Device is aimed at turning iPhone into an AI hub for your whole life
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The new updates focus on new AI features, better performance, improved battery and camera, Apple said.
:: Follow all the latest from the Apple launch here. It starts at $1,199 for the base iPhone 18 Pro, $100 more than the previous iPhone 17 Pro – which comes amid price rises across Apple’s products, apparently because of a supply shortage in memory chips. Pre-orders open on 12 September, and it will be available from 18 September.
In the UK, the phone will start at £1,199. Prices go all the way up to £2,499 for the Pro Max with two terabytes of storage.
The new high-end models replaced the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. Those come from Apple’s most popular iPhone generation ever – and, in its introduction, the company suggested it was a response to having gone “to the Moon” with its last update, and finding out what to do next.
On the outside, the phones are little changed. They come in some new colours – a new black, a silver, a lighter blue, and a burgundy that replaces the popular orange on last year’s Pro models – but otherwise they look identical to the iPhone 17 Pro they replace.
On the inside, however, Apple has added a new more powerful processor that not only makes the phone faster but also improves AI performance. The new phones will arrive alongside an entirely redesigned Siri, which can use AI features to organise people’s lives.
Apple opened the event in which it launched the phone by talking about the idea of the phone as a personal intelligence hub that can store data and analyse it to help its owner. If someone was designing such a device from scratch, they would make something that looked remarkably like the iPhone, suggested new Apple chief executive John Ternus, with a high-end processor and cameras.
The battery is also dramatically improved. The smaller iPhone 18 Pro has the same battery life as the larger iPhone 17 Pro Max, Apple said, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max will last up to 45 hours.
The improvements were made possible by a new battery design as well as the new A20 Pro chip that powers the phone, Apple said. That chip is easily the fastest of any phone on the market, Apple said, and includes a GPU that offers up to 40 per cent better performance.
That performance should also last longer thanks to a new vapour chamber that uses water inside the phone to cool it down. Last year’s iPhone 17 Pro was the first to use that technology – but the new one works 40 per cent better, Apple said.
Apple will also add new cameras to the Pro models, in what it said were the biggest improvement in years. That includes a new variable aperture, which works like a traditional camera, as well as new controls over the camera for more creative photos.
Apple also introduced a new feature called “Apple Reference Image”, aimed at stopping the prevalence of fake AI images. That stores a secure and unedited version of an image to allow people to prove that a photo was what they actually saw.
The new iPhone 18 Pro also features a smaller “Dynamic Island”, the cutout at the top of the screen that includes the camera and other sensors. The smaller cutout means that the Dynamic Island can show more live information at the top of the screen, Apple said.
The new phone will come with Apple’s upcoming iOS 27, which brings a host of Siri and performance improvements.
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