iPhone 16 Will Be Late to Hit the Markets, As Will iOS 18

The iPhone 16 is generating excitement with its upcoming launch, but this year Apple might delay its availability along with the iOS 18.

The Apple iPhone is one of those things where if you don’t own the latest version, you don’t really own it. That goes for the yet-to-be-released iPhone 16 whose hype has been building up online for some time now.

Those familiar with the Apple way of doing things know that the latest iPhone is debuted at the iPhone event. The iPhone 16 will also share this fate, but there is a twist. Usually, the iPhone is available right after its debut at Apple stores. But this year, that might not be the case. Don’t worry, though. Apple is not a company that takes its deadlines and release dates frivolously.

Apple iPhone 16 Availability and Price

As we mentioned, we don’t know where the iPhone 16 will launch precisely. This piece of information will probably only be revealed at the iPhone event on the coming Monday, 9 September. But by analyzing Apple’s past release schedules, we can come to a fairly accurate conclusion.

Here are some dates to begin with. Apple’s iPhone event will be broadcast live on Monday, September 9. Apple has been known to conduct this event on Mondays and open preorders on the coming Friday. By that account, on September 13, preorders will open. Then, Apple usually makes the device available a week after preorders. So that means on Friday, September 20, the iPhone 16 will be officially available to buy.

Alongside with iPhone in the iPhone event, subsidiary products like the Apple Watch and AirPods are also announced. The same will happen this year too, but what can we say about their release dates? The tradition says that they follow the same dates as the new iPhone device. But there is no rule here. These products may hit the market some weeks later. Maybe they’ll come as late as October.

Another concern for iPhone users is the cost. At the moment, there is not much information available about iPhone 16’s pricing, unfortunately. But we can draw some predictions based on the costs of the previous models of iPhone. The iPhone 15 models start at $799 and continue to rise till the iPhone 15 Pro with 1TB of storage, which comes in at $1,599. It is possible that Apple will continue the same pricing strategy for iPhone 16. However, the price range might vary a little based on the different storage capacities of different models, which is a normal practice for Apple.

Downloading the iOS 18

Not everyone is interested in buying a new iPhone as soon as it is released. For such people, Apple has an alternative. An older iPhone can be made similar to the latest one by installing the latest iOS, which happens to be iOS 18 in this case. Of course, the older iPhone has to be eligible for the upgrade. The good news is, if you’ve bought your iPhone in the past six years, it probably is.

Again, we have no information on the release of the iOS 18 update to the public. This we will only know at the iPhone event. History again comes to our rescue. Looking at the past trends, Apple usually releases the latest software one week after the event. So in this case, that would be on Monday, September 16. We can also account for delays, so the iOS 18 might not be available until the middle of that week.