Do you have any of these older iPhones? Here's our advice on whether it's time for a replacement. Andrew Cunningham

A new iPhone is here. You've spent most of the day watching Apple's announcement, the coverage around it, the reaction to the announcement and the coverage, and the reactions to those reactions. It's the standard tech news rigmarole, which can be fun, but ultimately doesn't really help people make purchasing decisions.

Let's assume you're a current iPhone owner, and you're being tempted by the new one's wiles. We're here to throw some water on the early adoption fire, to be the voice of reason that tells you whether it's really practical to upgrade or not. Here's a list of all the phones that are going to run iOS 8, and what you should be thinking about if you're looking for a replacement.

iPhone 5S owners: Keep your phone

This recommendation doesn't surprise anyone, right? If you have an iPhone 5S, you didn't buy a phone all that long ago. Your iPhone supports pretty much every iOS 8 feature, from Handoff, to the performance-boosting Metal graphics API, to 64-bit apps, to TouchID. Given Apple's reputation for secrecy even among different internal teams, it's a safe bet that a whole bunch of iOS 8 was developed on an iPhone 5S, for an iPhone 5S.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook went the "one more thing" route at the end of the company's Flint Center media event today and revealed the Apple Watch, the company's first-ever dedicated wearable. Cook said that Apple had to go back to the drawing board in order to create interfaces that worked with a tiny screen, meaning that the company had a lot to reveal—and explain—during the (long) presentation.

Apple Watch launches "early next year" at a starting price point of $349, so in-depth reviews won't appear for some time. For now, though, we have gathered the few pictures we do have into one place. Together, they illustrate many common functions of the watch.

Ars reporters on site at Apple's media event will weigh in later today with hands-on pictures and impressions of the new device.

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Alongside the launch of the launch of the iPhone 6 family, Apple is also prepping for the launch of iOS 8. The iPhone 6 family will of course ship with iOS 8 as their base OS, meanwhile Apple has announced that iOS 8 will be available as an upgrade for compatible devices on September 17th, 2 days before the iPhone 6 ships.

As Apple has already announced iOS 8 back at WWDC 2014, we won’t spend too much time recapping it here. Notable new features for iOS 8 include the low level Metal graphics API, new keyboard functionality, notification enhancements, and hands-free Siri.

Meanwhile for compatibility, Apple has confirmed that iOS 8 will be coming to A5 and higher devices. This includes the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and iPod Touch 5th Gen, along with their respective successors including the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. In practice this means that iOS 8 will run on anything iOS 7 ran on other than the iPhone 4, which was the sole A4 device to run that OS.

Aurich Lawson

When Apple announced that it would finally make a large iPhone to compete against all the large Android phones, my first thought was, "Will it even fit in my pocket?" It's hard to get a sense of what things look like in real life from seeing them on a computer screen, even when they're placed next to other objects for scale.

So I grabbed Apple's official press shot of the iPhone 5S compared with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and I whipped up some quick wireframe drawings to scale. You can print them out, cut around the edges with a pair of scissors, and hold the paper outlines in your hand to see just what each size really feels like.

Spoiler alert: the iPhone 6 Plus feels huge.

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Apple has thrown their hat into the wearable ring with the Apple watch, which tries to bring a better user experience to the watch without trying to adapt iOS to the watch with multi-touch gestures that we're familiar with on the iPhone.

There's a single crystal sapphire display, a digital dial crown that acts as a home button and a scroll system. There's also a strong emphasis on haptic feedback which allows for linking of watches to share notifications by sending taps in any possible pattern. This is done by using a force sensitive touchscreen, which is a method of navigating along with the scrolling dial. This allows for subtle communication that doesn't rely on obvious sound or gestures. It's also possible to send taps based upon pulse/heart beat.

There are IR lights and sapphire lenses on the back of the watch for heart rate and serves as a magnetic alignment wireless charging system. The accuracy of the watch is no more than 50 milliseconds off at any time.

In order to support this watch, Apple has also designed a custom SoC called S1, likely for battery life and sensor integration and reduction of board area.

