Technologies

OnePlus 11 Review: It Works Hard to Earn Its Flagship Title

We reviewed the OnePlus 11 over three weeks. In our tests, the new flagship was powerful, but not perfect.

The OnePlus 11 is the company’s first true flagship to launch in 2023 and it offers plenty to get excited about. From its slick refreshed design, to its hyper-powerful processor and fast charging skills, this phone works hard to earn its flagship title.

But it’s not a massive overhaul from last year’s already excellent OnePlus 10 Pro. It’s similar in design, it’s got a hefty (arguably redundant) boost in power and the new camera setup, while good, isn’t a big leap forward. If you were hoping to see a radical new OnePlus phone, you may be disappointed. Owners of recent OnePlus devices shouldn’t consider upgrading.

8.2

OnePlus 11

See at OnePlus

Get Price Alerts

You’re receiving price alerts for OnePlus 11

Like

Incredible performance for gaming
Slick, refreshed design
Hyper-fast charging
Five years of security support

Don’t Like

Cameras are good but not great
Better waterproofing on rivals

Price is certainly on its side. The $699 OnePlus 11 base model ( 729 or roughly AU$1,270) comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Even the higher-end review model I tested, with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, will only set you back $799 ( 799), undercutting its rivals by a decent chunk. The phone’s biggest competition comes from the superb Google Pixel 7 Pro, which at $899 isn’t a big step up in cost (it’s $999 for the equivalent 256GB model, although there’s no boost in power with the extra storage here).

The Pixel 7 Pro was one of our favorite phones of 2022, earning a coveted CNET Editors’ Choice award when it launched in October thanks to its superb cameras, slick interface and attractive design. It’s an amazing phone, and one of my favorite ways to experience Android 13.

Where the OnePlus 11 excels is in its raw power, offering blistering speeds for gaming and heavy multitasking. It charges quicker than Google’s phones, too. The Pixel’s Tensor G2 processor isn’t built for straight-line speed, but still handles anything you’ll find in the Play Store. The Pixel’s pure Android 13 software is clutter-free, and the cameras generally perform better — especially with the addition of the 5x optical zoom lens, which the OnePlus lacks.

Then there’s the new Samsung Galaxy S23, which starts at $800 and comes with a 6.1-inch display, a triple-camera setup, 8GB of RAM and the latest Qualcomm 8 Gen 2 processor. It’s the same chip you’ll find in the OnePlus 11, though it’s been customized for Samsung. With the S23 range going on sale on Feb. 17, we’ll have to wait and see how the new Samsung and OnePlus’ phones stack up against each other.

OnePlus 11: A refreshed design, now with added waterproofing

OnePlus’ flagship has arrived in 2023 with a fresh look, swapping out the square camera unit of the 10 Pro for a circular one, fringed with metal that curves gracefully to meet the edge of the phone. My review model’s green tone looks both stylish and smart, while the curving glass on both the front and back makes it satisfying to hold.

I love the phone’s look. It manages to appear different from its predecessors, while still looking familiar enough to feel part of the same family. The glass is toughened Gorilla Glass, so don’t worry too much about shattering it. The new phone one-ups the 10 Pro by coming with an IP64 rating for protection against water. The lack of waterproofing on most versions of the 10 Pro was annoying as it’s something we’ve come to expect on all flagships. So, it’s good to see more official protection here.

That said, IP64 only offers mild protection against water splashes while rivals — including the Pixel 7 Pro, iPhone 14 range and Galaxy S23 range — all have IP68 ratings which protect them from actual submersion in water for at least 30 minutes. IP64 is better than nothing though and will certainly help keep your phone safe when you take calls in the rain.

At 6.7 inches, the display is sizable enough to do justice to mobile games, while its maximum 3,216×1,440-pixel resolution makes everything look nice and crisp (you can opt for a lower resolution to help eke out the battery life). It’s a SuperAMOLED panel that supports Dolby Vision HDR and HDR 10 Plus, meaning it’s bright, bold and capable of properly showing off compatible HDR content.

Its adaptive frame rate can shoot up to 120Hz to provide a smooth experience for high-intensity tasks like gaming, but can dynamically drop to only 1Hz to save power for less demanding tasks like web browsing or showing the always-on display.

There’s an in-display fingerprint scanner, which works well. Longtime OnePlus fans will be pleased to see the alert slider on the right of the phone, which lets you instantly set the phone to silent or vibrate. The slider was notably absent on last year’s OnePlus 10T.

