Say hello to the gigantic-screened iPhone Xs Max

The iPhone X is simply what iPhones look like now. At the Apple event, Phil Schiller took center stage with the new iPhone Xs and the Xs Max, phones that are differentiated only by the size of their screens (a 5.8-inch OLED screen with 2.7 million pixels versus a 6.5-inch OLED screen with 3.3 million pixels) and predicted battery life.

What's notable here is that the iPhone Xs Max, with its long, corner-to-corner display, inches close to the screen-real-estate size of Samsung's latest Galaxy Note 9. (The phablet just clinches it for now though.)

Cameras are largely unchanged from last year's iPhone X, although a new Portrait mode includes an adjustable aperture setting after you've taken your photo, allowing you to change the bokeh to your suiting. The camera team has also worked to make the phone smarter at dealing with your shots, using the iPhone itself to better process HDR shots (HDR is on by default). It's chasing the likes of Google's Pixel 2 phones, which have inched ahead when it comes to smartphone photography. With the iPhone Xs, the phone keeps a frame buffer going, ensuring (essentially) zero shutter lag when you hit the button.

These new tricks are aided by Apple's latest mobile chip, the A12 bionic. The company says it is the first seven-nanometer chip to be used in a smartphone and can run 5 trillion operations per second -- compare that to last year's chip, the the A11 bionic and its meager 600 billion. There's a six-core CPU, four-core GPU and an eight-core neural engine all packaged inside.

That 7nm chip also means there are power savings to be had. Compared to the iPhone X, Apple believes that the iPhone Xs will eke out 30 more minutes of battery life and that the Xs Max will last for up to an hour and half longer. Other notable changes? Support for dual SIMs and phones that are made of more-renewable materials.

Perhaps the biggest talking point was pricing. In true iPhone X style, these new phones will not be cheap. The iPhone XS will be available to pre-order from September 14th, launching in earnest on September 21st. Prices will start from $999. The iPhone XS Max is $100 more expensive: The smallest-capacity 64GB model will cost $1,099.

The reasonably priced iPhone Xr