Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max are official, headlined by a variable-aperture main camera and a 2-nanometer A20 Pro chip. There’s no standard iPhone 18 at this event, only the Pro pair, priced at $1,199 and $1,299 in the US and starting at 256GB storage.
Pricing and Availability
iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 (US) and iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299 (US), both with 256GB as the base configuration and running up to $54.12 a month over 24 months through Apple’s own financing. Storage now tops out at 2TB, a new ceiling above last year’s 1TB ceiling, alongside 512GB and 1TB options.
Pre-orders open Saturday, September 12 at 5 a.m. PT, with availability beginning Friday, September 18. Apple listed India among the 65-plus countries getting the phone in this first wave, with 20 more countries following from September 25. Colors are black, silver, glacier, and a new burgundy.
Apple’s own release does not compare this year’s pricing to the iPhone 17 Pro. Multiple outlets, including MacRumors, have computed the US launch prices as roughly $100 higher than last year’s equivalent Pro models at the same storage tier — a reported figure, not something Apple stated at the event.
A Camera With Manual Aperture Control
The headline camera feature is a variable aperture on the 48MP Fusion Main camera, a first for iPhone. Six laser-cut blades adjust automatically for depth of field and lighting, or can be set manually across four aperture positions in the Camera app: as wide as ƒ/1.48 for low light, ƒ/1.8 for portraits, and as narrow as ƒ/4 for group shots with more of the scene in focus. Apple is also opening an API so developers can control aperture from within their own apps.
Variable aperture is a feature several Android phones experimented with years ago before mostly dropping it, so Apple is reintroducing an idea the Android side already tested rather than inventing something new. A new “Pro controls” panel adds manual shutter speed, white balance, and a histogram to the Camera app, and a “Reference Image” mode signs sensor data at capture time so users can later verify whether a photo was edited.
Specifications
- Chip: A20 Pro, Apple’s first 2-nanometer chip, with a 6-core CPU, 7-core GPU (up to 40% faster than A19 Pro), and a dual 16-core Neural Engine totaling 32 cores
- Camera: 48MP Fusion Main with variable aperture (ƒ/1.48–ƒ/4), plus the standard Pro Ultra Wide and Telephoto lenses
- Display: redesigned Dynamic Island supporting up to three simultaneous Live Activities, up from two
- Battery: up to 36 hours video playback on 18 Pro, up to 45 hours on 18 Pro Max on eSIM-only models, per Apple’s own testing
- Storage: 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB
- Software: iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI beta
Apple says the redesigned vapor chamber, with three times the surface area of the previous generation, gives the A20 Pro up to a 40 percent sustained-performance gain over the iPhone 17 Pro. eSIM-only models get an extra two hours of video playback by reclaiming the space a physical SIM tray would occupy, though those variants are limited to a specific list of countries including the US, Canada, and Japan.
“With iPhone 18 Pro, we’ve made advancements to the areas our users care about most: camera, performance, battery, and intelligence. And we didn’t just make incremental improvements in these areas — we took huge leaps forward to create the best Pro iPhone we’ve ever made,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
Trade-In and Financing
Apple is offering $175 to $885 in instant trade-in credit for an iPhone 13 or later, with some carriers extending that to as much as $1,200 for an iPhone 14 or later “in any condition.” Apple’s Upgrade leasing plan through Klarna, US-only, starts at $34.99 a month.
Source: Apple Newsroom
