There are two displays and multitasking options for iPhone Duo, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play two videos at the same time.

If you’ve ever been scrolling a social media app while listening to music, you’ve likely had the frustrating experience of having the music pause randomly. That’s because the social media app took over as the primary audio provider.

The same effect occurs whenever you’re watching video on iPhone or iPad. Picture-in-picture, split view, or even dual screens won’t let a user play two videos at once, even on iPhone Duo.

While this may seem obvious to some readers, there was some question given that there are two distinctly different displays. Technically speaking, you could pair two sets of AirPods and play one video on the outer display and one on the inner display at the same time.

However, that use case isn’t available. There are some features, like in FaceTime, that utilize the multiple displays at once, but not for video.

There’s even a new multitasking view that lets users pin a video from an app like Apple TV to the top of the iPhone Duo while a second app remains active at the bottom. If the second app starts playing a video, the top video will pause.

The iPhone Duo still runs iOS, so it will have similar limitations to other iPhones in some cases. It will be available to pre-order on October 16 and ships on October 23.

With a fresh folding form factor, the new iPhone Duo is Apple’s most radical redesign in years. It lands alongside the more familiar-looking iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. There’s no regular iPhone 18, or at least, not yet. Rumors suggest we may see a more affordable base model, perhaps flanked by an iPhone 18e and a second-generation iPhone Air, in spring 2027.

The two new Pro iPhones are available to preorder on September 12 and ship on September 18. You can preorder the iPhone Duo from October 16, ahead of a full release on October 23. But which iPhone 18 model is right for you? I’ll break down the differences and what these phones have in common, so you can choose with confidence. For options beyond the iPhone 18 lineup, read our Best iPhones guide.

Why You Might Not Need to Upgrade

Before you drop all those hard-earned dollars, remember that you probably don’t need the latest iPhone. If you have an older iPhone, Apple does a good job of updating the software (the iPhone 11 Pro is still supported), and for hardware issues, your iPhone might be repairable; maybe it needs a battery replacement or these troubleshooting tips. Don’t feel like you have to spring for Apple’s shiny new thing.

Sadly, Apple raised iPhone Pro prices this year, so both models are $100 more expensive than the iPhone 17 Pro series.

If you’re set on upgrading, consider raising funds by selling your old iPhone. Just be sure to back up your iPhone, and factory reset it before you sell or give it away. Once the new device arrives, we have tips on how to set up your new iPhone and what settings to change to get the most out of it.

Which iPhone 18 Is Right for You?

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Apple

iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max

We’ll start by looking at what’s the same across the iPhone 18 models this year.

All three new iPhones have Apple’s A20 Pro chip inside, and, you guessed it, this is Apple’s most powerful chip ever. Now, iPhones are already the most capable phones for raw compute power, but the A20 Pro promises a significant jump in performance (around 20 percent faster and 30 percent more efficient than the last generation). It also packs a new neural engine to power on-device AI and a new thermal design with a larger vapor chamber to keep things cool. For the iPhone Duo, the A20 Pro has a display engine to ensure smooth transitions between two screens. While Apple doesn’t list the RAM, every model is rumored to have 12 GB.

While they come in different sizes and the Duo has two, every iPhone features an OLED screen that Apple calls a Super Retina XDR display. They also have ProMotion technology, otherwise known as a 120-Hz refresh rate. These adaptive refresh rates can drop as low as 1 Hz when there’s little activity on the screen, enabling features like the always-on display without draining the battery too much.

The displays are protected by the scratch-resistant and antireflective Ceramic Shield 2, the same as last year’s iPhone 17 range. And they can go from 1 nit up to 3,000 nits of brightness. Only the iPhone Duo has a custom nano-texture finish on the interior screen, giving it a matte look that’s designed to reduce glare and crease visibility.