OnePlus 11: Potent power

Powering the phone is the aforementioned Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, backed up by a meaty 16GB of RAM (on my review model). It’s a potent chip that put in some seriously impressive scores on our suite of benchmark tests, landing it comfortably among the most powerful phones around.

Benchmarks don’t mean everything, of course, but rest assured that this phone will handle anything you care to throw at it. Its graphics performance is particularly strong. Demanding games like Genshin Impact, PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends (all at max resolution) displayed at consistently high frame rates for smooth gameplay.

OnePlus touts the phone’s «optimized RAM allocation,» «hardware-accelerated ray tracing» in games and «best in class» lighting and illumination effects, which is all well and good, but there aren’t any games available on Android yet that support things like ray tracing. It’s like having a car capable of driving on MagLev tracks — amazing technology, sure, but no way of actually putting it to use just yet.

In the real world, all that power means the phone is swift to use. Simply navigating around the Android interface is fast, smooth and free of the lag or stutters that might signal poorly configured hardware. There’s little that can slow it down. It handled video streaming and photo editing perfectly well.

That swift experience is helped by the phone’s Oxygen 13 OS software. Based on Android 13, Oxygen OS is a lightweight Android skin with a clean look that’s easy to use. I liked it straight out-of-the-box, but you can customize the system fonts and the always-on display to give it a more personal touch.

OnePlus extended its support period to four years for Android updates and an additional fifth year for security updates. That’s the longest the company has ever supported a phone for and means that the OnePlus 11 will still be safe to use five years from now.

OnePlus 11: Cameras that could do better

There are three main cameras on the back of the OnePlus 11; a 50-megapixel main camera with an f/1.8 lens and optical image stabilization, a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera with close focusing macro capabilities and a 32-megapixel portrait camera with a 2x optical zoom. It’s a fairly predictable triple-camera setup, but that portrait camera disappoints me.

That 2x zoom is a step down from the 3.3x zoom seen on the OnePlus 10 Pro and a big step down from the 5x telephoto zoom on the Pixel 7 Pro. Zoom skills might not seem like the most important feature, but if you want to take great images in any environment, a powerful zoom can be an invaluable tool.

Instead of using a wide lens and simply capturing everything in front of you in one image, a long zoom lens lets you find more interesting compositions within those scenes by cropping out distracting road signs, cars or crowds of people. A telephoto lens is typically part of any professional photographer’s kit bag (including my own) and I absolutely love using the zoom on the Pixel 7 Pro — and the whopping 10x optical zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Even the 3x on the iPhone 14 Pro gives me more room to work with.

Not having a proper telephoto lens on the OnePlus 11 feels like I have to make compromises in my photography that I wouldn’t with other phones. It’s not as fully rounded of a photography package as a result.

OnePlus has again partnered with iconic camera maker Hasselblad, which has apparently calibrated the camera for better colors. However, I’m not sure it’s doing either company much good as the results are hit-and-miss. While some shots look true-to-life, with punchy colors and pleasing contrast, others look oversaturated, with heavy-handed HDR processing that lifts shadows and tones down highlights to an unrealistic degree.

Taken with the main camera, this image above is beautifully exposed, with warm colors and plenty of detail.

This shot above of a ruined cottage deep in the forest is vibrant and pin-sharp. It’s a great snap all-round.

The close-up shot above is absolutely packed with detail and the colors look spot-on. Nice work, OnePlus.

Vibrant blue sky, lovely detail on the building to the left and a lovely flash of color from the rainbow. The phone has captured this scene above well.

This scene doesn’t impress me though. The phone’s software has really gone hard on the HDR processing, lifting the shadows here to such an extent that the shot above looks unrealistic.

Taken on the iPhone 14 Pro, this comparison image above is darker, but the deeper shadows against that bright blue sky are much more realistic and this shot looks much more natural as a result.

The OnePlus 11’s main camera has again lifted the shadows quite a lot in the snap above. The sky has more of a teal tone to it, which doesn’t reflect reality.

The Pixel 7 Pro’s shot above has a deeper contrast and more natural color tones both on the buildings and in the sky.

Switching to the ultrawide camera, the OnePlus 11’s heavy-handed auto HDR resulted in the image above where the sky looks almost fake against the buildings. There’s also a noticeable color shift between the OnePlus 11’s main camera and ultrawide — a detail I’d noticed on the OnePlus 10 Pro, too.

By not reducing the brightness in the sky to the same extent, the Pixel 7 Pro’s shot above looks more authentic.

Using the macro mode on the ultrawide lens, the OnePlus 11 has delivered a great close-up shot above. I love the rich, vibrant green tones.