There are six different straps that are easily exchanged. The sport band has multiple colors and is some kind of rubber. There's a leather sports strap which has multiple magnets to ensure that the fit works correctly. There's also a traditional leather strap and a stainless steel link bracelet. There's also a stainless steel mesh band that is infinitely adjustable. There are also two versions of each watch edition, one larger and one smaller.

The Apple Watch also has NFC and will work with Apple Pay.

There are actually three variants though, which include the standard Apple Watch, Watch Sport, and the Watch Edition which has 18 karat gold for the casing. The sport edition has a anodized aluminum casing.

Furthermore the watch will also come in two different case sizes to account for different wrist sizes (essentially his & her watch sizes). These sizes are 38mm and 42mm tall respectively.

The Apple Watch must be paired with an iPhone to work properly. It starts at $349 USD and will go on sale early 2015.

On Tuesday, Apple finally unveiled the Apple Watch, the company's first dedicated wearable device.

Once rumored for an October reveal, the Watch was only recently linked to today's iPhone announcement event, and while it follows devices from the likes of Samsung, Motorola, and LG, the Watch stands out thanks to its total integration with the iPhone and iOS ecosystem. The Apple Watch comes in two different sizes—one larger and one smaller.

According to CEO Tim Cook, the Apple Watch has been in development for a considerable amount of time and required a reassessment of how users interact with devices. Not content to take the iPhone experience and simply shrink it to wrist-like proportions, the Apple Watch discards traditional gesture controls like pinch-to-zoom, since they are impractical in the tiny form factor. Instead, the primary means of interaction is with the "digital crown," the tiny dial on the watch's side. Per Cook, it lets you interact with the watch without blocking its screen (although, confusingly, a screen-obscuring swipe appears to be the most common gesture used with the Watch). A press on the "digital crown" returns you to the home screen.

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Megan Geuss

On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled Apple Pay, a new mobile payment platform built into every iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. It will launch in October as a free update to iOS 8, and it will be supported by 220,000 merchants that already support contactless payments.

"Our mission is to replace your wallet, starting by focusing on payments," Cook said before showing a brief demonstration video of an iPhone user holding the phone up to a sensor at a payment kiosk. "That's it!" Cook said, and then he showed the video once more for those who may have "blinked and missed it." Like other payment apps, Apple Pay will support taking photos of credit cards to import their information.

Retailers are already poised to support Apple Pay. Megan Geuss

Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue confirmed that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models will support Apple Pay thanks to NFC, along with a new chip called the Secure Element that stores payment information in encrypted, secure fashion. All transactions will be conducted with a one-time code that doesn't transfer personal shopping information to Apple (or credit card information to individual cashiers), and payments can also be immediately suspended by using Find My iPhone.

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As expected from this year’s iPhone keynote, Apple has announced a new member of their internally developed family of ARM SoCs.

The latest SoC, dubbed A8, is Apple’s first SoC built on the 20nm process, and among the first SoCs overall to be built on this process. Apple notes that it has 2 billion transistors and is 13% smaller than the A7, which would give it upwards of twice as many transistors as the A7 and would put the die size at about 89mm2.

Image courtesy The Verge

From a performance perspective Apple is promising 25% faster CPU performance than A7. As is usually the case with Apple, they aren’t talking about the underlying CPU core – though this is a problem we’re working to rectify – so it remains to be seen how much of this is due to CPU architectural upgrades and how much is from clockspeed improvements afforded by the 20nm process. Apple just introduced their 64bit Cyclone core last year, so it stands to reason that just a year later and with the transition to 64bit already completed, A8 packs a CPU that is similar to Cyclone.

Apple SoC Evolution   CPU Perf GPU Perf Die Size Transistors Process A5 ~13x ~20x 122m2 <1B 45nm A6 ~26x ~34x 97mm2 <1B 32nm A7 40x 56x 102mm2 >1B 28nm A8 50x 84x 89mm2 ~2B 20nm

Meanwhile Apple is being even less specific about the GPU, but from their published baseline performance comparisons against the iPhone 1, the A8 is said to be 84x faster on graphics. This compares to a published figure of 56x for the A7, which implies that the A8’s GPU is 1.5x faster than the A7’s. Given Apple’s conservative stance on clockspeeds for power purposes and the die space gains from the 20nm process, it seems likely that Apple has upgraded from a 4 core PowerVR GPU to a 6 core PowerVR GPU, likely the flagship GX6650, which would account for the 50% performance gain right there.