All the phones have an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, meaning they can survive a short dunk in fresh water. They all come in four storage options (256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB), support Qi2 magnetic wireless charging (MagSafe), USB-C 3.2, Dual SIM, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread, and Ultra-Wideband (UWB). It also has Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, Emergency SOS via Satellite, and Crash Detection.

To help you better understand which model to buy, here’s precisely where they diverge.

In brief: A Norwegian rescue helicopter and a small aircraft took off over Andøya in 2024, but the routes visible to satellite-navigation receivers told a different story. On tracking screens, the helicopter appeared to make a series of tight, overlapping turns. The plane seemed to trace sharp, unnatural patterns in the air. Neither display reflected the aircraft’s actual flight path.

The false tracks were created as part of Jammertest, an annual Norwegian exercise that examines how equipment responds when satellite-navigation signals are disrupted or manipulated.

Held on the island of Andøya, roughly 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, the event brings together engineers, public agencies, and companies that depend on Global Navigation Satellite Systems, or GNSS.

The exercise, scheduled for mid-September this year, has become more relevant as real-world satellite interference has intensified around Russia’s war in Ukraine. An RAF aircraft encountered GPS jamming near the Russian border in May. In September 2025, Sweden’s Transport Agency said it was dealing with interference every day. Experts also warned in June 2026 that Russian satellites had transmitted interference from orbit, briefly disrupting GPS signals across Europe.

Aviation offers the clearest example of the problem because the effects are visible immediately. But GNSS interference can extend far beyond a flight deck or a map display. Satellite networks such as GPS provide not only location data but also highly accurate time. That timing supports communications networks, power grids, transport systems, and financial markets, where systems must remain synchronized.

Jammertest is built around the possibility that a receiver may lose that signal or, more troublingly, accept a false one. Jamming overwhelms the signal so that a receiver cannot use it. Spoofing sends a stronger counterfeit signal that can make equipment report an incorrect position or time.

The difference is important for infrastructure operators. A sudden loss of satellite data may be detected quickly, allowing a system to switch to backup timing. Spoofing can be harder to catch. If equipment continues to receive what appears to be valid data, it may distribute inaccurate timing or location information before anyone recognizes the problem.

At the 2024 event, Harald Hauglin, chief engineer of time and frequency metrology at the Norwegian Metrology Service, and his team demonstrated that spoofing can be a slow-moving risk. They gradually increased the strength of a spoofing signal over about 40 minutes. As the decoy signal became more powerful, a map display shifted the test site’s reported location away from its real position and into the Norwegian Sea.

The positional error was easy to see. Measuring the effect on time required a different setup. The team compared a GNSS-synchronized clock exposed to interference with a reference clock connected by fiber-optic cable to a receiver beyond the test area. The difference between the two was tracked in nanoseconds, revealing how a manipulated signal can slowly move a clock away from the correct time.

That is a particular concern for systems that need a common clock to operate. A power grid or mobile network can continue operating for some time after losing GNSS, but its ability to do so depends on the quality of its backup equipment. Local clocks, atomic references, and fiber-optic links can maintain precise timing, though building and maintaining them adds cost.

The more difficult scenario is a spoofing event that goes unnoticed. Rather than forcing a system to use its backup, it could continue feeding the system bad data. Over time, that may cause a wider synchronization problem across connected networks.

Jammertest is intended to identify these weaknesses before they appear in an actual disruption. Participants test commercial and industrial receivers in an open setting, then share results with other attendees. That approach differs from more tightly controlled US military tests, where information from the exercises is more restricted.

Norway and other governments are considering how much redundancy is needed as GNSS interference becomes a more regular feature of the security environment. Fiber-based timing networks and atomic clocks are among the options. Hauglin’s White Rabbit patch refers to White Rabbit, a CERN-developed system that distributes time across fiber-optic networks with accuracy better than one nanosecond.

