that powers the iPhone, has a CPU that has two new "supercores", which are up to 20% faster than last year's. More useful for games is the GPU, the graphics part of the chip, which is up to 40% faster - a big jump for one generation and Apple said it was tuned with high-end games in mind. The chip can also move data around 50% faster.

Monster Hunter Outlanders on stage

Tencent and Capcom's open-world co-op title took the keynote's gaming slot. Apple said it uses the A20 Pro's seven-core GPU to render iOS-exclusive graphics with console level lighting and detail at up to 120 frames per second.

It also uses MetalFX, Apple's tool for drawing a game at lower quality and sharpening it back up so the phone has less work to do, and spatial audio, which makes sound seem to come from around you rather than from the phone. It's due later this year.

Siri AI is now a discovery surface

Apple says Siri AI works with over 300,000 apps and can take actions inside third-party ones, with developers able to add their own capabilities. Apple's own caveat, though, is that some features have usage limits because they run on server models, with more access bundled into iCloud+ plans.

More on the vapour chamber and battery life

Apple's new vapour chamber is three-times bigger than the one in iPhone 17 Pro. Apple says the phone now holds up to 40% more performance over time than iPhone 17 Pro and up to twice as much as iPhone 16 Pro and older.

Battery is another gain and definitely relevant to those who run long-sessions: 36 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro and 45 on the Pro Max. Apple has also introduced a new battery usage measure it says reflects real world behaviour, including gaming and AI use.

The newly announced iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be available from Friday, September 18, 2026, (we won't see a standard iPhone 18 until next year), with pre-orders starting Saturday, September 12.

The iPhone Duo will be available from October 23rd, 2026.