Finally, Apple notes that the A8 is designed to be 50% more energy efficient than the A7. Some of these efficiency gains would come from gains due the 20nm process, however this large of a gain would indicate that Apple has done additional work at the architectural level to improve efficiency, as smaller manufacturing nodes alone do not see these kinds of gains.

Update: We have posted our initial A8 analysis here

Apple

CUPERTINO, CA—Apple has officially announced a release date for iOS 8, the latest version of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. The new software launches on September 17, and as we've written before it will be available on the iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, and 5S; the iPad 2, both Retina iPads, the iPad Air, and both iPad minis; the fifth-generation iPod touch; and all revisions of the third-generation Apple TV.

While iOS 7 was all about a complete, comprehensive visual refresh, iOS 8 focuses more on the underlying components of the operating system. The most important of these are the new Extensions, which will allow third-party applications to do many things they couldn't do before. Third-party applications can now provide widgets for your notification center, share data with other applications, and even edit photos and other documents inline without leaving the application you're working in.

iOS has long had a reputation for being more locked down and inflexible than Android, its biggest competitor in the mobile space, but Extensions help to remove many of those barriers. For example, one type of Extension allows for third-party software keyboards, something Android has allowed for a long time. There are still restrictions on what these Extensions can do and how they behave, but it should enable more useful apps and a more customizable user experience.

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Today, Apple is launching the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. One of first changes is that the new iPhone 6 has a 4.7" 1334x750 display, and the iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5" 1920x1080 (1080p) display. The thickness of of the 4.7" model is 6.6mm and the 5.5" model is 7.1mm.

The displays will have higher contrast, better peak brightness, and better viewing angles according to Apple. This suggests that the iPhone display has a chevron shape to its subpixels to improve viewing angles. The glass also has a 2.5D curve similar to the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3 for a smooth feel when swiping off the edge of the phone.

iOS is also adapted to the new larger iPhone 6 Plus' display by adding landscape views for many native applications that are two pane. In addition, in order to work with the differing resolutions Apple has added a "desktop-class scaler" to avoid incompability issues with applications that aren't aware of the new displays. This in turn implies that Apple is not doing integer scaling/doubling in all cases, and that we'll see fractional scaling used. These displays are known as Retina HD. There's also a one-hand mode for the iPhone 6 Plus in order to deal with the larger display size.

The new A8 powers both of these iPhones, and has 2B transistors compared to 1B the A7. It's also built on 20nm but it's unclear whether this is TSMC, Samsung, or both.

Apple also claims 25% higher CPU performance on the A8 and is also emphasizing that this new SoC can do better sustained performance over time compared against other smartphones. The GPU is supposed to be a GX6650.

Image Courtesy Engadget

Apple is also emphasizing that battery life on the iPhone 6 and how it compares to the iPhone 5s. WiFi browsing battery life is slightly increased over the 5s while LTE browsing battery life is unchanged, meanwhile the iPhone 6 Plus improves to 12 hours for both WiFi and LTE.

There's also a new M8 coprocessor which makes use of a new barometer sensor to measure relative air pressure and compute distance and elevation for better fitness tracking, which is used for the health application in iOS 8.

Apple is also finally introducing MDM9x25 with carrier aggregation and VoLTE. This means that there's a dual transceiver solution in the iPhone 6 devices. On the same line, Apple is finally adding 802.11ac to its smartphones and has worked on enabling seamless WiFi calling that goes from WiFi to cellular networks.

On the camera side, we see a new 8MP sensor which adds phase detection auto focus for faster autofocus, which is touted to be able to focus at up to 2x speed. There's also better local tone map and better noise reduction in addition to the PDAF system that was first seen in the Samsung Galaxy S5. Panoramas can now be up to 43MP in total resolution and a better gyroscope reduces stitching errors.