Such systems can reduce dependence on satellite signals, but they do not replicate every service GNSS provides. Dana Goward, co-founder of the Resilient Timing and Navigation Foundation, said the answer will require several layers of protection rather than one replacement technology. “There is no silver bullet, which is why you need a combination of systems,” he told the BBC.

ai AND ml

GPT-Live-1 makes speaking to AI models more fluid

OpenAI has launched a version of its latest real-time full-duplex voice model as an API, allowing software developers to implement more responsive voice-enabled apps and conversational workflows.

GPT-Live-1 debuted in July, offering a way to interact through spoken prompts and responses instead of through typed text. Initially available through the ChatGPT interface, the voice model can now be reached via API calls.

As a full-duplex model, GPT-Live-1 can listen and generate speech at the same time, which aids fluid communication. People often talk over one another and may find it frustrating to take turns speaking and listening as if using half-duplex handheld radios.

OpenAI says it has focused on allowing developers implementing GPT-Live-1 to customize how users of business apps experience voice interaction and associated workflows.

“A core GPT‑Live‑1 strength, smooth interruption handling, is already delivering business impact: in early evaluations, Speak found that GPT‑Live‑1 gave learners more time to think before the language tutor responded, cutting interruptions by almost 80 percent versus previous turn-based systems,” the company said.

GPT-Live-1 is designed to handle spoken conversation while a backend model (eg, GPT-6 Astra or a more affordable option for rote tasks) handles information lookup, tool usage, and task management.

It represents a step up from OpenAI’s Realtime API, which debuted in 2024. In the Tau3 voice-agent intelligence benchmark, which assesses spoken customer-service tasks relevant to airlines, retailers, and telecom companies, GPT-Live-1 scores 86.2 percent, compared to 45.7 percent for GPT-Realtime-2.1 and 42.4 percent for GPT-Realtime-2.

Citing its own evaluations, OpenAI said GPT-Live-1 performs 30 percent better than GPT-Realtime-2.1 in Full Duplex Bench performance, while also outperforming its predecessor in turn-taking latency and interactive behavior.

Yelp has been using GPT-Live-1 for the Yelp Host service, and has nice things to say about the technology as it applies to the company’s AI restaurant reservation system. 

“With GPT-Live-1, every call is more conversational and responsive,” said Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, chief product officer at Yelp, in a statement. “Yelp Host now gives restaurants an advanced voice AI that delivers exceptional guest experiences, captures revenue opportunities they may have otherwise missed, and helps staff focus on serving guests instead of answering the phone.”

Yelp does not address whether restaurant customers making reservations welcome the more free-flowing robo-banter or simply accept it because it’s better than waiting on hold to chat with a person.

GPT-Live-1 costs $0.05 per minute of usage, on top of whatever backend model is running. Custom voices can be negotiated with the OpenAI sales team. The voice model is also available through OpenAI Presence, the company’s enterprise agent platform. ®

A new Android malware strain called Mantax Otax combines ransomware and spyware capabilities to encrypt files, steal sensitive data, and spam and harass victims.

Indonesian operators distribute the malware through malicious APKs hosted outside Google Play, targeting users with phishing and social engineering messages.

After installation, the malware requests permission to use the Accessibility service, which gives it extensive control over compromised devices.

Next, it retrieves its command-and-control infrastructure (C2) domain from GitHub and sends back victim details such as location, carrier, Android version, and device ID. The C2 may send commands through Firebase or WebSockets for execution.

According to Zimperium, Indonesian operators distribute the malware through malicious APKs hosted outside Google Play, Android’s official app store, using phishing and social engineering messages to target victims.

Encrypting older Androids

According to mobile security company Zimperium, Mantax Otax encrypts devices running older Android versions. It searches shared storage and encrypts targeted file types using a victim-specific AES key obtained from the C2 server.

The malware then deletes the original files and adds the ‘.enc’ extension to the encrypted copies.

Mantax Otax also replaces local images with ransom notices and opens a full-screen Firebase-hosted chat to facilitate ransom payment negotiations.

Zimperium researchers were able to exploit a misconfiguration in the Firebase C2 server, which exposed the attackers’ chats with victims.

