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Apple fans waiting to hear about the company's futuristic wireless charging mat will have been disappointed on Wednesday, as the AirPower charger did not get a single mention at Apple's annual iPhone launch event.

Apple previewed AirPower last year, showing a flat pad that could wirelessly charge multiple devices at once, such as an Apple Watch, iPhone, and AirPods case. But there was, surprisingly, no mention of the mat in Cupertino on Wednesday.

Now commentators are speculating that Apple has experienced some kind of setback. 9to5Mac reported that most mentions of AirPower have been scrubbed from Apple's website. According to 9to5Mac, the product page for last year's iPhone X mentioned AirPower and a release date of some time in 2018. Since the iPhone X itself has been discontinued, there's no longer any mention of AirPower.

Tech blogger and well-known Apple watcher John Gruber also weighed in, noting that he could find a picture of an AirPower mat, but no mention of the product itself on Apple's site. "No one from Apple I've spoken to today will say a word about AirPower other than that they have nothing to say about it today. I wouldn't be surprised if it's been scrapped, and they just don't want to say so yet," he wrote on Wednesday.

Forrester analyst Thomas Husson told Business Insider he would be surprised if Apple had scrapped AirPower altogether.

"Given the importance of the battery life for the Apple Watch, it would have been a nice way to sell accessories to consumers who own multiple Apple devices and create a continuum of experiences across the product portfolio," he said.

"I would assume this is still the plan and that is only a matter of months before we know more details and see an official product launch."

Apple announced in September last year that it would release AirPower in 2018, but speculation about the precise release date has varied. Shortly afterwards it was confirmed that Apple had bought wireless charging company PowerbyProxi in order to "help create a wireless future," according to Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio.

The wireless future seems to have stalled however, as Bloomberg reported in June that engineers were struggling to stop the mats from overheating. The same report suggested that AirPower would be released in September.

Business Insider contacted Apple for comment.

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.

1. Apple announced its biggest iPhone to date, the $1,100 iPhone XS Max, during its annual event in Cupertino. It also unveiled the smaller, $999 iPhone XS and the "budget" $749 iPhone XR.

2. President Trump's campaign manager called Google a 'threat to the republic', after a leaked video emerged showing company executives lamenting Trump's 2016 victory. Republicans seized on the video as indicative of bias in Google's search results, though the video didn't back up their claims.

3. Apple unveiled an updated version of the Apple Watch with new features apparently targeted at older wearers. The Apple Watch 4 can take ECGs and detect if the wearer falls.

4. Tesla's vice president of worldwide finance and operations is the latest senior staffer to leave the company.Justin McAnear said he was offered the job of CFO at a different company, and his departure comes less than a week after chief accounting officer Dave Morton resigned.

5. Troubled games studio Riot Games has brought in a former Uber executive to try and fix its culture, after employees complained of bullying and harassment. Uber's former senior vice president for leadership and strategy, Frances Frei, will act as an adviser to Riot's culture team.

6. European politicians voted to back controversial legislation that could radically change the internet. Tough new copyright legislation, should it come into effect, would mean tech giants will have to pay to link to journalistic articles, and scan content uploaded content for any copyright breaches.

7. Google quietly announced it would discontinue Inbox, its innovative email app. Many of Inbox's features, such as smart reply, have made their way into Google's main service Gmail, and it appears the firm has decided the app has served its time.

8. Apple's latest mobile software, iOS 12, will be available on Monday and it includes major changes. The update will include changes to how notifications are displayed, updates to the Photos app, and a new augmented-reality Measure app to take measurements with only your iPhone camera.

9. There were two major no-shows at the Apple event on Wednesday: wireless charging mat Airpower, and updated Airpods headphones. Apple gave a sneak peek at Airpower last year, but said it wasn't ready, and it's been two years since the first-generation of Airpods came out.

10. Uber's new northern European boss, Jamie Heywood, made his first speech on Wednesday, radically upending what the company is best known for. Heywood didn't just talk about cab rides, but talked about the future of transportation including shared electric vehicles such as bikes and scooters.

Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.

Didi Chuxing, China's largest ride-hailing company, is now recording in-car audio during passenger trips in an effort that it says will improve customer safety.

The company, most recently valued at $50 billion, began trialing the new feature on one of its platforms, Didi Hitch, on Saturday, which asks users for a one-time authorization to create a voice recording for the duration of their rides before they're able to book a car. If they decline, the booking cannot be completed.

