During its traditional autumn presentation, Apple officially announced a new line of flagship smartphones — iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. The main innovations were the transition to the 2-nanometer A20 Pro processor, the introduction of an innovative cooling system, and a camera with an automatic variable aperture.
During its traditional autumn presentation, Apple officially announced a new line of flagship smartphones — iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. The main innovations were the transition to the 2-nanometer A20 Pro processor, the introduction of an innovative cooling system, and a camera with an automatic variable aperture.
As the company said during the broadcast, the new devices have “the longest battery life in iPhone history.” The smartphones will be available in four colors: deep black, updated silver, a new Glacier blue shade, and burgundy, which Apple called “sophisticated and unique.”
The new flagships are based on the A20 Pro chip, built on the latest 2-nanometer process technology. The six-core CPU has two performance supercores that are 20% faster and four energy-efficient cores. The developers claim that the performance cores have reached “desktop class” and are the fastest among all smartphones on the market.
The graphics processing unit (GPU) now has a 7-core architecture, providing a 40% performance boost and increased memory bandwidth. To run large language models (LLMs) directly on the device, Apple has added a second neural engine, increasing the total number of Neural Engine cores to 32.
Due to the high power of the chip, the company had to completely redesign the cooling system. The crystal packaging architecture now resembles M-series computer processors, where the memory and chip are connected directly to the evaporation chamber. The new-generation chamber itself is three times larger than the one used in the iPhone 17 Pro, and deionized water is constantly circulated through the system to effectively remove heat.
Thanks to the A20 Pro's power efficiency, the base iPhone 18 Pro now offers the same battery life as last year's Pro Max. In video playback mode, the younger version lasts up to 36 hours, while the new iPhone 18 Pro Max shows a record 45 hours. Under typical daily use, the devices will work up to 24 and 30 hours on a single charge, respectively.
Wired charging technology has also undergone a significant update: now the battery can be recharged by 50% in just 15 minutes, and a five-minute connection to the network will provide six hours of video viewing.
The main 48-megapixel Fusion camera has a variable aperture for the first time in the history of the iPhone. The system consists of six laser blades, thinner than a human hair, which are made of a special polymer composite. The aperture can adapt automatically: in dark conditions it opens wider, letting in 50% more light, which significantly expands the dynamic range and improves detail.
For professionals, Pro Controls have been added, which allows you to manually change white balance, shutter speed, aperture, and view the histogram for both photos and videos. There's also Smart focus tracking, which uses AI to maintain focus on a subject even if it temporarily disappears from the frame.
In the video recording area, Time-lapse mode now supports 4K resolution in Dolby Vision HDR format, and Cinematic mode can operate at 60 frames per second.
Apple has paid special attention to the authenticity of content. The new Apple Reference Image feature cryptographically signs the photo data at the pixel level at the time of shooting. Using the Private Cloud Compute system, this data is converted into an unchangeable image - a kind of "digital negative" that confirms that the photo was not generated or altered by artificial intelligence.
The Dynamic Island on the screen has also been updated - now it can display up to three active widgets (Live Activities) simultaneously.
The base iPhone 18 Pro with 256 GB of storage starts at $1,199, while the Pro Max version will cost a minimum of $1,299. This year, Apple also added a configuration with a record 2 TB of memory.