Mantax Otax’s ransomware module only runs against Android devices running version 9 or older, as the ‘Scoped Storage’ security and privacy feature in Android 10 and later significantly restricts the encryption capability to the external-files directory.

Spying, spamming, and harassing

Apart from ransomware, Mantax Otax includes spyware, remote control, and harassment features.

The researchers note that the malware can steal lock-screen PINs to maintain persistent access, read SMS and one-time passwords, access call logs, contacts, browsing history, app lists, Google account information, and location.

It can also extract WhatsApp profiles and messages, as well as Telegram chats, using simulated interactions via Accessibility services.

Additionally, it abuses Android’s MediaProjection API to capture screenshots, record MP4 videos, and stream the victim’s screen in near real time via the Catbox file hosting service.

Mantax Otax can also capture photographs using the infected device’s cameras and upload them to the operator.

Version 2 of the malware added harassment functions such as repeated dialog boxes, full-screen videos, rapid “jumpscare” image overlays, and remotely controlled text-to-speech messages played through the device speakers.

These additional features add an intimidation component to the attacks, which act as a pressure mechanism for the victim to pay the ransom.

Because Zimperium is a Google security partner via the App Defense Alliance (ADA), Mantax Otax is already detected and blocked by up-to-date Android devices with an active Play Protect service.

Users are generally advised not to install APKs from outside Google Play, not to give questionable apps Accessibility permissions, and to only trust reputable publishers.

Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.

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They’re aimed at protecting minors, but the rules are not universally supported.

August was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded, capping a remarkably grim summer of heat records. With El Niño strengthening—and climate change continuing to heat things up—more records are likely in store well into next year.

Data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate agency, shows that last month tied with July 2023 for Earth’s hottest month. (July is also usually the hottest month of the year.) This July also tied with July 2024 for the second-hottest July on record, while June 2026 was the second-hottest June ever recorded. The news comes on the heels of a separate announcement on Wednesday from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which declared this was the hottest summer for the US, beating a previous record set during the Dust Bowl.

The sweltering summer is a grim sign of how burning fossil fuels is pushing temperatures up around the globe while unleashing more intense and longer heat waves.

“August 2026 was a remarkable month in the global climate record,” Samantha Burgess, the strategic lead for climate at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said in a statement. “Combined with record global sea surface temperatures and the warmest summer on record for Western Europe, these observations show how climate change is driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans. The impacts of these conditions are increasingly being felt by communities, economies, and ecosystems across the world.”

The global average temperature for August was 1.65 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average, according to Copernicus. While it was hot globally this summer, the impacts played out with dangerous and sometimes deadly results locally.

Photograph: Ufuk Celal Guzel/Getty Images

Researchers estimate that as many as 35,000 people died during heat waves in Germany, France, and Spain this summer. Record-breaking fires also raged across parts of Europe, unleashing the first documented fire cloud in France and threatening a key NASA observatory in Spain. In North America, wildfires in Canada and northern parts of the US filled areas across the Northeast with smoke.

Climate change has boosted background temperatures, but the El Niño roiling the eastern Pacific Ocean has piled on more heat. El Niños usually coincide with a temporary uptick in global temperature from 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius. This year’s El Niño is forecast to reach record strength and upend weather around the globe. But the full impact on the planet’s temperature won’t be felt until next year, meaning that next summer may be even hotter than the one we just lived through.

Climate scientists have warned that the world needs to prevent long-term average warming from breaching 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. While temperatures above the threshold for a single month don’t represent a permanent breach of this temperature, they’re a sign that the world is getting closer to this benchmark.

Earlier this month, the UN warned in a report that the world is likely to cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold in a few years. To slow and eventually reverse the rise in global temperatures, the world needs to stop burning fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions.

“This summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires, and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead,” UN Secretary-General Antőnio Guterres said in a statement. “We must make the overshoot above 1.5 degrees as small and short as possible. That demands an overshoot of ambition.”