Apple event: iPhone XS Max and new Apple Watch headline year of big upgrades, big screens – and big price tags

It is very much an ‘S’ year – one of stability and speed, not spectacle

Apple held its annual iPhone event, showing off three new handsets and a completely redesigned Apple Watch for the first time, with a focus on health and an entirely new look.

The biggest update to the iPhone line was the iPhone XS. That phone borrows the design of the iPhone X – supplementing it with a brand new shiny gold colour – and fills it with an improved processor, display and facial recognition technology.

It also has a sibling called the iPhone XS Max that is much bigger, and boasts the largest screen of any iPhone. It has the biggest price to match, starting at £1,099.

To soften the blow, Apple also offered the cheaper iPhone XR. Which also takes the iPhone X's design, but uses a cheaper material and brings a whole range of colours.

That phone costs £749 – much cheaper than any of the other iPhone X-shaped phones.

The "S" moniker was once a staple of Apple's line-up, used every other year to indicate that the company was sticking with last year's design but filling it with entirely new innards. It appeared that with the 7 Apple had given up on that naming, but it re-emerges this year.

"S" years have since taken on a reputation for being a year of stability, speed and safety, rather than revolutionary new upgrades. This was one of those years – all of the new iPhones look like last year's breakthrough iPhone X – with chunky but unspectacular upgrades.

Instead, the really radical changes were to the Apple Watch.

The wearable received a radical new redesign, for the first time since it was released, which allows the screen to sweep right across the front of the face. It received new features too, including an ECG monitor that can keep track of the health of its wearer's heart.

But what is just as notable is what Apple didn't launch.

The company has been rumoured to be preparing new iPads and Macs – neither of which arrived. Those might be getting saved for another event next month, where Apple is expected to show off sweeping new changes to its tablet and computer line.

There was also no sign of the AirPower charging mat, which can charge an Apple Watch, iPhone and AirPods all at once. That was first shown off at last year's iPhone event when it was advertised as coming soon – but it was not mentioned at all, and any discussion of it now appears to have been mysteriously pulled from Apple's website.

And plenty more was seemingly killed off: chief among them being the headphone jack. Apple caused a stir when it announced that the iPhone 7 would come without the plug, but it continued to make it available in its older phones. Now, with the loss of the iPhone SE and 6S from its line-up, all trace of it has been removed – and the new phones don't even come with the headphone to lightning adapter that was devised to smooth over those complaints.