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Apple iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max Review: For Camera Fiends
There is no iPhone 18 this year. If you were hoping to upgrade your smartphone right now, Apple is only offering the new iPhone 18 Pro models (and a very expensive folding iPhone coming next month). Don't let that be a reason to spend extra money on a phone you might not need.
Apple hasn't confirmed the next base-model yet, but the iPhone 18 is expected in spring 2027 alongside a mid-tier iPhone 18e. If you've historically been more than satisfied with the base iPhone model, you should absolutely wait to upgrade. Don't let the hype machine sway you.
That said, if you're a Pro connoisseur, the iPhone 18 Pro ($1,199) and its bigger sibling, the 18 Pro Max ($1,299), are very good phones, despite the $100 price hike over last year’s Pro models. No, you don't need to upgrade if you're coming from an iPhone 17 Pro, 16 Pro, or even a 15 Pro—hold onto your devices for longer!—but Apple's flagships deliver where it matters, even if they feel eclipsed by the spectacle of the foldable iPhone Duo.
Apple says the iPhone 18 Pro models have significant upgrades, but let's be a little more measured here.
Battery life has been stellar on the Pro models over the last few years, and that remains true here. The Pro Max is the more notable of the two because it packs a denser battery. With average use (around 5 hours of screen-on time), I hovered around 50 percent by the end of the day, and easily made it through day two on a single charge. I spent a little less time with the smaller Pro, but so far it has also comfortably gotten me through a day with around 40 percent left by bedtime. Safe to say, most people will very much enjoy the battery life, but the update doesn't feel drastic.
Next, there's the processor: the A20 Pro chip. I hardly run into problems with Apple's flagship silicon, and that hasn't changed. The phones run every app fluidly, and my benchmark tests show a surprisingly sizable leap over the A19 Pro in the 17 series.
It runs Control—a AAA game from 2019 ported to iOS earlier this year—decently well. However, aggressive upscaling makes the graphics look grainy, and character movements can feel a little sluggish. (I maxed out the graphics settings.) It's certainly not perfect, but I still can't believe I'm playing such a demanding title on an iPhone.
More impressive is Apple's thermal management on these phones. The company has expanded the vapor chamber's surface area by three times—the phone's cooling technology that helps spread heat around—meaning the entire phone felt toasty after close to an hour of gameplay in Control, with no uncomfortable localized hot spots. This larger vapor chamber also lets you game longer before phone’s thermal throttling kicks in and slows everything down.
The iPhone 18 Pro models come with iOS 27 out of the box, which features the all-new Siri AI. Yes, Siri AI is infinitely more capable than any version of Siri that Apple has offered before. It still doesn't quite have the spark or versatility of other AI assistants, but you might be fine with that. If you throw Siri AI a question, there's a good chance it can actually give you a satisfactory answer now. Remember that Siri AI and other Apple Intelligence features aren't exclusive to the latest models, though you do need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer to access them.
The Dynamic Island, the pill-shaped bar housing the selfie camera and Face ID sensors, is noticeably smaller this year. To take full advantage of it, you can now view three live activities—like a DoorDash order status or your Uber ETA—simultaneously inside the Island, up from two. I was navigating in Apple Maps, chatting on a phone call, and had a DoorDash order en route to my home, and it spaced out all of these activities neatly.