Apple iPhone 18 Pro Review

Design

• Burgundy leads a more subdued colour range
• Last year’s shape, refined
• Slightly heavier than the 17 Pro

Burgundy is this year’s flagship hue, and it’s the colour of the iPhone 18 Pro Max I had. Seen in person, it’s much richer and darker than Apple’s official images.

The other three options are much more understated compared with 2025’s loud Cosmic Orange. Silver is Apple’s long-standing staple, while Glacier is the range’s nod to blue – and a far stronger blue than the Sky Blue of the iPhone Air and MacBook Air.

Black, the colour you’ll see in the photos alongside the review, is a true, deep black rather than a dark grey or off-blue. I’m a big fan of how it looks, and it’s very welcome to have a black Pro iPhone available again.

This is a refinement year, as often happens after a major redesign; Apple has stuck closely to the 17 Pro’s blueprint. There’s an aluminium chassis with gently rounded edges and the camera plateau running across the upper back. A decade ago, this would be an S series update.

The recessed panel beneath the cameras now contrasts more subtly with the rest of the phone than on the 17 Pro, and I think that’s an improvement. I said this in my 18 Pro Max review, but the older design always gave me the impression of a battery case bolted onto the back. It just looked odd, and not very Apple.

On the frame you’ll find the Action button, which I find handy, and Camera Control, which Apple still hasn’t made nearly enough use of. Nothing highlights this more than its lack of use with the new Pro camera controls, which I will delve into later.

Weight has crept up to 211g, around 5g more than before, although it’s ridiculously light compared to the near 250g Pro Max I was using before I switched to this. Apple has cut grams in the past by fitting smaller batteries, producing lighter, thinner phones. I’d rather carry a little more for the added battery life – although moving to silicon-carbon cells could let Apple lose some weight without giving up much capacity.

Screen

• Ceramic Shield 2 protection
• A vivid 6.3-inch OLED
• A marginally smaller Dynamic Island

The only change you’ll spot on the front is a smaller Dynamic Island. With the Face ID components relocated beneath the display towards the left-hand side, the cutout around the selfie camera has been trimmed slightly. With this benefit comes the ability to have three Live Activities rather than two.

I assumed this would be a highlight, but the change is so slight that it makes little real-world difference. Anyone who found the cutout annoying on older iPhones will still find it annoying here; anyone who didn’t won’t start now.

Beyond that, there’s nothing new in display tech this year, yet this remains among the finest screens on a phone. Its colours are lush, which makes streaming, gaming and browsing your camera roll a joy on the 6.3-inch 120Hz ProMotion OLED panel, and Ceramic Shield 2 makes it highly resistant to damage. You can get away without using a screen protector here; the coating is that good at rejecting smaller scratches.

I’d always recommend the larger 6.9-inch iPhone 18 Pro Max for those with bigger hands, or those who want the biggest canvas for games and videos. Yet, I think this 6.3-inch size is nice – it’s a good midpoint, offering enough screen while still being more accessible. I can use this iPhone one-handed without feeling like I need to dislocate my thumb to reach the corners.

Performance

• Class-leading graphics performance
• The A20 Pro copes with anything
• Storage options up to 2TB

I’ve reviewed iPhones for over a decade now, and I feel like I say the same thing about performance every time. It’s fast, it can handle any app from the App Store, and slowdown is rare. The same is very much true for the iPhone 18 Pro. However, with AI tasks becoming a bigger part of iOS, there is more of a need for a chip with enough power for today, and a few years down the line.

Benchmarks tell a striking story of just how powerful Apple’s latest piece of silicon is. In Geekbench 7’s GPU test, the 18 Pro’s A20 Pro posted roughly 20x the score of a Pixel 11 Pro XL. This isn’t some old device either, but Google’s month-old flagship that costs roughly the same. The difference in gaming performance here is, simply put, staggering.

Up against Qualcomm’s 2026 flagship chip, the A20 Pro is around 3x faster. No phone GPU I’ve tested comes anywhere near it, and performance held steady through prolonged runs, which is key. Performance doesn’t drop after a while – something the 17 Pro was prone to do.

Compared with the iPhone 17 Pro, games maintained higher performance for longer while the phone ran cooler. It’s an obvious step forward, and evidence that Apple’s internal design work is paying off.

It’s strong on AI workloads as well, finishing ahead of the Pixel 11 and Z Fold 8 Ultra in Geekbench’s AI benchmark. In side-by-side tests, it also completed Siri AI requests quicker than the iPhone 17 Pro every time.

Over my week of testing the 18 Pro and a further week of testing the Pro Max, I couldn’t find a single task that troubled the chip. That’s a big contrast with the Pixel 11 Pro XL, which failed to keep games at a steady 30fps unless graphics were dropped to low. The A20 Pro’s efficiency also feeds into the battery, pushing stamina to a level iPhones haven’t reached in years.

UK models use Apple’s own C2 cellular modem alongside the N1 chip, which handles Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and there’s still a physical SIM tray. Curiously, US units ditch the C2 in favour of a Qualcomm modem on the Pro Max, but retain it on the Pro. There hasn’t yet been any confirmation about why this is.

Camera

• Consistent results
• A mechanical variable aperture for the main sensor
• Expanded manual settings – though not via Camera Control

The big hardware upgrade for the Pro iPhones in 2026 is the main 48MP camera’s new mechanical aperture. It regulates the light reaching the sensor, and Apple’s camera app lets you choose between four settings: f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4.0.

The widest aperture brings in the most light and the softest backgrounds, while f/4.0 maximises how much of the image stays sharp. Third-party apps get access to a wider range, and you can set it yourself or let Automatic mode choose.

