San Francisco, Sep 13 : Apple officially introduced its 2018 line-up of iPhones -- the premium iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR at an event in California late on Wednesday.

The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max will support dual SIM and dual standby functionality.

The premium iPhone XS and XS Max come with upgraded 12MP + 12MP camera and 2x optical zoom. There is an improved TrueTone quad-LED flash as well. Both the models have a 7MP RGB camera sensor in the front with F/2.2 aperture while the iPhone XR has a single 12MP camera at the rear.

The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max would be available in 64GB, 256GB and 512GB storage variants in space grey, silver and a new gold colour starting at Rs 99,900 and Rs 1,09,900, respectively through Apple authorised resellers in India.

The cheapest of the lot -- the iPhone XR -- has a starting price of Rs 76,900.

The premium iPhone XS is made with stainless surgical grade steel with a new glass formulation and has edge-to-edge screen, Apple said in a statement.

Both the iPhone XS and XS Max are fueled by Apple's latest A12 Bionic chipset built on 7-nm design, which allows for 6.9 billion transistors on the chip. Also, there is a new neural engine with an 8-core dedicated machine learning (ML) processor.

The iPhone X comes with a 5.8-inch OLED display while the iPhone XS has 6.5-inch OLED screen -- the biggest ever on an iPhone. Other than the size, both the models have 3D Touch and HDR.

The Face ID in these models is said to work faster this time than last year's iPhone X. The affordable iPhone XR has a 6.1-inch LCD screen with liquid Retina display and aluminium body instead of a steel one.

The Cupertino-based company also unveiled its new Apple Watch Series 4 with improved health features. Its next generation of Apple Watch features edge-to-edge display with smaller bezels, which is 30 per cent bigger.

The device brings a design overhaul to the Apple Watch as the iPhone-maker is now using a new dual-core 64-bit chipset, custom designed to improve performance.

"Apple Watch isn't just the number one smart watch, it is the number one watch in the world period," Tim Cook, CEO of Apple said. Apart from heartbeat data, the devices would now also track heart rhythm and notify users.

The new series has been approved by FDA for ECG recording as well but this feature would be limited to only US-based users initially. The tech giant said it is working to introduce this feature in other countries as well.



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Lucknow(PTI): Voting for the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, which will decide the fate of four Union ministers, including Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani, and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, will be held on Monday.

Voting will also take place for the assembly bypoll to Lucknow East assembly constituency.

The seats going to polls in the fifth phase are Mohanlalganj (SC), Rae Bareli, Amethi, Jalaun (SC), Jhansi, Hamirpur, Banda, Fatehpur, Kaushambi (SC), Barabanki (SC), Faizabad, Kaisarganj and Gonda.

Besides Defence Minister Singh (Lucknow), Minister of Women and Child Development Irani (Amethi), those in the fray are Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj) and Minister of State of Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur).

Rahul Gandhi is in the fray from Rae Bareli, which was represented by his mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi earlier.

Over 2.68 crore voters are eligible to exercise their polling rights and 144 candidates are in the fray.

The BJP gave tickets to 11 of its sitting Lok Sabha MPs in this phase, while it had fielded new candidates in Barabanki (SC) seat and Kaisarganj.

In the INDIA bloc, the Congress has fielded K L Sharma from Amethi, Tanuj Punia from Barabanki (SC) and Pradeep Jain 'Aditya' from Jhansi. The Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates are in the poll fray on the rest of the seats.

Defence minister Singh is eyeing a fourth term from Lucknow. He is pitted against sitting SP MLA Ravidas Mehrotra from Lucknow Central.

From the neighbouring constituency of Amethi, Irani is in the poll fray.

In Kaisarganj Lok Sabha seat, the contest is between BJP's Karan Bhushan Singh, son of former MP and ex-president of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, and SP's Bhagat Ram.

Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, which covers the temple town of Ayodhya, will see a contest between sitting BJP MP Lallu Singh, who is seeking a hat-trick, and Awadhesh Prasad, the SP MLA from Milkipur (SC) assembly constituency in Ayodhya district.

In Hamirpur, the poll contest is between BJP's Kunwar Pushpendra Singh Chandel, eyeing a third term, and SP's Ajendra Singh Lodhi.

In Gonda, BJP's Kirti Vardhan Singh, who is eyeing a fifth term, is facing a contest from SP's Shreya Verma.

The main electoral contest in Banda is between RK Singh Patel, who is seeking a third term, and Krishna Devi Shivshankar Patel of the SP.

Vinod Kumar Sonkar, who is eyeing a hat-trick of Lok Sabha wins, will be facing SP's Pushpendra Saroj, son of SP leader Indrajeet Saroj, for Kaushambi (SC) constituency.

Voting will also take place for the assembly bypoll to Lucknow East assembly constituency.

Bypoll in the Lucknow East assembly constituency was necessitated following the death of sitting MLA Ashutosh Tandon on November 9, 2023.