Apple’s “awe dropping” event later today is going to be a packed one, with four smartphones, three smartwatches, and potentially a smart home gear lined up as well. But according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple could deliver a couple of surprises atop its flagship phone and true wireless earbuds.
AirPods Pro 3 make the big leap
For a while, we have been hearing rumors of a big health-centric upgrade for the AirPods Pro. Apple has reportedly been experimenting with a camera, temperature sensor, and a heart rate biosensor for its top-end wireless earbuds.
Subsequent reports mentioned that those planned sensor-heavy upgrades may have been pushed. According to Gurman, the third-gen AirPods Pro 3 “might” still make an appearance at the Fall launch event in a few hours from now, armed with a heart rate sensor.
This won’t be the first such adventure of its kind for Apple, nor is it the first name out there to attempt it. The Beats PowerBeats Pro earbuds already come equipped with a heart rate sensor. Sennheiser even put a heart rate and temperature sensor on the Momentum Sport earbuds.
Gurman goes on to claim that the AirPods Pro will offer “improved design for better fit and revamped charging case.” Rumors suggest that the revamped charging case means the round physical button is gone, and replaced with a hidden capacitive button, akin to the AirPods 4. However, he suggests that any improvements to the noise cancellation and audio quality aren’t expected.
The iPhone 17 Pro is going to be pretty cool
Moving over to the hotly anticipated iPhone 17 Pro, he wrote in another social media post that a vapor chamber will be a big draw for the upcoming phones. Moreover, he also predicts two bold new colors — blue and orange — for the flagships.
So far, Apple has relied on traditional graphite sheets and a bonded aluminum substructure with the Titanium chassis on the iPhone 16 Pro to handle heat.
This approach, however, is not nearly as effective as a bunch of high-end Android phones like the OnePlus 13, which come with a vapor chamber cooling system and run noticeably cooler under stress. It’s not just about the heat on the user’s skin. Poor thermals also take a toll on the sustained performance under load, such as gaming and hi-res camera capture.
On devices such as the Red Magic Astra tablet, a next-gen dual-sided vapor chamber cooling system delivered unprecedented stability, even under ray-traced workloads. I am extremely excited for similar performance-related gains on the iPhone 17 Pro pair.
