Apple has announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. Prices start at $1,199 and $1,299 for the 256GB models. Pre-orders open on Saturday 12th September, with the phones going on sale on Friday 18th September. Today’s was the first keynote run by John Ternus, who replaced Tim Cook as CEO on 1 September.
Apple only launched three iPhones today:
- the iPhone Duo – Company’s first foldable device
- iPhone 18 Pro
- iPhone 18 Pro Max
The standard iPhone 18 and the cheaper iPhone 18e now arrive around March 2027, which we explained in August.
New variable aperture
The 48MP main camera now has a variable aperture. The the first on any iPhone. Aperture is the opening that lets light onto the sensor. A wide opening pulls in more light and blurs the background. A narrow one keeps more of the scene sharp. Every iPhone until now had a fixed opening.
Six laser-cut blades move between ƒ/1.48 and ƒ/4.0. The camera picks a setting on its own, and you can override it with four settings in the Camera app. Apple has published an API so other camera apps can move the aperture too. The Pro controls now include shutter speed, white balance and a live histogram.
The rest of the camera system stays at 48MP across all three lenses. The telephoto is a 100mm periscope at 4x optical, with an 8x crop Apple rates at 12MP and calls optical quality. The ultra wide sits at 13mm. The front camera is 18MP with autofocus.
There’s also something new Apple calls “Apple Reference Image” which is signing for every pixel the sensor records to prove a photo came out of a camera rather than being generated. This is verified through Private Cloud Compute. It exists as Apple launches Spatail Reframing and Extend Tool together with photo cleanup that uses AI to rework pictures taken on iPhone.
Battery
Apple is quoting 36 hours of video playback for the iPhone 18 Pro. That’s massive. And 45hrs on the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Apple said the Pro max is the largest battery increse they’ve ever shipped. From real use data, Apple quoted 30 hours of use for the Pro Max. These figures are for the eSIM only versions which will sell in US, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. For other markets with a SIM tray, battery will reduce.
This time, Apple has also included faster charging. Charging reaches 50 percent in about 15 minutes wired, but only with a 60W-capable USB-C cable and a USB PD 3.1 power adapter. Wireless charging hits 50 percent in 30 minutes.
There’s now a bigger vapor chamber, with three times last year’s surface area. Apple says this is the reason for up to 40 percent better sustained performance.
Siri
There’s a new A20 Pro chipset powering the iPhone 18 Pro series. It’s built on a 2nm process. It has a 6-core CPU, a 7-core GPU that Apple rates 40 percent faster than the A19 Pro. There’s a Neural Engine split into two 16-core blocks for 32 cores in total. Apple says that doubles the AI processing of the A19 Pro, with 50 percent more memory bandwidth.
iOS 27 arrives on 14 September as a free update, and it carries the rebuilt Siri, though still in beta. Siri can now use personal context across messages, email and photos, see what is on screen, and run inside the Camera app to answer questions about whatever you point it at. That’s for English. French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish follow in October. Apple is not shipping the new Siri in the EU at launch.
Prices, storage and when the devices arrive in Kenya
Both phones cost $100 more than their iPhone 17 Pro equivalents, which started at $1,099 and $1,199. The rise comes out of the global memory shortage that has pushed DRAM costs up across the industry through 2026.
Storage tiers are 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB across both Pro and Pro Max. Apple published prices only for the 256GB models. We’ll know other prices later on.
Other Specs:
- 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch Super Retina XDR displays
- at 120Hz and 3,000 nits peak outdoors,
- an aluminium unibody with Ceramic Shield 2 front and back,
- IP68 to six metres, and
- a smaller Dynamic Island that now holds three Live Activities.
- Apple’s own C2 modem replaces the C1X, with faster uploads at 15 percent less energy.
- Colours are black, silver, glacier and burgundy.
For Kenya, we can expect prices between KES 160,000 and KES 200,000 when these first land.
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