By comparison, the iPhone 14 Pro’s macro mode has produced the shot above where the green tones are quite washed out and yellow-ish. I don’t like it as much.

The OnePlus 11 Pro lacks the zoom prowess of some of its competitors, but its 2x lens does allow for decent portrait shots. The colors in the image above are a little cold, and there’s not a ton of detail on my face. But the blur effect is nice.

The iPhone 14 Pro’s 3x portrait mode has resulted in a closer-up portrait (it was shot from the same position), and I think there’s better background blur (known as bokeh) here. The details on my face are sharper too, and although the color tones give a warmer look to the image above. It’s a strong yellow effect that I don’t like any more than the cold look of the OnePlus 11’s shot.

There’s no question, though, that I’d miss having a larger zoom. Above is an image from the 2x zoom lens on the OnePlus 11.

The 5x optical zoom of the Pixel 7 Pro lets you get creative zoomed-in shots, like above, that are out of reach for the OnePlus.

As part of the Hasselblad partnership, the phone comes with a variety of color presets created by Hasselblad ‘Master’ photographers. Take a look above. I don’t really like them and would much prefer to simply edit images my own way using any of the very good photo editing apps on the Google Play store.

At night the camera performs very well however. I was impressed at the brightness it was able to achieve, delivering brighter images (see above) than even the iPhone 14 Pro, albeit with less detail.

The iPhone 14 Pro’s night mode shot above has a touch more detail on some of the distant buildings, but it’s not as bright as the shot from the OnePlus.

It’s brighter than night mode shots from the Pixel 7 Pro, too. See above.

It’ll shoot video at up to 8K resolution, but its standard 4K footage will be plenty for most, offering HDR footage that helps keep bright skies under control. Colors look good in videos and while the optical image stabilization helps smooth out shaky hands, it can result in upright objects in your footage (trees, for example) appearing wobbly as the sensor tries to correct the movement. Check out the video below for some clips recorded on the OnePlus 11.

The camera can take some great shots overall. If photography isn’t a huge focus for you, and you just want crisp, vibrant shots of your friends or your kids at the beach then you’ll be well served by the OnePlus 11 — particularly if you like taking photos at night. If you’re looking for a more well-rounded photography experience then look toward the Pixel 7 Pro.

OnePlus 11: Solid battery and fast charging

The phone runs on a 5,000mAh battery that’s capable of getting you through a full day of use, as long as you’re reasonably careful in how you use it. With the display set to its maximum 3,216×1,440-pixel resolution, at 120Hz refresh rate and with screen brightness on max, the battery dropped from full to 92% remaining after 1 hour of streaming a YouTube video. After the second hour it had dropped to only 85% remaining, which isn’t a great performance.

With the resolution dropped to 2,412×1,080 pixels and the refresh rate at a maximum of 60Hz, it didn’t even drop below 100% after an hour of YouTube streaming and only dropped to 95% after a second hour — not bad at all. But 30 minutes of gaming in Genshin Impact with all settings on max comfortably knocked 10% off the battery.

With more conservative settings you won’t need to worry too much about your phone dropping dead halfway through the afternoon, and you should still have plenty of juice remaining when you put it on charge at night. Demanding gamers can ramp up the settings when you want to enjoy every last detail, but make sure you’ve got your charger nearby.

Thankfully, even if you do drain the battery with gaming or YouTube streaming, getting the juice back in is a speedy process. The phone supports 100-watt fast charging in the UK (80W in the US) which will fill the battery from empty in only 25 minutes — or 27 minutes on the 80W model. That’s quicker than the 1 to 2 hours you can expect a full recharge of the Pixel 7 Pro to take.

OnePlus 11: Should you buy it?

If you’re looking for a high-performance phone to tackle gaming, video streaming and all of life’s essentials, the OnePlus 11 is an excellent phone to consider. It’s got power enough to tackle anything in the Google Play store, it looks great and its fast-charging means that battery life isn’t an issue. The five years of security support is a nice bonus, too.

And while the camera setup is far from the best around, it’s perfectly capable of taking shots of your kids on holiday you’ll be excited to share with your wider family and friends.

But it’s the price that stands out here, being one of the cheapest flagships you can buy, undercutting both the Pixel 7 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S23. If photography isn’t your top priority but you do want ultimate performance for gaming on the go, the OnePlus 11 is certainly worth your time.

How we test phones

Every phone tested by CNET’s reviews team is actually used in the real world. We test a phone’s features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it’s bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor’s performance to the extremes using both standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.

