With the Apple “Surprise and shine” event now behind us, the company has officially revealed the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. On the outside, it looks to retain the design from last year’s batch of models. But inside, there are a number of upgrades, from the usual incremental ones like a new chip with better number crunching capabilities and stamina to pretty substantial improvements, especially where the cameras are concerned.
As mentioned, Apple has decided to keep the look of the iPhone 17 Pro unchanged for the 18 Pro. In front, the Dynamic Island is smaller when it’s not expanded, but at the same time, the bitten fruit brand made it able to show you up to three live activities at a time.
Inside is the new A20 Pro chip, with a new 2nm architecture, a six-core CPU that breaks down into two “desktop-class” cores and four efficiency cores. Alongside it is a seven-core GPU, and a dual 16-core NPU, for even better on-device Siri performance. The vapour chamber is noted to have three times the surface area of the previous generation to better keep the device cool.
Then there’s the battery life. Apple has usually been averse to sharing specific numbers, but this time, the company has mentioned battery life figures in hours. For the iPhone 18 Pro, the company says it can do 24 hours per charge, with the Pro Max pushing it up to 30 hours per charge. For video playback, the smaller device is rated at 36 hours, while the larger one can go on for 45 hours, at least for eSIM models.
Sadly, old habits die hard, as the company has gone all over the place as it usually does for charging speeds. So what we have is 15 minutes of wired charging giving the iPhone 18 Pro 50% charge, as well as five minutes of charging for seven hours of video playback for the Pro Max.
But the most important improvements lie with the camera, without a doubt. To start, there’s the familiar 48MP Fusion main camera, but this time Apple makes a big deal about the way the aperture is controlled by six laser-cut blades. This leads to the actual meat of the upgrades to the camera system on the iPhone 18 Pro: manual controls, or as the company calls it, Pro controls. Fitting for devices with Pro in the name, and it makes you wonder why Pro controls were not in the earlier Pro models of the iPhone.
Android users will be familiar with most of the options available here – aperture, shutter speed, white balance, and exposure, but manual ISO control is missing. Still, these settings will be available for stills as well as video.
Finally, the cameras on the iPhone 18 Pro will be able to digitally watermark shots that you take. The company calls this Apple Reference Image, which will give you an unalterable reference image, viewed separately from the main image. With upcoming support for the Google SynthID protocol, it will also help you identify images generated or edited with AI.
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max come in four colour options, which are Black, Silver, Glacier, and Burgundy, to replace last year’s Orange. Storage options range from 256GB all the way up to 2TB. Correspondingly prices range from RM5,499 to RM11,499 for the iPhone 18 Pro, and from RM5,999 to RM11,999 for the Pro Max. Pre-orders start on 12 September, with general availability starting on 18 September.
