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Apple will reveal the iPhone 12 on October 13th

The company is finally entering the 5G era.

Engadget

Apple's new Watches and iPads just had their turn in the spotlight; now it's time for the iPhone 12 to take the stage. The company has just sent out invites to an event on October 13th at 10AM Pacific/1PM Eastern with the tagline "Hi, Speed.”

By all accounts, the company will be packing plenty of new devices into next week’s show. Reports suggest that we could be looking at two versions of the iPhone 12 Pro and two versions of the standard iPhone 12, which would make this the largest swath of brand new phones Apple has ever released in one shot. In an interesting twist, the company also seems to be making its iPhones more physically diverse than ever. The smallest model said to be announced next week is the 5.4-inch iPhone 12, which sits between the original iPhone SE and the SE released this year in terms of size. And on the other end of the lineup, Apple will reportedly reveal a version of the iPhone 12 Pro with a 6.7-inch display — the largest the company has ever squeezed into a phone.

While you can expect to see some very different looking iPhones next week, the biggest draw might be what’s inside of them. Like the new iPad Air, the new iPhone 12 series will use the company's latest mobile chipset, the A14 Bionic. While that chipset stacks up favorably to the silicon used in Apple’s last-generation iPad Air, the company hasn’t yet offered a sense of how it compares to last year’s tremendously fast A13s. At the very least, here’s hoping Apple has some power efficiency improvements to announced. They’ll be crucial now that the company is finally embracing 5G — at this time, rumors suggest that all new iPhones will support sub-6 5G, but support for faster (but less common) mmWave 5G could be limited to just a single model. For more on what we know about Apple’s new iPhones, be sure to check out our full preview here.

Apple’s iPhones tend to be the star of whatever show they appear in, the company’s reference to speed in its invitations could manifest in one more interesting way. Apple announced its plans to ditch Intel’s processors and chart a new path for its desktops and laptops with in-house chipsets earlier this year, and execs time noted that the company would launch its first ARM-based Mac in 2020. With only a few months left on the 2020 clock, we may get our first glimpse of the future of the Mac in a few short days.

We’ll be covering the event live next week, so stay tuned for all the news as it happens.