Apple holds its September product keynote on Wednesday, with the company’s first folding iPhone widely expected to be the headline announcement. For viewers in Sri Lanka the event streams at 10.30 p.m. that night, free on apple.com, Apple’s YouTube channel and the Apple TV app.

None of the hardware has been confirmed by Apple. Everything below comes from pre-launch reporting and should be treated as such until the company says it on stage.

A new chief executive presents

The keynote is effectively the first for John Ternus, who became Apple’s chief executive on September 1. Apple announced in April that Tim Cook, who had run the company for fifteen years, would move to a newly created executive chairman role, handing the top job to Ternus, previously head of hardware engineering. It is the first September event in fifteen years that Cook has not presented.

The rumoured iPhone Ultra

The folding device is reported to carry the name iPhone Ultra. Pre-launch accounts describe a book-style design with a roughly 5.5-inch outer screen and a 7.8-inch inner display, both OLED with ProMotion for refresh rates up to 120Hz, running Apple’s A20 Pro chip built on TSMC’s 2nm process and paired with Apple’s own C2 modem rather than a Qualcomm part.

To keep the folded device thin, Apple has reportedly dropped Face ID in favour of a Touch ID sensor in the power button and skipped a telephoto lens, leaving two 48-megapixel rear cameras and a 24-megapixel front camera.

Reported starting prices run from about $2,000 to as much as $2,299, with top storage tiers above $3,000. That would make it Apple’s most expensive phone to date.

Also expected: iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models sharing the A20 Pro chip, with a smaller Dynamic Island and a variable-aperture main camera; Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4; AirPods 5 with active noise cancellation; and ship dates for iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27. A standard, cheaper iPhone 18 is not expected until spring 2027.

What it means for prices here

Sri Lanka has no official Apple store, so local prices reflect import duties, taxes and dealer margins on top of the US figure.

Apple’s current US pricing for the base 256GB, unlocked models of the outgoing line is $829 for the iPhone 17, $1,099 for the iPhone 17 Pro and $1,199 for the iPhone 17 Pro Max. At an exchange rate of about Rs. 328 to the dollar, those convert to roughly Rs. 272,000, Rs. 360,000 and Rs. 393,000.

Local listings for the same three models run considerably higher — closer to Rs. 319,900, Rs. 399,900 and Rs. 479,900 — a premium of roughly 17 to 22 per cent over the straight conversion.

Applying that gap to a foldable starting near $2,000 would put an iPhone Ultra well above the half-million-rupee mark, assuming it reaches Sri Lanka in its first wave of markets at all.

Update, 10 September: what Apple actually announced

Apple named the folding device the iPhone Duo, not the iPhone Ultra. The name used throughout this article came from pre-launch reporting and was wrong.

The starting price landed at $1,999, at the bottom of the $2,000–$2,299 range reported here, and the screens came in slightly smaller than expected — 5.4 inches outside and 7.6 inches inside, against the 5.5 and 7.8 inches described above. The Duo goes on sale on 23 October; the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, at $1,199 and $1,299, go on sale on 18 September.

Full details are in our report on the keynote.