It’s Official! Apple Will Hold a ‘Glowtime’ iPhone 16 Event on September 9
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Like every August in recent memory, the weeks leading up to Apple’s expected September iPhone unveilings have been filled with rumors and speculation on exactly when the company will hold its event. Over the past few days, the conventional wisdom landed on September 10, but it seems that Apple has thrown us a curveball this year.
Since switching to a fall release schedule in 2011, Apple has, without fail, held its iPhone events on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. For most of those years, the company also stuck to a fairly predictable formula: each fall’s iPhone event was always held on a Tuesday except when it was the week of Labor Day or when that Tuesday happened to land on September 11. In those years, the event was shifted to a Wednesday to avoid holding it immediately after a holiday or interfering with the memorial significance of 9/11.
It didn’t break with that tradition until 2021, when the iPhone 13 launch was held on September 14, surprising many analysts who expected it would land on September 7 instead. Still, Tuesdays and Wednesdays remained the norm, so it’s easy to understand why most analysts predicted September 10.
However, Apple has an even bigger surprise for us this year: For the first time in history, the iPhone 16 lineup will launch on a Monday.
Perhaps Apple is doing this just to change things up and befuddle analysts, but it’s breaking a pattern here, which could be a way of hinting that the iPhone 16 itself will also be setting a new trend.
This year’s event is dubbed “Glowtime,” which doesn’t inherently hint at anything special about the iPhone 16 hardware. However, that’s fair, as we’re not expecting much anyway. By all reports, the biggest pitch for the iPhone 16 lineup is expected to be the new Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18, and in that context, “Glowtime” could be an oblique reference to the new Siri design.
Apple’s Senior marketing VP, Greg Joswiak, didn’t offer any more meaningful hints in his announcement than to say Apple is “glowing with excitement,” so take that for whatever it’s worth.
What to Expect from the iPhone 16
Nevertheless, the iPhone 16 lineup is expected to bring significant changes, even if it doesn’t define a new hardware paradigm. The entire lineup will get some variation of the A18 chip with 8GB of RAM (minimum) to support Apple Intelligence. There’s been some speculation the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will get a more capable “A18 Pro,” but there have been no solid reports to confirm that, so Apple may use its most powerful silicon across the board. At most, it may go with “binned” chips for the standard iPhone 16 models, similar to the iPhone 13 lineup, where the A15 in the Pro models had one more GPU core available.
Beyond that, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are expected to feature a redesigned camera layout, returning to the tandem arrangement of the iPhone 12 era combined with the pill-shaped bump of the iPhone XS. This is believed to be a way to support spatial video capture on the standard iPhone 16 models — a feature currently exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Along the same lines, the standard iPhone 16 models will gain the Action button introduced in last year’s pro models, plus a new Capture button that’s rumored to be coming to all four iPhone 16 models.
While the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will remain the same size, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are expected to get slightly larger to accommodate new 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch screens, respectively. However, the size of the iPhones may not increase by that much, as some of the screen growth is expected to come from smaller bezels.
Apple Intelligence isn’t expected to be ready until iOS 18.1 ships later this fall, but Apple will likely still heavily promote it as a core feature of the iPhone 16 models since the A18 chip is also expected to gain a more powerful Neural Engine to handle on-device AI processing. Some earlier rumors suggested the microphone array could be upgraded to improve the Siri experience, but we haven’t heard much about that lately.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Apple launched a new iPhone lineup while promoting features that won’t come until a later software update. Even the iPhone 7 Plus, which introduced Portrait Mode, didn’t gain that feature until iOS 10.1 was released a few weeks later, and that trend has continued with many iPhone releases since then. Granted, Apple Intelligence is a much bigger deal, but we wouldn’t be surprised if iOS 18.1 isn’t far behind the iPhone launch, and it’s conceivable that the iPhone 16 models could even launch with that version preinstalled.
When Will the iPhone 16 Be Available?
With Apple changing things up to a Monday, it’s hard to rule out it doing the same with its pre-sale dates. However, as long as Apple sticks with tradition, pre-orders for the iPhone 16 models should open on Friday, September 13, with in-store availability the following Friday, September 20. We’ve heard no reports of any models being delayed, so all four of the new iPhones — the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max — should go on sale and ship at the same time.