All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using it daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.

Technologies

Invincible VS Is a Tag-Team Brawler Packed With Bloody Superhero Carnage

The Invincible franchise is heading to Xbox.

Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase had its share of surprises, including a new game from Pokemon developer Game Freak and the ROG Xbox Ally portable handheld. Another surprise is a fighting game featuring characters from the Invincible comic and show.

Invincible VS is a three-versus-three tag fighting game featuring characters from the Invincible universe. The trailer showed several characters from the show, including Invincible, Omni-Man, Atom Eve, Rex Splode, Bulletproof, and two Viltrumites — the powerful alien species Omni-Man and Invincible belong to.

The game itself has a comic book art style to it, but its action is more along the lines of Mortal Kombat. The fighting is very bloody, which is faithful to the comic and show, but no kind of fatalities were shown in the trailer. There are also a couple of familiar settings from the show. While we saw only a handful of characters in this first glimpse of Invincible VS, there is a wealth of heroes and villains that could be added to the game before it launches.

Robert Kirkman’s Invincible
started as a comic in 2003 and ended its run in 2018. In 2021, an animated series based on the comic made its debut on Amazon Prime Video. The show wrapped up its third season in March and has already been renewed for a fourth season.

Skybound Games is publishing Invincible VS with development handled by Quarter Up, an in-house studio led by members of the team that created 2013’s Killer Instinct.

Invincible VS will be released sometime in 2026 for PC and Xbox Series consoles.

Technologies

I Played With the ROG Xbox Ally, the Upcoming Xbox Handheld

The new handheld console was revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase, and I got to spend some time with my hands on it.

Microsoft revealed its long-rumored Xbox handheld console running Windows 11 during the Xbox Games Showcase — two models called the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X — and I spent a short time playing around with one soon after.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures or videos of the demo since the hardware we got to test wasn’t final. That became evident when our designated guide had HDMI connection issues with the unit. I was able to play around with the Xbox full-screen experience and the various settings menus and play the beginning minutes of Gears of War Reloaded, which comes out this summer.

The device is quite comfortable to hold, with slightly textured grips. The face buttons, triggers and analog sticks all felt familiar, very similar to what I’m used to on an Xbox controller.

What’s really exciting is that you can download your games, remote play from your Xbox or stream from the cloud, making this more useful than PlayStation’s Portal, which can only stream and play remotely. That’s one of the major benefits of being inside Xbox’s ecosystem: You can play a game on any of its devices, regardless of where you bought it, whether that be Xbox consoles, PC, cloud or this new handheld. This more open-platform approach makes the Xbox Ally closer in spirit to a Steam Deck compared with a Nintendo Switch, which can only run Nintendo games.

When it ships — expected in time for the winter holidays — you’ll be able to navigate via a full-screen Xbox app, which combines your Xbox game library with installed games from several other marketplaces into a single Xbox experience. The company specifically mentioned Xbox, Game Pass, battle.net (owned by Microsoft) and «other leading PC storefronts,» which I’m hoping includes Steam. Much like on an Xbox, each game has icons depicting which platform they’re from. In my demo, the only example of a different storefront was Hearthstone, which had a battle.net icon.

The Xbox Ally consoles use the Game Bar, and if you’ve used the Xbox app on PC, then you’ll find it familiar. In fact, pressing the new Xbox button opens an almost identical version of the guide when playing Xbox games on PC. However, there’s also a new Command Center tab on the far left to adjust settings for power consumption and performance, similar to what we’ve seen on Steam Deck.

In Game Bar, you can quickly jump to the home screen, your library, launch games, open apps, chat with friends, adjust settings and more. And this Game Bar works alongside Asus’s Armoury Crate overlay. This is a little worrisome, as Armoury Crate has usually felt more like unnecessary bloatware, but when we get to test the device later this year we’ll see if Asus has stripped it down to the relevant functions rather than just added more on top.

Since it’s a Windows 11 device, you’ll also be able to launch and use apps like Discord and Twitch and access game mods. The Xbox Ally boots directly into the «Xbox full screen experience» similar to how a Steam Deck launches into Big Picture mode. The full-screen experience is optimized specifically for handheld gaming, and Xbox told me the device minimizes background activity and allocates more system resources to gameplay like Game Mode does on Windows. This means more memory and potentially higher framerates for your games.