A message on the app says recording is done on the driver's phone, and recordings will be uploaded to the company's servers as an encrypted file only accessible by Didi or law-enforcement. According to the message, the recording will be used as evidence in dealing with complaints or bad reviews, and will be automatically deleted within seven days if a complaint is not filed.

In July, the app tested out an optional video recording function in 20 cities, which asked users if they wanted to be recorded when they entered into a vehicle equipped with a camera.

The company has also rolled out driver facial recognition software before each trip, limited late-night rides to drivers and passengers of the same sex, and announced it would temporarily be suspending late night services on the app from September 8 while the company evaluates risks and continues to make improvements.

The increased safety measures follow two high-profile murders that happened during Didi rides in the last several months.

Last month, a 20-year-old woman was allegedly raped and murdered by a driver after using the service in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and in May, a 21-year-old flight attendant raped and murdered in Zhengzhou by an unregistered driver who allegedly hijacked his father's account.

Public records seen by the South China Morning Post indicate that the service had at least a dozen instances of sexual assault convictions involving drivers and passengers.

Wang He/Getty Images

Some users have expressed concern that the new safety measures are an invasion of privacy.

"This is sacrificing privacy for safety," one user wrote on popular microblogging platform Weibo, according to Sixth Tone. "Why can't [Didi] let passengers make their own choice?"

"We can't talk about work and life during a journey after this," a Didi passenger told Global Times. "I feel that both the driver and passenger are being monitored."

The new measures also raise wider concerns about surveillance of Chinese citizens as they go about their daily lives.

China has already announced plans for a mandatory "social credit system" to be rolled out by 2020, which ranks citizens behavior and "trustworthiness" by monitoring most things about people — from their spending habits, to their internet use, to traffic violations.

Good social credit can lead to preferential treatment when renting apartments, staying in hotels, or getting a job promotion. But a poor score could result in travel bans, lower internet speeds, limited job prospects, or even public shaming.

The methodology of how China cultivates the score remains foggy, though the country could be using widespread facial recognition technology, monitoring online messages, forcing citizens to download government-linked monitoring apps, and tracking citizens' social media posts.

The credit system has been rolled out in dozens of cities across the country, and citizens are already witnessing the effects of state monitored surveillance from suspended university enrollment, to banned travel access.

Several popular apps have been found to record sensitive user data stored in their mobile devices, which could be used to track and monitor Chinese citizens, according to Hong Kong Free Press. And Chinese authorities have acknowledged they have accessed deleted conversations from the popular messaging app WeChat.

Still, when it comes to ensuring safety, users in Chinese citizens are among the most willing to sacrifice privacy for safety and convenience, according to a report by market research firms Experian and International Data Corporation.

Last week, the Oracle eco-system was surprised to learn that Thomas Kurian, one of Oracle's longest serving executives in charge of Oracle's all-important cloud business, had left for an extended leave of absence.

Inside Oracle, word is that Kurian's departure was due to butting heads with his boss Larry Ellison, a source tells Business Insider. This person says that Kurian's good-bye was intended as a resignation, although the company says that he has not resigned but is simply "taking some time off. We expect him to return soon," a spokesperson said.

The disagreement seems to have centered on the direction Oracle should take with its bet-the-company cloud computing business, reports Bloomberg.

Sources told Bloomberg that Kurian was pushing Ellison to allow more of Oracle's software to run on clouds that compete with Oracle, particularly market leaders Amazon and Microsoft.

If true, this disagreement between the two strategies, and the two men, would not be surprising. Both of them are known for being tough, outspoken and opinionated — characteristics which describe a lot of Oracle's culture.

A page ripped out of the Microsoft playbook

If Kurian is pushing Oracle to embrace multiple clouds — even the clouds of its bitter enemies — the strategy would make a lot of sense.

It's similar to what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has done. There was a time when Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were protectionist about Windows. But, with the rise of cloud computing, Nadella recognized that the world had changed.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne It became far less important to push people to use Windows than to ensure that Microsoft's enormous catalog of software, particularly Office, could run on any device. So, Microsoft built out its cloud to serve up Office 365 to run on any device; it made sure that its Windows Server software could run on other clouds; and it embraced competitive software, like Linux, on its own cloud.

That way, Microsoft makes money when customers run its software on a competitive cloud (they still have to buy the software) or when they run a competitor's software on their own cloud (they have to pay for Microsoft cloud usage).

