iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max: Price, A20 Pro Chip, and What’s New

Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max at its “Surprise and shine” event on September 9, 2026. After redesigning the Pro line’s exterior last year with the iPhone 17 Pro, this generation leaves the aluminum body and rear camera plateau alone and puts the year’s engineering budget into the camera, the chip, thermal handling, and battery life instead.

It was also a notable moment on the corporate side: this was John Ternus’s first keynote as CEO, delivered eight days after he formally succeeded Tim Cook, who moves into the role of executive chairman.

A 48MP camera that can physically change its aperture

The headline camera feature is a variable aperture on the 48-megapixel main sensor. A mechanical system built from six thin blades adjusts how much light reaches the sensor depending on the scene, letting the camera open up in low light and stop down for more control over depth of field and exposure in brighter conditions. That’s a physical adjustment layered on top of the computational photography Apple already relies on, not a replacement for it.

Apple paired the new aperture system with an improved low-light mode, 4K time-lapse recording with Dolby Vision HDR, and additional manual controls for stills and video aimed at people who’d rather set exposure and white balance themselves than let the camera decide.

A20 Pro: Apple’s first 2-nanometer chip

Both phones run on the new A20 Pro, built on a 2-nanometer process — a first for an Apple smartphone chip. The layout is a 6-core CPU paired with a 7-core GPU, and Apple claims up to a 40% GPU performance gain over the previous generation, aimed squarely at mobile gaming, generative AI features, and other graphics-heavy workloads.

More GPU headroom means more heat, so Apple redesigned the thermal system to match. The vapor chamber introduced with the iPhone 17 Pro returns with roughly three times the surface area, intended to keep the phone running at full performance for longer under sustained load instead of throttling.

Battery life: up to 45 hours on the Pro Max

Apple lists up to 36 hours of video playback for the iPhone 18 Pro and up to 45 hours for the Pro Max, which the company is positioning as the longest battery life of any iPhone to date. Getting there involved reworking the battery cell shape and internal layout, and Apple credits some of the gain to the A20 Pro’s power efficiency as much as to the battery itself.

A rebuilt Siri, arriving in stages

The iPhone 18 Pro line is also the first hardware built around Apple’s reworked Siri, which can read and reason about what’s currently on screen and integrates more directly with Apple Intelligence than the version it replaces. The new Siri ships in English as a beta alongside iOS 27 this month; French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish are expected to follow in October.

Colors, pricing, and availability

The lineup drops last year’s orange finish in favor of a new burgundy option, alongside deep black, silver, and glacier. Design-wise, that’s essentially the extent of the change — Apple is carrying over the aluminum unibody and camera plateau from the iPhone 17 Pro rather than introducing a new shape.

In the US, the 256GB iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199, and the Pro Max starts at $1,299. In

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Frequently Asked Questions

References

MacObserver — iPhone 18 Pro Is Official: Price, Release Date, Specs and Every New Feature Apple Just Announced https://www.macobserver.com/tips/round-ups/iphone-18-pro-official-price-release-date-specs-new-features/

Tom’s Hardware — Apple A20 Pro Powers iPhone 18 Pro — The Company’s First 2-Nanometer Smartphone Chip https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/apple-a20-pro-powers-iphone-18-pro-the-companys-first-2-nanometer-smartphone-chip