Apple's Late-2027 Megalaunch: Camera AirPods, Foldables, and a 20th-Anniversary iPhone, All Delayed by a Siri Rebuild

Apple is laying the groundwork for what Bloomberg's Mark Gurman describes as its "biggest new product period ever" , a concentrated wave of new hardware now reportedly scheduled for late 2027. The ambitious lineup—camera-equipped AirPods, a second-generation foldable phone, a celebratory 20th-anniversary iPhone, and AI-powered smart glasses—was originally slated for earlier launch windows but has been pushed back by a single, critical bottleneck: Siri's prolonged struggles with artificial intelligence.

This delay is not a simple schedule slip. It's the direct consequence of Apple's strategic decision to first rebuild Siri on a completely new foundation, a multi-billion-dollar project in partnership with Google, before it can ship the visual AI features that its upcoming wearables depend on.

The Products: A Coordinated Late-2027 Push

According to people familiar with the matter, Apple is planning to release all of the following products within the same late-2027 timeframe .

Camera-Equipped AirPods (Code-named B798): These are positioned as Apple's first wearable AI product . Originally slated for a 2026 release, the B798 AirPods will feature tiny cameras integrated into their stems . The cameras will not be used for traditional photography; instead, they are designed to feed real-time visual data to Siri, enabling contextual object recognition and environmental awareness . The delay was attributed partly to the need to develop new visual AI models capable of identifying objects . Reports indicate a privacy indicator light will alert those nearby when the cameras are active .

20th-Anniversary iPhone: Expected to be a high-end, flagship "Pro" model (code-named V73 and V74) , this special-edition device will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original 2007 iPhone . It is rumored to feature a curved glass design and a seamless all-screen front, eliminating the notch and Dynamic Island for a completely uninterrupted display .

Second-Generation Foldable iPhone: Also launching in the same window is the refined follow-up to Apple's first foldable phone, referred to by some as the "iPhone Ultra 2" . This device represents a maturation of Apple's foldable line, debuting alongside the latest conventional iPhone models.

Smart Glasses (Code-named N50): Apple's first pair of AI-powered smart glasses have also been delayed by about a year, from a previous target of late 2026 to late 2027 . Without an augmented-reality display, the N50 glasses rely on cameras, speakers, and microphones to let Siri identify objects in the user's field of view and provide contextual information . Like the other wearables, they are expected to require an iPhone connection to function .

The Common Bottleneck: Siri's Critical Rebuild

The unifying thread behind all these product delays is not hardware engineering, but software. Every new device in this wave depends on visual AI features that require a powerful, contextually aware Siri to interpret the real world . This capability has been the main stumbling block.

To solve this, Apple took the dramatic step of forming a historic multi-year partnership with Google. Announced in January 2026, the deal licenses Google's Gemini models to serve as the foundation for a new generation of "Apple Intelligence" and a ground-up rebuild of Siri . Key details of the rebuild include:

• A custom 1.2 trillion-parameter Gemini model powers the new Siri, for which Apple is reportedly paying Google roughly $1 billion per year .
• Siri AI, unveiled at WWDC 2026, does not use Google's assistant stack, serving infrastructure, or Google Search. Apple executives were explicit that "the amount of the Google assistant we use, which is none" .
• The architecture runs on Apple's own third-generation Apple Silicon and its private-cloud compute infrastructure, using Gemini as the underlying foundation model that has been distilled into Apple's own models .

This rebuild is the prerequisite for the entire 2027 hardware strategy. Until Siri can reliably see and understand the world, products like camera AirPods and smart glasses do not have a reason to exist.

A Word of Caution on Rumors

It is important to remember that all of this information comes from unofficial sources and pre-release supply chain rumors, primarily the reporting of Mark Gurman at Bloomberg . Apple has not confirmed specific product names, feature sets, or launch dates for any of these devices. Given that these plans represent a roadmap that is still more than a year out, significant changes, further delays, or cancellations are always possible.