The ROG Ally and Ally X have been out for a bit now, but the Xbox models have some unique features. In addition to the Xbox button, the ROG Xbox Ally also has larger, contoured grips. The previous ROG Ally is more rectangular; the Xbox Ally is closer to the design of the PlayStation Portal, with dedicated, slightly separated hand grips that mimic the look and feel of a standard game controller. They also have upgraded components over the Asus versions.

The handheld comes in two options, a white Xbox Ally and the more powerful Xbox Ally X that comes in black. The lower-end Ally is powered by an AMD Ryzen Z2A processor, comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage, weighs 23.6 ounces (670 grams) and has a 60Wh battery. The Ally X has an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, weighs a bit more at 25.2 ounces (715 grams) and has an 80Wh battery.

Both models are equipped with a 7-inch,120Hz 1080p screen, the same as on the original Asus versions of the devices. They also have RGB lights surrounding the analog sticks, something I hope I’ll be able to turn off when I spend some real time playing on the device. The Ally X did feel on the heavier side, but then again, the recently released Switch 2 and my Steam Deck OLED are also pretty heavy, so I think that’s just what handhelds weigh these days.

Xbox hasn’t yet revealed the pricing or release date, aside from «this holiday.»

Technologies

Everything I Suspect Will Be Announced at WWDC 2025 Monday

We could see new iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch software called iOS 26, MacOS Tahoe and WatchOS 26. Apple is rumored to overhaul all of its OSes with a unifying visual interface.

Apple’s developer conference, WWDC 2025, kicks off Monday at 10 a.m. PT. At its last two WWDC events, Apple launched itself into new territories, jumping into both AR/VR and generative AI. There’s pressure on the company to match, if not top, what it’s done in the past. CNET has editors and writers attending in person to report on live WWDC 2025 developments as they break.

There was the Vision Pro in 2023, and then Apple Intelligence in 2024. What big announcement is coming in 2025? With both the Vision Pro and Apple Intelligence having faced slow and heavily criticized starts, the big message at this year’s WWDC doesn’t seem clear at all. Apple might focus on operating system redesigns and gradual improvements across the board.

WWDC is usually a showcase for Apple’s future-forward ideas. It’s also where the company discusses its developer tools, as you’d expect. And it’s where previews of all the new OS versions are revealed, giving an early look at what’s coming to the iPhone, iPad, Mac and other Apple devices.

It’s possible Apple will reveal a new home device — a display-enabled HomePod — or even a new Apple Pencil with a calligraphy mode. But the biggest rumors so far suggest a new cross-OS redesign and renaming that could be Apple’s way of deflecting some attention away from not having big new AI features to show off.

OS by year: Will it be iOS 26?

Recent reports from Bloomberg’s often-correct Mark Gurman say Apple is going to ditch the existing numbered OS convention it’s used for years and instead go with another approach to naming: labeling all annual OSes by year number. Instead of iOS 19, we’ll have iOS 26. And iPadOS 26, and MacOS 26, and WatchOS 26, TVOS 26, VisionOS 26. Samsung made a similar move in 2020, jumping from the Galaxy S10 in 2019 to the Galaxy S20 in 2020.

Apple’s numbering has felt pretty disjointed as the numbers have gone ever-higher across multiple device categories. A yearly number would at least help people know if they’re on the current version.

Glass as the new look

The WWDC invites, featuring a hazy transparent ring, hint at a reported redesign of all the company’s software to a new «glass» look. Bloomberg’s Gurman reported on a large incoming cross-OS design shift, calling it a dramatic redesign and one of the biggest Apple’s done in years. The design may mirror the Vision Pro’s VisionOS feel, which has lots of frosted glass panes, layers of transparency and circular app icons. Front Page Tech’s Jon Prosser showed a preview of the expected design based on information from his sources, and it definitely looks VisionOS-esque.

Beyond a coat of paint, will the OSes start to feel more similar in function too? I’m particularly curious about how iPadOS and MacOS start to close in on each other even more. Apple’s iPad has slowly inched toward acting like a computer, with features like Stage Manager for multitasking, and it’s felt inevitable that the tablet line would eventually provide a comparable experience to the MacBook.

WatchOS should get Apple Intelligence, and the Health app may be part of it

One of the devices that’s missed out on Apple Intelligence so far has been the Apple Watch, and that should be changing soon. Apple is expected to put more AI on the next Watch OS, which could help with message summaries, translation and maybe even composing messages. It could also bring overdue health and fitness upgrades. Reports say Apple could be working on adding generative AI insights to its Health app data and even using AI as a medical service, with a launch target of 2026. Health could possibly get a paid subscription tier, similar to Fitness and what many of Apple’s current services are adding. This could be like what Google is doing with Wear OS, which has long used Fitbit Premium as a health subscription (a broader Gemini rollout is on the way too).

