I got a quick hands-on with Apple’s latest mainstream flagships, the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, at Apple’s European product showcase ahead of their official launch. The iPhone Duo is understandably stealing most of the attention this year, but I don’t think Apple’s standard flagships deserve to be overlooked. The company has packed in some genuinely impressive upgrades.
Let’s get the design out of the way first, since it’s the area that has changed the least since last year. The one exception is color: there are two new options, burgundy and glacier, and both look classy. Burgundy is the more serious of the two, while glacier feels like the fresher choice. Apple’s current design language still looks modern and likable to me, so I don’t mind the lack of exterior changes.
There is one detail worth calling out, though: the glass window on the back is now much better color-matched to the rest of the body, and I really like that.
A20 Pro Chip: 2nm Power, but the Vapor Chamber Is the Real Upgrade
The big changes, though, are on the inside. First on my list of notable upgrades is the new A20 Pro chipset, which is Apple’s first 2nm chip in an iPhone. That should translate into both more power and better energy efficiency. Compared with last year’s A19 Pro, Apple promises up to 20% faster CPU performance, up to 40% faster graphics, and up to 40% better sustained performance.
You may think iPhones already have more than enough power, but I’d disagree. Take the Liquid Glass UI Apple introduced last year: it’s mesmerizing, sure, but it’s also extremely resource-hungry. In my experience, Apple’s current chips sometimes struggle to hold a steady high refresh rate because of it.
By the way, the promise of better sustained performance is what excites me most. Don’t get me wrong, peak performance is great in certain situations, but sustained performance is really hard to achieve on a phone, especially with demanding workloads like long 3D gaming sessions, shooting 4K video at high frame rates and editing it directly on the phone, or even running local large language model tasks.
These are the kinds of tasks that heat a phone up a lot, and after a while it has to throttle performance to keep temperatures safe. That’s why Apple is putting so much effort into improving its vapor chamber cooling design: to enable better sustained performance.
Much improved battery life
Another major improvement is the new batteries inside the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. They’re slightly bigger this year, and paired with the 2nm A20 Pro, there’s real reason to hope for better battery life.
The 18 Pro Max, for example, is promised to reach 45 hours of video playback, which is 6 hours more than its predecessor. That sounds like a considerable improvement to me. Meanwhile, Apple says the iPhone 18 Pro will deliver battery life on par with last year’s Pro Max, which is a huge upgrade in my book.
iPhone 18 Pro Camera: Variable Aperture Is a Gimmick, but Pro Controls Is a Game-Changer
The other big upgrade in this year’s iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max is the brand-new main camera. It’s still 48 MP, but it now has a variable aperture, a first for an iPhone. Yes, I know Samsung did it years ago with the Galaxy S9, which offered two aperture steps.
There are also modern specialty cameraphones like Huawei’s Pura 90s Pro Max, which has a 10-step variable aperture. The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max come with a 4-step variable aperture, adding a new level of control to the camera experience. It can help with creative effects and depth of field, but on a phone we usually want the widest aperture possible, since small sensors need every bit of light they can get.
Still, not every situation calls for the widest aperture. On a bright, sunny day, for example, you rarely need it. At the end of the day, though, the big story for me is that Apple is putting more control in the hands of mobile photographers. Why? Because we finally get a Pro mode in the iPhone camera app. Who would have thought? Apple calls it Pro Controls, and it lets you tweak the standard settings, like shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, and more.
It’s very convenient that Apple has built Pro Controls right into the stock camera app, and the company has done it in its signature elegant, polished way. I spent some time on the 18 Pro Max tweaking the various pro settings, and Apple has done a great job with this mode. It’s easy to use, feels capable, and is genuinely useful.
Whether I’ll actually use the variable aperture setting, I’m not sure. Most of the time I’d probably leave it on auto, which lets the phone pick the best aperture on its own. That’s the cool part: you still benefit from the variable aperture without having to do anything.
The iPhone for those who want a premium, perfected experience
At the end of the day, this feels like a typical iPhone upgrade. On a surface-level look, the phones may seem largely unchanged.
Once you start using them day to day, though, you quickly find numerous meaningful improvements that make a real difference, especially in essential areas like battery life, performance, and the camera.
I still need to spend more time with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, but they look like very worthy successors to the 17 Pro series. That’s good news, because not everyone will want to reach for the iPhone Duo this year or experiment with a brand-new form factor. You can safely go for the more mature mainstream flagship, the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max, and get a phone with a better camera and better performance at a significantly lower cost.