Oracle is in a similar quandary but with one key difference: Amazon has become a major threat to Oracle.

Amazon isn't just trying to get Oracle's customers to bring Oracle software to Amazon Web Services (which they can already do), it's trying to get customers to ditch Oracle's database and use Amazon's database instead. Amazon even built a tool to make it easier to move from an Oracle database to an Amazon one. Microsoft also has its own database and has been a bitter competitor with Oracle for years.

So Ellison has been building an Oracle cloud that competes with Amazon (and Microsoft) insisting Oracle's cloud is a faster, better way to run the database. If Oracle's customers don't stay within Oracle's own sphere, Oracle could lose them altogether.

The clock is ticking

Oracle executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison Oracle The problem is, Oracle's cloud is years behind Amazon's in terms of features. It will take Oracle billions of dollars and several years to catch-up, if it even can because Amazon is adding features at an ever increasing rate, hundreds or more per quarter. Microsoft is widely considered the No. 2 cloud.

Enterprise customers are choosing their cloud providers now, based on the features they want and need now.

Oracle may not have years to play catch up. And the person responsible for that catch-up is 22-year Oracle veteran Kurian, and his team. Kurian is the president who heads engineering and product development. About a quarter of the company reports up to him.

There have been signs that Oracle's cloud ambitions are not growing as well as the company wants, too, putting Kurian on the hot seat. Although, to be fair, Oracle is doing a good job in getting many of its customers to sign up for the certain parts of its cloud. They like the cloud versions of its HR, marketing and financial software (similar to how Microsoft moved people from MS Office to Office 365).

Should Ellison allow more of that software to run on competitors' clouds? And should it partner with its rivals (assuming such partnerships were an option) to run their software on its own cloud?

Probably yes. Other would-be Amazon competitors have either been crushed (Rackspace) or forced to eat crow and partner up (VMware). Once VMware got past the bitter taste, its partnership with Amazon has proved fruitful, filling a need with enterprise customers who want their datacenters to work better with the Amazon cloud (and making Amazon more of a beast, in the process).

But there's no question it's risky, and Ellison certainly wouldn't be crazy for being wary.

Oracle declined comment.

To hear the technoratti tell it, Apple's iPhone event Wednesday was a snooze fest.

But as the assembled reporters and analysts were starting to zone out, and as Apple's stock price slipped, the company unveiled what will prove to be its sleeper hit. The iPhone XR, the most low-ranking member of Apple's expanding X family of devices, is exactly what the company needs to revive its sluggish smartphone sales.

The new device offers many of the high-end features of last year's iPhone X and this year's XS with a price that's in line with that of the iPhone 8 and older models. My sense is that's going to be more than enough to convince iPhone owners who are holding on to aging devices to upgrade.

Apple could use the help. On an annual basis, the number of iPhones the company has been selling recently has barely budged and is actually down from what it sold three years ago. While last year's premium priced iPhone X helped boost the company's smartphone revenue, the stagnating unit sales are holding back the company's overall growth, and have led to declining market share.

You can chalk up Apple's stalling smartphone sales to a pair of factors. It basically stuck with the same design from 2014's iPhone 6 models to last year's iPhone 8. Although the innards of those phones changed over time, they looked basically the same and the new features they offered weren't compelling enough to encourage consumers to upgrade en masse.

Prior to Apple's official unveiling of the iPhone X last year, many analysts expected its anticipated revamped design to spark a massive upgrade cycle. But it didn't, due to the product's steep $1,000 price tag. That was a $350 premium over the starting price of the flagship models it replaced and put it out of reach of many consumers.

That's where the new iPhone XR comes in. The device was announced at the end of Apple's press event, which was dominated by the company's unveiling of its new flagship XS models that have little noticeable difference from last year's iPhone X.

But the XR is a wholly new model. It's got the same basic design of the iPhone X and XS, with a large edge-to-edge screen. In fact, while its display is bigger than that found in any other iPhone model other than the XS Max, the phone itself is actually smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus and previous plus-sized models.

What's more, it comes in a rainbow's assortment of colors. So for iPhone owners who have been holding out for something that looks different and new, it will likely fit the bill.

But if that's not enough to convince them it's a worthy upgrade, the XR also offers many of the same cutting-edge features found on the top-of-the-line XS models. Among them: Apple's Face ID facial recognition system; the company's latest and fastest chip, the A12 Bionic processor; and support for both wireless charging and some advanced photo features, such as the ability to take "portrait" photos with blurred backgrounds.

