Apple's iPhone 18 Pro adds a moving camera aperture, 45 hours of battery and a 2nm chip. Kenya still waits.

Apple has published the European product information sheets for the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 18 Pro Max. The iPhone 18 Pro has a 4,056 mAh battery. The iPhone 18 Pro Max has 5,391 mAh. Both figures are for the versions with a physical SIM tray.

Apple does not list battery capacity on its spec pages anywhere in the world. It quotes hours of video playback instead. In Europe it no longer has the choice. Regulation (EU) 2023/1669 has required every smartphone sold in the bloc since 20th June 2025 to carry an energy label and a one-page product information sheet, and that sheet has a line for rated battery capacity in mAh. Apple files one per model and links it from its European product pages.

Compared to last year’s 17 Pro and Pro Max

Last year’s sheets put the iPhone 17 Pro at 3,988 mAh and the iPhone 17 Pro Max at 4,823 mAh. The Pro gained 68 mAh, or 1.7 percent. The Pro Max gained 568 mAh, or 11.8 percent.

For a 6.3 inch device, with a new A20 Pro chip, and a bigger vapor chamber, Apple had very little space to work with. So battery gains at 1.7% is quite a stretch. However, at launch Apple said the Pro now has last year’s 17 Pro Max’s battery life. So, the small gain, plus the efficiecy for the A20 Pro, built on a 2nm process, the new C2 modem which draws 15 percent less energy, could mean those 17 Pro Max numbers can be achived on the 18 Pro smaller phone.

Endurance

Apple’s documentation as requested by the EU also reveal to us more interesting figures on battery endurance per cycle. It is the closest thing to a like-for-like battery comparison across brands:

The iPhone 18 Pro is rated at 52 hours, up from 47.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max is rated at 62 hours, up from 53.

Both are good for at least 1,000 charge cycles.

eSIM-only vs Sim Tray

The eSIM-only phones are different inside. Apple sells eSIM only iPhones in 12 markets, among them the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Japan, and they use the space the tray would have taken for more battery. Apple has not published their exact capacities. However, the company puts the gain at two extra hours of video playback compared to iPhones with SIM trays.

Last year, the iPhone 17 Pro went from 3,988 mAh with one to 4,252 mAh eSIM only, and the 17 Pro Max from 4,823 mAh to 5,088 mAh eSIM only. With those same numbers, we can expect the eSIM-only iPhone 18 Pro to feature a 4,320 mAh battery or thereabouts and the iPhone 18 Pro Max to have something near 5,655 mAh.