The iPhone 18 Pro is here with the biggest camera upgrade in years

Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max on September 9 at Apple Park in the first keynote led by new CEO John Ternus since he took over from Tim Cook on September 1. This year’s Pro lineup retains the aluminum unibody and camera tray that arrived with last year’s iPhone 17 Pro and upgrades to Apple’s 2nm A20 Pro chip and C2 modem.

Both the Pro and Pro Max feature a variable aperture main camera, the first time Apple has integrated aperture control into an iPhone. Reports leading up to the event suggested the feature would be exclusive to the Pro Max, so I’m happy to see it coming to both new Pro phones.

The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 and the iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299, an increase of $100 each from last year’s price. Pre-orders will open on Saturday September 12th and both phones will go on sale Friday September 18th. For those looking for a more affordable option, there’s no standard iPhone 18 this year. Rumors predict that this device will land in spring 2027, which is when the iPhone 16e and 17e were previously launched.

One of the most visible changes to the iPhone 18 Pro is a smaller dynamic island, which has shrunk for the first time since its introduction on the iPhone 14 Pro. To achieve this, Apple reportedly moved the Face ID illuminator below the OLED panel, allowing Dynamic Island to take up less space at the top of the screen. Apple did not specify how and simply attributed the change to new display technology. It retains the same functionality it’s had for years and actually gains the ability to display a third persistent notification, just inside a smaller pill. Face ID works exactly as before.

Display sizes are unchanged on this year’s phones, at 6.3 inches on the Pro and 6.9 inches on the Pro Max. If you’re trying to decide which size is best for you before pre-orders open, just take a look at the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, which are among the best big phones you can buy in 2026. The panels themselves upgrade to what vendors have called LTPO+ technology, which aims to reduce the screen’s power consumption rather than adding a new refresh rate or resolution.

Four finishes are available this year: Black, Light Blue, Glacier and Burgundy. Burgundy is my favorite this year: it’s a deep burgundy that turns purple and brown depending on the light. I expect it to replace Cosmic Orange as the finish Apple wants on every display panel. Black may be a more meaningful addition for many users, as it’s been a few years since Apple released a black iPhone. On the back panel, the Ceramic Shield MagSafe area gets a more uniform frosted finish that reduces the two-tone look introduced by the iPhone 17 Pro. The Camera Control button was integrated into another iPhone, but in a more simplified version. It removes touch sensitivity and haptics, so the button is now only pressure sensitive. You probably never use it anyway, so it’s not a significant change by any means.

Every iPhone Pro, starting with the iPhone 14 Pro, comes with a fixed f/1.78 main camera. This means the lens aperture never changes and exposure is managed by shutter speed, ISO and software. The iPhone 18 Pro changes that with a physical iris that opens and closes like a pupil, with six laser-cut blades on a new rotor mechanism, which move smoothly between four aperture settings and open up to ƒ/1.48. It gives the main 48 MP Fusion camera better control over depth of field and the exact amount of light reaching the sensor in bright conditions.

Apple

By default, the camera chooses the aperture for you based on what you’re shooting. But what exactly does this mean in practice? Narrowing the aperture keeps more of the frame in focus. You can expect portraits with better blur, because it’s real rather than image processing; better night photos, since the camera can let in more light; and more natural motion blur in videos. That being said, a phone-sized sensor is still limited compared to proper cameras. Furthermore, both phones share the same configuration as last year. This means you get three 48 MP rear cameras covering the main, ultra-wide and 4x telephoto lens, as well as the 18 MP Center Stage front camera.

Apple has finally added pro controls to the Camera app, which allow you to customize the app’s interface and manually control your photos, including aperture and shutter speed. Manual exposure control is something photographers have wanted for years in Apple’s camera app, and third-party camera apps like Halide are the only option for now. Other changes to the Camera app include Photographic Styles gaining texture and grain controls, cinematic effects that can now be applied after the fact to footage shot at up to 60fps, time-lapse recording in 4K and Dolby Vision HDR, and audio mixing that can isolate music as well as vocals.

The iPhone 18 Pro devices are powered by the new A20 Pro chipset, built on TSMC’s 2nm process. The six-core processor combines two super cores that Apple says are 20% faster with four efficient cores, and each core now has a built-in neural accelerator. The seven-core GPU is one core more than the A19 Pro and up to 40% faster for graphics. Memory bandwidth increases by 50%. The A20 Pro also features a dual 16-core neural engine for 32 cores in total, double what the A19 Pro had, which Apple says doubles the AI ​​processing power on the device. This matters more this year than last, because iOS 27 ships with Siri AI in beta and relies more on local processing than any previous iPhone.

Thermals have received another major overhaul. Apple borrowed part of its M-series chip design to place the silicon chip next to the memory instead of stacked with it, which removes the memory from the chip’s thermal path and allows the A20 Pro to attach directly to the vapor chamber. This vapor chamber now uses new materials and has three times the surface area of ​​the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple claims up to a 40% gain in sustained performance, which is the number to watch for anyone exporting videos or games over long periods of time.

The C2 modem in the iPhone 18 Pro is Apple’s third-generation internal cellular modem, following the C1 in the iPhone 16e and the C1X in the iPhone Air. This is the first time the Pro line has shipped without a Qualcomm modem inside. Apple says the C2 uses AI to improve call quality and connection reliability, offers much faster downloads than the C1X and does so while using 15% less power. It also supports mmWave in the US, which is the box Apple silicon needed to check before it could replace Qualcomm in the flagship. Apple’s N1 wireless chip supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread.

Apple calls this the biggest increase in battery life in iPhone history, which seems accurate. The eSIM-only iPhone 18 Pro is rated for up to 36 hours of video playback and the iPhone 18 Pro Max is rated for up to 45 hours. Both figures apply specifically to eSIM-only models, which use the space a physical SIM tray would have taken up for a slightly larger cell worth about two extra hours. So iPhone 18 Pro models outside the US likely won’t see bigger gains. Loading speeds have also been improved. The iPhone 18 Pro reaches 50% in about 15 minutes wired, or 30 minutes MagSafe. On the Pro Max, five minutes plugged in buys about seven hours of video playback.

Apple also cited a second, separate figure for the Pro Max: up to 30 hours of use on a full charge. This comes from a new battery model built on real-world data across a mix of messaging, streaming, browsing, and browsing, so it’s a more honest reflection of a normal day than video playback counts. I expect these new phones to top our list of smartphones with the best battery life in 2026.

Thanks to the current RAM situation, both phones cost more than the iPhone 17 Pro line. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,299 for 256GB, compared to $1,099 for the iPhone 17 Pro. The iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,399, down from $1,199. Both are available in Dark Cherry, Sky Blue and Silver. Storage now runs at 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB, with the 2TB tier being a first for iPhone. Both are available in black, silver, glacier and burgundy.

Pre-orders open on Saturday, September 12, rather than the usual Friday, since Friday falls on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks – a date that Apple has historically avoided for commercial announcements before. Both phones will be available on Friday, September 18.

Anyone hoping for a more affordable handset option this fall is out of luck. The standard iPhone 18, iPhone 18e, and iPhone Air 2 are all scheduled for release in spring 2027. If the $100 price increase seems a bit steep, it might be worth waiting until third-party retailers start offering discounts on iPhone 17 Pro devices.