The iPhone XR comes in an assortment of colors. Apple The XR's most compelling feature, though, is likely to be its price. At $750, the XR isn't exactly cheap. But that's $250 less than the starting price for the XS, and XR comes with a bigger screen. And it's actually $50 less than Apple charged for the iPhone 8 Plus last year.

To be sure, the XR doesn't have all of the bells and whistles in the XS. It's got a lower resolution screen than the flagship models, and, unlike them, its display is based on LCD technology, not OLED. Consumers will likely be able to tell the difference if they compare them side by side.

What's more, it lacks the telephoto lens found not only in the XS and XS Max but in previous years' Plus models. And it doesn't have 3D Touch, Apple's technology that typically shows users more options or information if they press down on an app icon or menu option.

But my guess is none of that will matter. I think lots of Apple customers with aging phones are going to jump at the chance to have a device that looks like an even more fun and colorful version of the iPhone X. I think the long-awaited iPhone upgrade cycle may finally be here.

Amazon wants a bigger piece of the TV advertising business.

The question is, will TV's giants let the ruthlessly efficient e-commerce behemoth into their highly lucrative, highly exclusive world?

As Business Insider has reported, Amazon has been working building out an ad network for TV apps within its Fire TV system — very much like Roku. In fact, Amazon has been asking small and mid-sized video apps to supply 30% of their ad inventory on Fire TV devices in exchange for distribution.

Now, Amazon is putting together a pilot program with select video apps along the lines of Crackle, Tubi and Pluto to sell ad space using Amazon's powerful data sets, said people familiar with the matter. And Amazon would like big TV companies like Fox, NBCUniversal and Hulu to be part of the pilot.

That would be a marked change for the TV business, where TV networks do not traditionally allow third parties to sell their valuable ad inventory. In fact, the biggest TV players typically sell the vast majority of their linear ad space in an annual upfront sales bonanza to a few hundred national advertisers.

But OTT is changing things. Devices manufacturers like Roku, Xbox and Amazon control the new TV delivery systems ecosystems much like cable companies have in the past.

In Amazon's case, the company can offer TV networks a compelling two-pronged argument:

It's bound to be an intriguing pitch. Amazon could claim that it can help TV companies more money from OTT advertising than they can on their own — theoretically.

"This would almost certainly be big if they can get it going," said one ad buyer.

"It could really change TV," said another.

But they'd have to be open to partnering — not something the TV business is famous for.

Amazon

That also means relinquishing control in an industry known for its small cadre of high powered sellers and buyers.

Some say, not a chance. After all, the TV business, despite ratings plummeting, just enjoyed an outstanding upfront. It's only getting harder to reach people in mass media. Why mess with things?

"It will be scary for them," said Torrential CEO Matt Wasserlauf, a veteran digital media exec who also logged time at CBS.

Or as one consultant put it, "my guess is [NBCU sales chief Linda] Yaccarino says, 'yeah right. Drop dead, unless you want to write me a massive check.'"

On the other hand, TV is undoubtedly going through massive changes, and advertisers are pining for more data-driven, automated buying. Amazon could build a self-serve platform with this new offering, and let loads of brands plug in and buy ads without making a phone call, paying for a lunch or taking an ad buyer to a Knicks game.

As one former TV exec said, 'how long can you justify having these high priced ad sales groups? If you can make more money from partnering with Amazon, even if you have to share revenue, you could automatically do it cheaper by cutting back on sales executives, dinners, lunches and splashy upfront presentations.'"

TV networks are unlikely to get rid of all their sales executives overnight. And if they partner with Amazon, it may initially be focused on smaller networks and/or limited to unsold inventory.

Some have wondered whether top TV networks may look to rent Amazon's data rather then let Amazon get its hands on their ad space. Yet even as Amazon's ad business has soared, the company has not shown much inclination to share any of its precious data.

Regardless, big TV companies have a big decision to make.

Apple's new iPhones pack all sorts of nifty new features. But there's one important item you won't get with the new iPhone: a headphone dongle.

Apple will no longer include include a free 3.5mm jack conversion dongle with newly-purchased iPhones.

The clunky, white doodad doesn't get much love from consumers. It's dorky-looking and easily lost. But it's an essential item for a lot of people.