I like AI coaching and insights on a watch, but I don’t like subscriptions. We’ll see what happens, and if Apple gets into any of these future plans at this WWDC.

Battery life boosts

Another recent report (again, Gurman) says AI will help Apple improve battery life on its devices. How many devices? The iPhone, but hopefully the Apple Watch, too — these are the products in the lineup that I find I need to charge more than I’d like. For me, at least, iPads and Macs are mostly fine on battery life as is, but I’ll never refuse longer battery life for anything.

Apple has made gradual boosts to its battery features over time, but maybe there will be more intelligently applied power modes this time.

Game news?

Apple may be pushing the importance of games again, just as the Nintendo Switch 2 debuts. Bloomberg reports that the company could release a new app to act as a hub for games and game services including Apple Arcade, becoming an overdue overhaul of Game Center.

A number of game controller accessories, like Backbone, already have app hubs that function as game launchers, but Apple has never done much to help organize games on its devices in a way that feels more like what you find on a console. A new app seems like a good fit for those types of controllers, too.

Apple just acquired its first game studio: RAC7, the developers of hit Apple Arcade game Sneaky Sasquatch.

Apple could also have VR gaming news, if older reports come true: PlayStation VR 2 controllers have been expected to work with Vision Pro headsets, in a push to expand gaming on Apple’s VR/AR headset. Maybe that’ll be part of a push to get more developers onboard, as Apple could be readying a less expensive version of the Vision Pro in the next year. Right now the headset can’t compete with Meta’s more affordable Quest headsets in the gaming department.

AI: Live translation, and maybe Vision camera advancements

Apple opened up camera access to enterprise developers last year, and now it’s time for AI tools to emerge for everyone else — tools that could help describe what you’re seeing, or help you remember things too. Apple has already added assistive support for some camera-enabled functions on the Vision Pro and other products, suggesting more to come.

Though Apple’s WWDC keynote presentation isn’t expected to include many announcements of AI strides, the company still needs to compete with Google, Open AI, Perplexity and many others who are making such strides. Reports say live translation will come to some AirPods models, which would mirror what Google and Meta have been doing on glasses and earbuds and on phones.

The biggest VisionOS move I’d expect to see is some introduction of camera-aware AI. Apple Intelligence debuted on Apple’s VR/AR spatial computer headset earlier this year, but none of the AI can take advantage of the system’s cameras to «see» what you’re seeing. At least not yet. Google’s use of Gemini to access the cameras on upcoming headsets and glasses, and Meta’s support of camera access for Quest developers (and its expanding AI tools on Ray-Bans), suggest Apple needs to move this way now to begin paving a way for camera-aware AI to work on future headsets and eventually glasses.

Apple Pencil

We could see either a brand-new Apple Pencil or updated features that make the current device feel new, according to a report from Bloomberg. Expect to see a new a digital reed calligraphy pen feature unveiled. It’s unclear whether this new software will be for both the original Apple Pencil and the Apple Pencil 2, or if we’ll actually see a brand-new version of the stylus.

A new HomePod-slash-iPad?

There could be a new product emerging at WWDC: a look at a long-expected screen-enabled HomePod that may be part of a bigger push into smarter smart home tech. Reports suggest it’ll be something like a HomePod now — speaker-enabled, with an array of mics — but with a touchscreen. Would it be a screen big enough to act as a photo frame, or something more like a control panel? Where would this thing live, exactly? And what would it cost? Originally, reports of this device even suggested a robotic arm that would allow the screen to follow your face, but those plans seem to be off the table for now.

Of all the wild-card product ideas Apple could announce at this show, this seems the most likely.

WWDC/Gurman potpourri

There are, of course, a number of other rumors from Gurman. Here are some that caught our attention:

Messages app: iOS could get the ability to add backgrounds to chats and group chats.
iPadOS: Apple may reveal an iPadOS version of the Preview app.
iPadOS: MacOS-like multitasking might come to the iPad.
iPhone Camera app: The interface could get an overhaul focused on making it simpler to use.

We’ll know more soon

WWDC is happening June 9, with the keynote video presentation streaming at 10 a.m. Pacific. We’ll be there at Apple Park, too, covering it in person. We’ll know more about how all this software could be hinting at new products, and get a check-in on where exactly Apple is with its AI strategies. And maybe we’ll get a bit of product news, too — you never know.