There's a brand new ISP in the A8 SoC as well, which is likely to be named the H7 ISP if we follow from the A7. Furthermore there's one feature that the iPhone 6 Plus does have that the iPhone 6 doesn't have for the camera, which is optical image stabilization (OIS) to reduce shaking. It appears that the entire module is floating instead of just a VCM-based lens stabilization system. There's also a timelapse feature. The PDAF also helps with continuous AF in video that avoids all of the breathing effects that come with conventional contrast-based focus.

The front facing camera also has a better sensor, f/2.2 aperture, single photo HDR, HDR video, and burst shot on the front facing camera.

Both will launch with iOS 8, which has QuickType that we've talked about at the WWDC keynote in addition to Extensibility which allows for TouchID auth in third party apps.

Also new to the iPhone 6 family is Near Field Communication (NFC) hardware, which is being used to power Apple's new payment system, Apple Pay. The iPhone 6 family utilizes an encrypted secure element (likely on the NFC chip itself) and credit cards are added through Passbook and validation for a purchase can be done using TouchID.

Apple has reassured security concerns by saying that Apple cannot know what is purchased and the cashier cannot see the credit card number or any information to ensure security. Online payment is also handled by Apple Pay which is a one-touch solution using TouchID and one time number from the secure element. Groupon, Uber, Target, Panera, MLB, and Apple store applications are all already supporting this system. Another example cited was OpenTable which allows for one to pay for a dinner check through an app. The system launches in the US in October as an update and will have an API open to all developers to implement in their applications.

  Apple iPhone 5s Apple iPhone 6 Apple iPhone 6 Plus SoC Apple A7 Apple A8 Apple A8 Display 4-inch 1136 x 640 LCD 4.7-inch 1334 x 750 LCD 5.5-inch 1920 x 1080 LCD WiFi 2.4/5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n, BT 4.0 2.4/5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, single stream, BT 4.0, NFC Storage 16GB/32GB/64GB 16GB/64GB/128GB 16GB/64GB/128GB I/O Lightning connector, 3.5mm headphone Size / Mass 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm, 112 grams 138.1 x 67 x 6.9 mm, 129 grams 158.1 x 77.8 x 7.1 mm, 172 grams Camera 8MP iSight with 1.5µm pixels Rear Facing + True Tone Flash
1.2MP f/2.4 Front Facing 8MP iSight with 1.5µm pixels Rear Facing + True Tone Flash
1.2MP f/2.2 Front Facing 8MP iSight with 1.5µm pixels Rear Facing + True Tone Flash + OIS
1.2MP f/2.2 Front Facing Price $99 (16GB), $149 (32GB) on 2 year contract $199 (16GB), $299 (64GB), $399 (128GB) on 2 year contract $299 (16GB), $399 (64GB), $499 (128GB) on 2 year contract

There are new silicone and leather cases with gold, silver, and space gray. The iPhone 6 starts at the usual $199 for 16GB, $299 for 64GB and $399 for 128GB. The iPhone 6 Plus comes in the same colors at $299 for 16GB, $399 for 64GB and $499 for 128GB. The iPhone 5s is now $99 on 2 year contrast, and the iPhone 5c is free. The new phone will ship on September 19th and preorders begin on September 12th.

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CUPERTINO, CA—As expected, Apple has just updated its iPhone lineup with brand-new handsets. While last year's 5C and 5S were both variants of 2012's iPhone 5, the new phones feature a redesigned chassis made to hold their larger 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screens. The new enclosures are thinner, too, with the iPhone 6 measuring 6.9 mm and the Plus coming in at 7.1 mm—both thinner than the iPhone 5S's 7.6 mm.

This is just the second time that Apple has changed the size of the iPhone's screen since the original model was introduced back in 2007, and it's the first time Apple has changed the width of its screens—the 4-inch iPhone 5 design just made the previous 3.5-inch displays taller. The new phones are better-suited to compete against ever-increasing screen sizes from Android phone OEMs like Samsung, HTC, LG, and Motorola. According to Apple slides revealed during the Apple vs. Samsung case, Apple is aware that most of the growth in high-end smartphone sales is coming from large-screened phones.

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 has a resolution of 1334×750 (326 PPI) and the iPhone 6 Plus is 1920×1080 (401 PPI), They won't be as sharp as displays in many premium Android phones, some of which have 2560×1440 display panels, but as we've seen, those panels can be a big drain on the battery.