In Automatic, it spent most of its time at f/1.8 or f/1.48. I only saw it switch to f/4.0 once – while photographing a document, for instance. As an idea, I love it. No iPhone has had this before, and beyond a handful of short-lived Android experiments, it’s never become a lasting phone feature. The real-world payoff is small, however.

Wide-open shots have marginally more background blur and f/4.0 images are a little crisper towards the edges, but the differences are subtle enough that you’ll need to hunt for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people didn’t notice them at all. That’s particularly true when software portrait modes already exaggerate the look of a wide aperture so heavily, and make the effect – especially the blurry background – look so much stronger. That could change as sensors get larger in future iPhones, and I’d like Apple to keep it.

The camera app itself now offers much more hands-on control – features ‘Pros’ have been asking for since the series began. There’s adjustable shutter speed, white balance and focus, plus a histogram that you’d previously have needed a third-party app to get.

These can be pinned along the top of the viewfinder so they’re also accessible, and you can disregard the ones that you’ll never use. The icons are very small though, and even hard to hit on the smaller-sized 18 Pro. Still, having advanced options permanently within reach is a real bonus. 

Strangely, Camera Control can’t access any of them – it only offers the previous generation’s settings and doesn’t let you change aperture – which leaves the experience feeling disjointed and muddled.

In good light, the 18 Pro and some of the best Android camera phones like the Pixel 11 Pro are very evenly matched up to 8x zoom. The Pixel goes heavier on HDR, deepening shadows and boosting contrast, which can tip images into looking artificial and obviously smartphone-processed.

Apple’s rendering is more true-to-life, with warmer colour and, in my view, more convincing texture on things like fur and foliage. If you’d like a cooler look, Photographic Styles can shift the palette, and there are film-inspired presets that add grain and texture for extra drama.

At night, it’s largely down to taste. Every £/$1000+ flagship produces dependable results in dim or near-dark conditions. The newest Pixel and the Galaxy S26 Ultra deliver brighter night images, but the iPhone uses shorter exposures – which I prefer, since its shots look closer to how the scene really was rather than artificially lit.

Otherwise, the camera hardware is largely carried over from the 17 Pro. You get three 48MP sensors – the new variable-aperture main camera, a 13mm ultrawide covering 120 degrees and a 100mm telephoto – along with a strong 18MP Centre Stage front camera that takes great selfies.

Video remains Apple’s trump card. As with earlier Pro models, the 18 Pro is the best phone for shooting it; nothing else I’ve tested records footage that’s as smooth, sharp and attractive, whatever competitors claim on their spec sheets. Cinematic effects can now be applied or stripped out after you’ve finished filming, with the original clip left intact.

Battery Life

• The longest-lasting smaller Pro iPhone in years
• Quick wired charging
• MagSafe convenience

Judging any phone’s battery life after a short testing period, even two weeks, is a tough task and not one I particularly like doing. The first days of use, as the phone installs apps and gets everything ready, always hammers the battery life. So those days can be discounted immediately. Things start to improve after a week, and then everything steadies out.

I’ve been using the 18 Pro for a few weeks now, and I am impressed. This could, of course, change down the line, but I would say this is the best standard Pro iPhone for endurance I have used in several years.

When I reviewed the iPhone 17 Pro, I said the battery life had improved from the 16 Pro, and I would typically be left with a decent amount left at the end of the day, but it was still very much a phone that would require nightly charging. With the 18 Pro, it’s closer to the battery life of the 17 Pro Max – a full day of harder use is typically easily achievable, and lighter users can go into the second day.

I am not getting the full days of the 18 Pro Max, so the bigger iPhone is still the best for battery life overall. Still, this is probably as good as we will get on phones this size until silicon carbon tech is used by Apple.

Charging by cable is quick. Plugged into a MacBook Pro power adapter – above the 60W Apple recommends – the phone hit 50% after 15 minutes and was full inside an hour. This is the fastest charger on an iPhone yet.

Wireless and MagSafe charging are considerably slower, but MagSafe’s advantages, particularly its range of magnetic accessories, make me happy Apple has kept it.

Software

• Runs iOS 27
• Siri finally gets its AI overhaul
• Liquid Glass you can adjust

The new Siri AI is the version of Apple Intelligence we should have had all along. It anticipates what you need, understands what’s displayed on your screen, and its answers are much more accurate and helpful. A new app also stores your chats with it, so you can revisit and continue earlier conversations. This is a far cry from the limited Siri that has been on iPhones before.

It’s the headline addition in iOS 27, landing after a long spell of Apple talking it up and pushing it back. It isn’t limited to the 18 Pro, but it responds noticeably faster here than on the 17 Pro.

Google’s Gemini now handles some photo editing tasks behind the scenes. Reframe alters a picture’s perspective after it’s been captured, and Extend generates extra scenery around the edges. I’m still highly sceptical of AI altering photos, and neither tool convinced me. Reframing a shot of my dog in the living room, it invented a set of drawers under the TV that was never there. That’s unavoidable – it has no way of knowing what was really there – but it leaves me uncomfortable.

In contrast, the camera’s new Reference mode securely signs images at the pixel level at the moment of capture, so they can’t be altered or doctored.

iOS 27 also brings a slider that sets how see-through Liquid Glass appears, letting you reduce the effect or turn it up to the maximum. I’m a fan of Liquid Glass anyway, but more ways to personalise iOS are always welcome.

Apple doesn’t set out how long it’ll support phones for, so I can’t say this will get six or seven years of updates. The iPhone 11 is still supported by iOS 27, so expect many years of new features here.

Should you buy it?