Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Apple CEO Tim Cook unveils bigger, pricier iPhones
CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple unveiled three new iPhones on Wednesday, including its biggest and most expensive model yet, as the company seeks to widen the product’s appeal amid slowing sales.
CEO Tim Cook showed off the Apple XS, which has a bigger screen than the one on last year’s dramatically designed model, the iPhone X. The XS will cost about $1,000. A bigger version will be called the iPhone XS Max, which looks to be about the size of the iPhone 8 Plus, though the screen size is much larger. It will cost almost $1,100.
As with the iPhone X, the new phone has a screen that runs from edge to edge, an effort to maximize the display without making the phone too awkward to hold. The screen needs no backlight, so black would appear as truly black rather than simply dark.
This even-bigger iPhone represents Apple’s attempt to feed consumers’ appetite for increasingly larger screens as they rely on smartphones to watch and record video, as well as take photos wherever they are.
The iPhone X also got rid of the home button to make room for more screen and introduced facial-recognition technology to unlock the device.
Apple also showed off a cheaper iPhone, called the iPhone XR. It has a traditional, lower-quality screen and an aluminum body; it’s physically smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus but has a bigger screen. It’ll cost roughly $750 and comes out Oct. 26.
By making more expensive iPhones, Apple has been able to boost its profits despite waning demand as people upgrade phones less frequently.
Apple also announced updates to its Apple Watch, which will have a larger screen and a built-in heart sensor that the company said can detect irregular heart rates and perform an electrocardiogram.