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Staff at a pizzeria in Italy successfully fend off would-be robbers - despite being held up at gun point.

Escalating tensions between Yemen's government and the armed Shia Houthi movement are threatening to plunge one of the poorest countries in the Middle East into a wide-scale armed conflict.

Amazon has at long last released a version of its video player for Android devices, according to a report Tuesday from The Next Web. The app release negates some of the video advantage that used to be reserved for Amazon-branded Android products like the Kindle Fire, but it rounds out the list of platforms where Amazon can appear.

Amazon has always been a persnickety service about where and how its videos will play. Users can stream to a PC desktop but not always in HD, and they can pin videos for offline viewing but only on Kindle products. Amazon video apps have been available for iOS devices for some time, but Android was always left out.

At first, Android users had to use a workaround to get the app from Amazon's Appstore that involved enabling the right permissions. But as of a couple hours later, the app was available directly through the Google play store for users in the US, UK, and Germany. This brings video purchases and rentals as well as Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming to devices including the Nexus 7, one of the Kindle Fire's competitor devices.

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2014-09-09T12:00:00-05:00

Apple has had a very quiet 2014. Aside from its announcements at WWDC, it hasn't made any major product introductions, and even WWDC was mostly previews of things that would be released in the fall.

That's all set to change tomorrow morning, when Apple takes the stage at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in its hometown of Cupertino, CA. We'll be publishing a longer post about what to expect soon, but the short list includes at least one new, larger iPhone, the public release date for iOS 8, and the announcement of a brand-new wearable that will be the first all-new product line of the Tim Cook epoch.

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A variant of the infamous banking trojan Zeus has gone beyond targeting financial accounts, instead striving to collect another type of sensitive business data: customer information.

The variant, known as Dyre, is a banking trojan that first came to light in June when security companies warned that the Zeus knockoff found a way to bypass Web encryption, known as secure sockets layer (SSL). At the time, it targeted some of the largest global banks, such as Bank of America, Citibank, Natwest, RBS, and Ulsterbank. A recent version of Dyre, however, has begun targeting Salesforce, a popular cloud service for storing customer information, according to analyses.

Other cloud services could just as easily be targeted, according to security firm Adallom.

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New footage from the MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine shows rebels roaming amongst the wreckage, as Nomia Iqbal reports.

Newgrounds

Publisher Electronic Arts is working to fix an overzealous filtering system that is preventing players of The Sims 4 from sharing characters with names that include gay references, the company told Kotaku.

As it currently stands, The Sims 4 doesn't prevent players from naming their virtual Sims however they want. But if a Sim's name includes a word like "gay," "queer," "homosexual," or even "straight," the game will pop up a warning that the character can not be posted in the online Gallery section, as shown in this video from a German player.

EA is aware of the issue and working to fix it. "The Sims has a long history of supporting stories that players want to tell, irrespective of gender preference," an EA representative told Kotaku. "The Gallery uses an automated filtering program that filters out certain words, including some of the ones you mentioned below. We are aware of [it and] have been working on a fix, which will be out soon."

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A second year of badger culling has begun in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset in a bid to tackle bovine TB.

Hey that's not 320 mAh. iFixit/Ron Amadeo

iFixit has gotten ahold of the Moto 360 and applied the usual spudgers and heat packs to rip open the little round smartwatch. There weren't too many surprises (everything is round!) except for the battery: it's smaller than advertised.

In iFixit's pictures, the 360's battery is only labeled as 300 mAh, 20 mAh less than advertised. The 300 mAh battery has only 75 percent of the capacity of the 400 mAh battery found in the LG G Watch, and together with the OMAP 3 processor, it's not a great combination for all-day battery life. We've asked Motorola for a comment about the smaller battery in iFixit's 360, but the company hasn't gotten back to us yet. We'll update this post if we hear anything. The company's response is below.

As for the rest of the device, the round LCD looks pretty much the same as it does on the outside, and even the main PCB is round. iFixit managed to nail the processor down to an OMAP3630, which as we suspected is built on a 45nm process.

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