Apple charges $100 more for an iPhone 18 Pro with last year's exact measurements

The person shooting product photos next to a shop window never opens the aperture control. She taps the shutter and accepts whatever the processing hands back. Apple's answer this cycle is a physical iris of six laser-cut blades on a rotor, stepping between f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4 ^[10][11], and the part that matters for that user is the default: the camera picks the setting itself based on what it sees ^[14]. The manual panel that got stage time, with aperture, shutter speed, white balance and a histogram ^[15], is the pitch; the automatic choice is what most people will actually use. Every iPhone Pro since the 14 Pro has had a fixed f/1.78 opening ^[12], so this is the first year exposure is handled optically rather than by shutter speed, ISO and software.

Back the money out and the increase is 9.1 percent on the Pro, from $1,099 to $1,199, and 8.3 percent on the Pro Max, from $1,199 to $1,299 ^[2][27], with 256GB still the entry capacity ^[1]. Nothing in the industrial design absorbs that. The 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch screens carry over, as do the aluminium unibody and the camera plateau introduced last year ^[5], and Mashable's comparison puts the 18 Pro Max at exactly the same height, width and depth as the 17 Pro Max ^[6]. What moved is weight: 249 grams against 233, up 16 grams or 6.9 percent ^[7][8], which Mashable attributes to the larger battery and the new aperture components ^[9]. Mashable also judges the $100 defensible given the global memory crisis ^[26], which is an argument about Apple's input costs rather than the buyer's return.

If you order cases or mounts in volume before the September 18 on-sale date ^[3], one measurement is unresolved. The body dimensions match ^[6], but Macworld notes that pre-event leaks pointed to the camera plateau thickening rather than the chassis ^[29]. A same-body phone is not necessarily a same-accessory phone.

The silicon numbers are not settled either, and both versions come from the keynote. Macworld reports the A20 Pro as Apple's first 2nm iPhone chip, with 50 percent more memory bandwidth than the A19 Pro ^[16] and an Apple claim of up to 40 percent better sustained performance alongside a larger vapor chamber ^[17]. CNET reports the same chip as 20 percent faster than its predecessor ^[18]. The 45 hours of video playback on the Pro Max, six more than last year ^[19], and the roughly 50 percent low-light gain at the widest aperture ^[13] are Apple's figures too. No one has yet run either phone through a working day.

That leaves a decision you can test without holding the device, because each thing the extra money buys attaches to one task that either fails today in your hands or does not.

- Synthetic-looking portrait blur in your own shots: the iris gives real optical depth of field, and this is where the $100 lands ^[10]. - Capture sessions that throttle partway through: the vapor chamber and the sustained-performance claim are the relevant spec, still unverified ^[17]. - Shifts that outlast the phone: six extra hours of video playback is the number to check against your own logs ^[19].

Score zero out of three and the upgrade is buying a black finish ^[23], a narrower pill on the display, with the sensor region down from 20.76mm to 16.57mm, about a fifth ^[20][21], and headroom for AI features not yet in anyone's pocket. The cheap escape hatch is closed as well: there is no standard iPhone 18 this autumn, and BGR reports the rumours pointing to spring 2027 for a non-Pro model ^[24].