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iPhone 18 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro: Here’s everything new
Today Apple unveiled iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, its latest flagship models. Here’s everything new with iPhone 18 Pro vs last year’s iPhone 17 Pro.
Every year Apple makes the iPhone camera system better. But with four different cameras on the iPhone Pro models, sometimes changes are limited to one camera or another. Last year, for example, brought an all-new Center Stage front camera and Telephoto improvements.
With iPhone 18 Pro, the Main camera is the focus of Apple’s upgrades.
Apple says the 48MP Fusion Main camera is all-new, notably adding a variable aperture feature. Here are the details:
The new 48MP Fusion Main camera with variable aperture is the most advanced camera Apple has ever made, bringing aperture control to iPhone for the first time along with even more creative control. Six laser-cut blades smoothly transition between different apertures, making it incredibly easy to capture the best shot by automatically adjusting for depth of field and lighting. Combined with a new sensor that improves image quality, the result is better low-light photography, crisper detail in the back of group photos, and more unique shots. Variable aperture also provides more control for creative pros by giving them the ability to manually adjust any of the four aperture settings in the Camera app, and an API is available to developers for even more control across the aperture range in their apps.
Users will be able to switch between ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, and ƒ/4.0 variable aperture options.
Apple also introduced a variety of new Camera app software features, including updated Photographic Styles and pro controls for lens aperture, shutter speed, white balance, and viewing histogram. Those are all exclusive to iPhone 18 Pro too, as are Smart focus tracking, Cinematic mode effects from video, and Apple Reference Image.
The new A20 Pro chip is a big upgrade over last year’s A19 Pro. That’s partly thanks to the new 2nm process it was built on, which improves performance and efficiency.
A20 Pro has a 6-core CPU, with 2 new super cores that Apple says are the fastest in any smartphone, plus 4 new efficiency cores. There’s also a 7-core GPU with 40% faster graphics performance, increased bandwidth, and faster Neural Accelerators than A19 Pro.
iOS 27 is packed with major AI features, and A20 Pro is an especially big leap for AI. That’s thanks to a new Dual 16-core Neural Engine—that’s double the number of cores as A19 Pro.