Apple unveils its largest iPhone yet and a powerful cheaper option with all the high-end features

APPLE has unveiled three new iPhones, its largest smartphone ever and a cheaper version that boasts the high-end features of its iPhone X at its largest annual product event this morning. 

The focus of the product unveiling was on performance with some serious new power under the hood, giving the company’s flagship device some great new capabilities and features.

The event kicked off with the Apple Watch 4 series, which briefly stole the show.

APPLE WATCH 4

Apple’s chief operating officer Jeff Williams started the event off by unveiling the huge redesign to the Apple Watch 4 series.

It’s the first major design overhaul of the Watch since its debut more than three years ago. He highlighted the health benefits of such a device with features like it’s ability to automatically notify users if it detects they have an elevated heart rate.

“Apple Watch has become an intelligent guardian for your health,” he said. “In these areas of staying connected, exercising and monitoring your health, we’re taking Apple watch to the next level.”

Apple has made the screen bigger, pushing the glass display right to the edge, giving it a 30 per cent larger display while the body of the watch is actually thinner than the series 3 Apple version.

The watch has a raft of new screen displays and hardware improvements. It has an improved speaker and microphone and is 50 per cent louder which will certainly help when engaging with Siri.

“You just won’t believe the sound you get out of such a small device,” Mr Williams said.

The guts of the device received an update that promises to produce two times faster performance.

But it was new health capabilities that are the focus of Watch 3 series, including a feature called Fall Detection.

“Identifying a fall may sounds like a trivial thing but it takes a lot of data,” Mr Williams said.

The watch uses an in-built accelerator and gyroscope to determine when a fall occurs, which prompts an alert on the watch to make an emergency call.

If the device senses you are immobile for a minute after the fall it makes the emergency call for you. It also send your location to the emergency contacts on your device.

The watch will also send you notifications if your heart rate is too low as, while usually a good thing, that could be a sign of something serious, Mr Williams said.

Apple Watch can now screen your heart rate in the background and detect if users are suffering from atrial fibrillation, or an irregular heart beat which could indicate certain health issues.

“We think this can detect a lot of people who otherwise didn’t know they had an issue,” Mr Williams said.

Rather amazingly, Apple has added electrodes to the back of the watch to allow users to take an electrocardiogram or ECG.

“This is the first ECG product offered over the counter, direct to consumers,” Mr Williams said, adding that Apple received FDA approval for the capability.

Apple Watch already detected high heart rate, but can now also detect low heart rate and irregular rhythm to flag potential atrial fibrillation. And can now take an ECG on the digital crown. OK, that’s amazing. #AppleEvent

— Seamus Byrne (@seamus) September 12, 2018