The highly rumoured iPhone 9 could be announced any day now. Stores in the US – including Best Buy – are taking deliveries of third-party cases for the device, suggesting an announcement is imminent.
The case pictured below (spotted by 9to5Mac) is an Urban Armor Gear case that's listed as suitable for the "new iPhone 4.7-inch 2020". Retailers are under strict instructions not to start selling these cases until 5th April (this Sunday), which suggests that either we'll see an announcement then or that is the on-sale date for the device. Or both. We would bet against a weekend announcement, though, so Friday could well be the day.
Cases pop up online all the time, but they aren't sent to bricks-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy until right near a phone's launch date.
The iPhone 9 is thought to be a 4.7-inch successor to the iPhone 8 (pictured, top). In other words, it will be more wallet-friendly than other recent iPhones. It is rumoured to look almost identical to the 8 but with a newer processor inside. In that respect, it's the spiritual follow-up to 2016's iPhone SE, which crammed the innards of the iPhone 6S into the body of the iPhone 5S.
Apple is thought to also be making a larger iPhone 9 Plus device, with a 5.5-inch screen.
The firm is also working on a new HomePod smart speaker, Apple TV, MacBook Pro, budget iPads, Apple Watch and iMac, according to Bloomberg. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Cupertino company is reportedly (and understandably) struggling to adjust to a work-from-home culture that it has avoided for years.
According to the report, the firm's notoriously secretive nature doesn't gel with employees working at home – there are no top-secret labs at employees' homes, after all. This has caused some minor setbacks in product development, according to Apple sources.
Not that you'd know it. As well as all working on these devices (some of which should launch later this year), the firm recently launched a new MacBook Air and iPad Pro. Pandemic be damned...
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