Apple online store down ahead of iPhone 11 preorders

Apple late Thursday took its online storefront down in preparation of a start to preorders for iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, the company's latest and greatest flagship smartphones.

Unlike the typical midnight go-live time of years past, Apple will begin accepting iPhone preorders on Friday at 5 a.m. Pacific. The later-than-usual timeline gives early adopters a few extra hours of sleep before they fight an expected launch day rush.

The company reflected the scheduling change in a prepared message that reads, "Staying up late is so last year. The good news is, now you don't have to. This year, pre-order begins at 5:00 a.m. PDT. See you then." Similar to last year's iPhone XR and XS debut, the landing page features an animated Apple logo.

Apple's latest handset lineup was unveiled at a special event on Tuesday.

Anchoring the product offerings for 2019 is iPhone 11. The successor of 2018's iPhone XR, the current-generation smartphone boasts a 6.1-inch Liquid Retina HD LCD screen with True Tone support and Haptic Touch. Apple's front-facing TrueDepth array gets a boost with a 12-megapixel camera and updates Face ID with a wider field of view. New camera software enables slo-mo selfies, or what Apple dubbed "slofies."

A pair of rear-facing cameras are nestled in iPhone 11's camera "bump," with one ultra-wide imager designed to capture landscape, group and action shots. The extra lens also assists in new photo options like Night mode and the forthcoming Deep Fusion feature.

Powering computationally intensive photo features, including 4K video at 60 fps in extended dynamic range and scene composition analysis using real-time machine learning, is Apple's all-new A13 Bionic processor and its 8-core Neural Engine.

Touted as the fastest chip ever to be incorporated in a smartphone, the A13 relies on two high performance cores that are up to 20% faster and use up to 30% less power than the A12 Bionic. Four efficiency cores are up to 20% faster and use up to 40% less power, while an integrated GPU is up to 20% faster and consumes up to 40% less power.

Other upgrades include an hour of extra battery life compared to iPhone XR, a new U1 Ultra Wideband chip for enhanced location awareness, Wi-Fi 6, Spatial Audio surround sound, Dolby Atmos support, Gigabit LTE and the ability to share audio to two AirPods or Beats headphones simultaneously.

The iPhone 11 comes in white, black, PRODUCT(RED), green, yellow and purple color options and starts at $699 for 64GB of storage. Users can also select from 128GB and 512GB models.

Apple's top-of-the-line iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max adopt all iPhone 11 features and add Super Retina XDR OLED panels measuring a respective 5.8- and 6.5-inches on the diagonal. The screen is said to be the brightest and sharpest ever to grace an iPhone, with Apple claiming 458 pixels per inch and up to 800 nits of brightness in the sun and 1,200 nits for HDR photos and HDR10 video. A custom panel ensures consistent and highly accurate color reproduction.

Similar in style to their stainless steel-wrapped predecessors, iPhone XS and XS Max, this year's models add an extra ultra wide rear-facing camera to wide and telephoto lensers. Also new for 2019 is a revamped wide camera sensor with 100% Focus Pixel coverage, making for snappier, more accurate focusing.

Like the iPhone 11, both Pro models come equipped with advanced camera software powered by the 13 Bionic chip.

Instead of integrating its 3D Touch force-sensing solution in iPhone 11 Pro, Apple opted to rely on the software-based Haptic Touch system. Space savings afforded by the removal of 3D Touch is thought to have gone toward more capacious batteries, with 11 Pro gaining four hours of life over the XS and 11 Pro Max upping the XS Max by five hours.

Other improvements include an 18W USB-C charger in the box, Spatial Audio, Wi-Fi 6, Dolby Atmos support, Gigabit LTE and Audio Sharing.

Apple's iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max come in Space Gray, silver, gold and Midnight Green color options, all of which feature a textured matte glass back cover. Models with 64GB of storage start at $999 and $1,099 for 5.8- and 6.5-inch versions, respectively. The handsets also come in 256GB and 512GB configurations.