Six laser-cut blades now sit inside the main camera of the iPhone 18 Pro, opening and closing to change the aperture. Apple has never put a variable aperture in an iPhone before, and it is the headline of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, announced on September 9.
Pre-orders open Saturday, September 12, with the phones in stores from Friday, September 18. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 and the Pro Max at $1,299, in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes. Colours are black, silver, glacier and a new burgundy.
Camera
The 48MP Fusion Main camera lets users pick from four aperture settings by hand in the Camera app. The blades adjust automatically for depth of field and light, and a new sensor should help in low light and keep the back row of a group photo sharper. Developers get an API for aperture control in their own apps. A new Pro controls panel adds shutter speed, white balance and a histogram. Video can take Cinematic effects after capture at up to 60 fps, and Time-lapse now records in 4K Dolby Vision HDR.
Apple is also pushing authenticity. In a new Reference mode the sensor signs every pixel it sees, and Private Cloud Compute turns that data into an unalterable reference image that can be viewed beside the edited photo in Photos. Support for the SynthID standard is coming to help flag AI-generated or edited images.
Under the hood
The A20 Pro is built on a 2-nanometer process. Apple claims 50 percent more memory bandwidth than the A19 Pro, a 6-core CPU, a 7-core GPU up to 40 percent faster, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine, 32 cores in all, for double the AI processing power. Packaging now puts the die beside the memory, taking the memory out of the thermal path so the chip can sit directly on a new vapor chamber with three times the surface area of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple says that yields up to 40 percent better sustained performance.
Connectivity comes from the N1 chip (Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread) and, on the 18 Pro, the new C2 cellular modem, which Apple says uploads faster than the C1X while using 15 percent less energy and adds mmWave in the U.S.
Battery claims are large. The eSIM-only models are rated for up to 36 hours of video on the Pro and 45 on the Pro Max. The Pro charges to 50 percent in about 15 minutes by wire, or in 30 minutes wirelessly. Five minutes of wired charging gives the Pro Max around seven hours of video.
Software
The phones run iOS 27 with Siri AI, rolling out in beta. Apple describes it as an entirely new Siri that draws on personal context across messages, email and photos, reads what is on screen and answers questions on almost any topic. The redesigned Dynamic Island can show three Live Activities at once. iOS 27 also brings iPhone Handoff, which lets users on supported carriers switch between two iPhones sharing a number.
The eSIM-only versions will be sold in Bahrain, Canada, Guam, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the U.S. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Both models use 40 percent recycled content, including 100 percent recycled cobalt in the battery and 85 percent recycled aluminum in the enclosure.
