How this review was made: it is based on Apple’s published specifications and on tests published by other reviewers, listed at the end. It is not a long-term personal test, and where a claim comes from one reviewer, I say so.

Pick up an iPhone 18 Pro and you could mistake it for last year’s model. The design is unchanged. GSMArena describes this as the series’ most modest update in a while, and it is right. But modest is not the same as unimportant, and two of this year’s changes are genuinely useful.

The aperture is the headline

For the first time, the main camera on an iPhone has a physical iris. Six blades move between four settings: f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4.0. Every phone camera before this has had to fake what this hardware does, relying on software to imitate depth and manage light.

Whether it matters depends on who you ask, and this is the most interesting disagreement in the reviews. The Shortcut found it delivers real gains at night and in portraits, with sharper detail and more natural background blur. GSMArena argues the practical benefit is limited in this particular implementation.

My reading is that both can be right. If you shoot in automatic and share to social media, you may rarely notice. If you like controlling a photograph, this is a real tool, and you can now set the aperture yourself in the Camera app. The 4x telephoto and the ultra wide carry over largely unchanged, both at 48MP.

Battery is the upgrade you will feel

The 18 Pro Max carries the largest battery yet in an iPhone: 5,567mAh in the eSIM-only model and 5,391mAh with a physical SIM tray. Apple rates it for up to 45 hours of video. In PhoneArena’s test it lasted a little over 12 hours of video playback, and The Shortcut reported ending heavy days with around 40 percent remaining, after an initial settling period of about nine days.

Charging is faster too, with about 50 percent in roughly 15 minutes on a compatible charger. Reports differ on the exact wattage, so I would trust the time rather than the number.

A chip you will mostly feel as coolness

The A20 Pro is built on a 2nm process, comes with 12GB of memory, and Tom’s Guide calls these the fastest phones it has tested. Honestly, last year’s phone was not slow either. The more practical gain may be heat. A much larger vapor chamber, which The Shortcut puts at about three times the size, helped keep the phone cooler during long camera sessions.

The Dynamic Island also shrinks, because the infrared camera moved beneath the display. It is a small and welcome tidy-up. The Shortcut found Face ID unaffected.

Pro or Pro Max

You get the same chip and the same aperture in both, so choose by size. The Max has a 6.9-inch display and the best battery life, but it weighs 249 grams and is 8.8mm thick. Even The Shortcut, which gave it a perfect score, wished it were lighter and thinner. If you use your phone one-handed, the smaller 18 Pro is the better daily companion.

The price

US prices rose by $100, to $1,199 for the Pro and $1,299 for the Pro Max, both with 256GB. Local prices will be higher, and in Bangladesh it is worth comparing warranty terms as carefully as the price.

Should you upgrade?

From an iPhone 16 or older, yes, particularly for the battery and the camera. From an iPhone 17 Pro, very probably not, unless the aperture is exactly what you have been missing. It is the kind of phone that makes no argument for itself in a shop and quietly makes the case over a year of ownership.

Sources