Beiruting News

Apple has just announced its traditional fall iPhone launch, sending out invitations to the press for an event on September 9th at 10AM PST, as expected. Less expected? The venue, San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. That's a new one for Apple - and it's a massive venue with a 7,000-person seating capacity, so expect a lot of news.

The company is expected to unveil a new pair of smartphones: the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. Not much is known about what the new devices might offer in the way of upgrades, but it's a good bet that the displays will incorporate Force Touch - technology that allows for force-sensitive touches and has already appeared on the Apple Watch and newer MacBooks. A dramatic camera upgrade has also been rumored, so we'll be looking for that.

We've also seen images of packaging that purportedly belongs to the iPhone 6S Plus from Chinese tech site cnBeta. The image shows an iPhone with what looks to be a Butterfly Koi. It's been suggested that this could be one of a new set of animated wallpapers arriving with the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. This style of "motion wallpapers" have previously been seen on the Apple Watch, with the company said to have photographed one flower 24,000 times to create a single watch face.

What else? We've also heard rumbles that new iPads might be in the mix, including a rumored larger iPad Pro, and persistent whispers of a revised Apple TV never really seem to go away, although it seems as though that new-look streaming service still won't make it in time. And of course we'll see iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2, all of which should be ready for primetime release.

Gonna be a big one, and we'll of course be there liveblogging and covering it all. Get ready.