Diehard Apple iPhone fans have queued up all night outside the company’s stores to buy the latest and most expensive smartphone offering.
They were shopping for the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and Apple Watch Series 4 despite the hefty price tags.
Shoppers have made the £999 iPhone XS and £1,099 XS Max the fastest selling iPhones ever while the most expensive XS Max – priced at £1449 – sold out in gold and space grey finishes during the launch last week.
While the stores are selling the new phones, the Apple web site is only taking pre-orders.
The new gadgets were launched in a circus of media hype last week to stir up sales.
Most advanced iPhone ever
CEO Tim Cook claims the iPhone XS is the most advanced smartphone to come off the Apple production line.
It’s not all about the money – the XS has a massive 512 gigabyte capacity and the new XR that has slipped under the radar due to the XS hype has a 6.1 inch screen and costs £750 – almost half that of the flagship model.
Apple says the new line has better batteries, faster processors and more memory than previous models. The firm also claims the phones are ‘more waterproof’ and have better cameras than other iPhones.
Some models will support dual SIM cards that allow access to two data plans simultaneously.
Amazon’s big product launch
In another big launch, Amazon has upgraded the range of Alexa gadgets for the home.
The event was big – with 70 new announcements.
Many were improvements to the ever-evolving artificial intelligence Alexa. She now has a whisper-mode, gives country specific answers dep[ending on the user’s location and a better understanding of follow-up questions.
Alexa can now answer questions like how far is it, followed by is there a hotel there?
A new Echo Dot seals the 75,000 five-star rating as the world’s best voice-activated speaker. Selling at £49.99. Another slimmed down Dot is speaker less for linking to an external speaker and will sell for £34.99.
Other new additions include pairing Echo devices for stereo sound and a sub-woofer.
At long last Amazon is also releasing the Echo smart plug, costing £24.99 each.
Other devices include an echo Microwave – so far for the USA only – and the Echo wall clock.
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