That's because Apple removed the traditional 3.5mm analog headphone jack from its iPhones in 2016, and replaced it with the proprietary "lightning" jack. Listening to music, or taking hands-free calls on an iPhone, now requires newer lightning compatible headphones, or wireless headphones — or, the converter dongle that lets your old headphones connect with the lightning jack.

Until now, Apple has included the dongle as a complimentary item with new iPhones. After all, it was Apple's decision to make the change, so it makes sense that the company would provide the necessary equipment so that customers could continue to use their old headphones.

But apparently Apple believes that two years is enough time for the world to have adapted to the new reality.

The company did not formally announce that it is no longer offering the free dongle with iPhones, but a look at the Apple site that details everything that's included with the latest iPhones reveals the dongle's conspicuous absence.

For those who are still attached to their old headphones though, there's still a way to connect them to the iPhone — but it will cost $9. The dongles can be purchased on Apple's website, on physically in-store.

Amazon is being criticized for appearing to inflate prices as residents of North and South Carolina prepare for Hurricane Florence to make landfall.

Many local grocery and warehouse stores have sold out of basics like cases of water, so some locals have turned online to buy goods to prepare for the storm. What they've found is water cases that cost over $20 for a few dozen bottles — far more than their usual cost.

Some on social media have balked at the prices that Amazon is charging for these items.

As Amazon's own stock and third-party sellers' lower-priced stock has sold out, the price of the water has appeared to creep up. When Business Insider checked the prices for a 40-pack of Deer Park water on Wednesday morning, it was listed for as much as $29.99 by a third-party seller.

Amazon

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that it has taken action against some of the sellers listing unusually expensive water.

After Business Insider reached out to the company for comment, the same case of water was in stock with Amazon again and was listed for $10, though the spokesperson declined to comment on the pricing of this specific item.

Amazon

"We do not engage in surge pricing, and product prices do not fluctuate by region or delivery location," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider.

Unless a product is being sold by Amazon, the company does not set the prices itself. Still, many customers don't make the distinction between Amazon and its third-party sellers.

Prices might already appear high due to the expense of shipping a heavy case of water through the mail, which is baked into the price by sellers.

Some third-party sellers have added an increase to the shipping charges instead of to the product itself. One seller of a pack of 40 bottles of water from Dasani included a shipping charge of nearly $80.

Amazon

Earlier this year, some customers overpaid for paper products by thousands of dollars because of this same selling method. Amazon refunded them. Its policy explicitly states that "sellers cannot set excessive order fulfillment or shipping costs."

"We have selling policies that all sellers agree to before selling on Amazon, and we're actively monitoring our store and removing offers of products that violate our policies and harm our customer experience," an Amazon spokesperson said.

"If customers think an offer has substantially increased in price or shipping cost, we encourage them to contact Amazon customer service directly and work with us so we can investigate and take the appropriate action."

Most bottled water at Walmart and Target is being sold directly by the retailer and does not cost more than $10, according to a scan of those retailers' websites.

Some people quake at the idea of artificial intelligence. It's safe to say that sci-fi films featuring malevolent machines have helped poison much of the public's perception of AI.

But three experts in the field say there's good reason to feel uneasy. While killer robots are still many years away, AI in some cases could pose an enormous threat to humans, according to Andrew Moore, the dean of the Computer School at Carnegie Mellon University who will soon take over as head of Google Cloud AI.

In November, Moore gave the keynote address for the Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative, and said: "If an AI disaster happens, and that would for instance be an autonomous car killing people due to serious bugs, and frankly I believe that's already happened, then at some point AI systems are going to be locked down for development, at least in the US."

"There are some even more horrible scenarios — which I don't want to talk about on the stage, which we're really worried about — that will cause the complete lockdown of robotics research," Moore continued.

Moore's statements come during a time when billions of dollars are being invested in AI.

Google, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Amazon, Facebook, and others are pushing hard to develop the technology. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, once called AI more fundamental to human development than electricity or fire.

Andrew Moore, head of AI for Google CloudThe Charlie Rose show

Nonetheless, a handful of researchers are urging caution and warning that AI misuse could bring serious consequences.

Last week, Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China, predicted that AI will revolutionize many industries and generate a lot of wealth, but most of it will land in the pockets of a relatively small number of people. He warned that with the help of AI, business owners will automate more and more tasks that were once performed by humans.

"So it's actually having a doubling effect...creating new AI tycoons at the same time taking away from the poorest of society," Lee said at the Artificial Intelligence 2018 Conference in San Francisco.

At the same conference, Meredith Whittaker, cofounder of the institute AI Now at New York University and a leading Google researcher, outlined how technologists, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, are searching for a means to enable humans to control devices via their thoughts. She predicted that in the not-so distant future, the technology will exist that can interpret and store our thoughts.

Whittaker then posed a question to the audience: What would happen if the authorities went to a company who had warehoused its customers' thoughts and subpoenaed a person's thought records? She called this possibility "creepy."

Along the same "creepy" vein is the increasing ability of AI systems to read human emotions. This is something that Moore said is on the way.

"Up until three or four years ago, the advances in computer vision and speech processing were around recognizing people, recognizing objects, and transforming spoken words into underlying written sentences," Moore told Forbes magazine last year. "Now we realize we can go farther than that. For example, the cameras in modern cell phones have such high resolution that they can see little imperfections in the face and use them to track all the parts of skin as they move around the face.

"From tracking all the bits of the skin, you can work out what the muscles are doing under the face," Moore continued. "From what the muscles are doing, using previous knowledge from psychology, you can detect facial action units and micro expressions to get information that we as humans are not even consciously aware of.

"This means that when in dialogue with a person, we can capture when they are excited, when they are happy, when there are fearful, or when there is a showing of contempt."

Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's campaign manager for the 2020 election, wants Congress to investigate Google following the leak of a video that showed the internet company's top managers lamenting Trump's election victory in 2016.

The video was recorded during one of Google's weekly all hands meetings, known as TGIF meetings, and was leaked to the right-wing Breitbart news site on Wednesday.

"Let's face it, most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad because of the election...myself, as a immigrant and refugee I certainly find this election deeply offensive and I know many of you do too," Google cofounder Sergey Brin is seen saying in the video.

The comments do not appear very different from other critical comments Brin made following the election, particularly with regards to Trump's views on immigration. But the leaked video was quickly seized upon by associates of Trump, who have been leading a drumbeat of accusations about anti-conservative bias within the tech industry.

"Google needs to explain why this isn't a threat to the republic," tweeted Brad Parscale, the manager of Trump's 2020 election campaign.

Parscale's tweet comes amid a full-scale attack by Trump and his allies on Google. The President also took to Twitter two weeks ago and accused Google of rigging search results as part of an effort to silence the voices of people with politically conservative views and to make him look bad.

Trump also alleged that Google had not promoted his state of the union addresses on its famous front door the same way the company had done for former US President Barack Obama. Google refuted the claim and provided evidence that it promoted Trump's speeches before Congress in the same way as Obama's.

Business Insider is going through the video and will update this story soon.

Apple's got two new main versions of the iPhone this year: the iPhone XS (ten-ess) and XS Max.

In the past, Apple has released its new iPhone alongside a "Plus" model — since the Max is "bigger than Plus size," Apple's calling it something different.

With a 6.5-inch "Super Retina" OLED display, the iPhone XS Max is a giant. It's got a giant-sized price tag to match: The iPhone XS Max starts at $1,099, with 64 GB of storage, and goes all the way up to $1,499 with 512 GB of storage.

The iPhone XS directly replaces last year's iPhone X at the now standard iPhone price of $999 to start. The screen size stays at 5.8 inches, and the phone in general looks very similar to last year's model.

Here's a comparison, with the iPhone X on the left, the iPhone XS in the middle, and the XS Max on the right:

Indeed.

In the camera department, both the XS and XS Max have two 12-megapixel lenses on the back. Apple is touting a new feature called "Smart HDR," which seamlessly blends several different image frames into a single image. In short, the function is intended to make photos look sharper and have more natural light.

Another new camera trick is adjustable bokeh — you can snap a photo, and then adjust how blurry or sharp the background of your subject is.

But the biggest upgrade to this year's iPhone model is something you can't see: A new chip. The "A12 Bionic" chip is said to make the iPhone more powerful than ever.

Both the iPhone XS and XS Max are offered in three colors: gold, silver, and space gray. Additionally, there are three storage options for each: 64 GB, 256 GB, and — for the first time in an iPhone — 512 GB. Another notable addition: Both the XS and XS Max support a dual-SIM card system, enabling multiple phone numbers and easier international travel.

Pre-orders for both phones are planned to start this week, on Friday, September 14; the phones are otherwise scheduled to be available in stores starting on the following Friday, September 21.