iPhone 18 Pro Pre-Orders: Upgrading Gets You These 10 New Features

Apple this week unveiled the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. While the devices look very similar to the iPhone 17 Pro models, there are still quite a few new features and incremental changes compared to the previous generation.

Below, we have recapped 10 new features coming with the iPhone 18 Pro models, which can be pre-ordered now (pre-orders began on Saturday, September 12 at 5 a.m. Pacific Time). The devices will be released on Friday, September 18.

• A20 Pro chip, the first 2nm chip in an iPhone. It has a 6-core CPU, a 7-core GPU, and a 32-core Neural Engine. Apple says the chip delivers up to 20% faster CPU performance and up to 40% faster graphics performance compared to the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple also says sustained performance is up to 40% faster.
• Three new color options: Burgundy, Black, and Glacier. Orange is no longer an option. The rear aluminum and Ceramic Shield glass area are now more color matched.
• A smaller Dynamic Island with support for up to three Live Activities at once.
• The main 48-megapixel Fusion camera on both the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max has variable aperture, allowing you to adjust the amount of light that reaches the image sensor for greater control over depth of field. Apple says this upgrade will allow for improved low-light photography and crisper details in the back of group photos. Aperture options include ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, and ƒ/4.0.
• In the Camera app on iPhone 18 Pro models, new Pro controls allow you to manually control or adjust shutter speed, white balance, and aperture, and there is an option to use a histogram.
• iPhone 18 Pro models can record time-lapse videos in 4K and Dolby Vision HDR.
• Both of the iPhone 18 Pro models have longer battery life compared to the previous generation — especially the iPhone 18 Pro Max. If we go by Apple's offline video playback metric, the iPhone 18 Pro Max has up to 15% longer battery life compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Fast charging to 50% now takes 15 minutes, down from 20 minutes.
• The revamped vapor chamber cooling system in the iPhone 18 Pro models has three times more surface area than the one in the iPhone 17 Pro models, for even better heat dissipation.
• At least some iPhone 18 Pro models in some countries have Apple's second-generation C2 cellular modem for 5G and LTE. Apple says the C2 chip has "AI-powered improvements" to cellular quality and reliability, delivering "meaningfully faster uploads when compared to its previous C1X modem while consuming 15% less energy. In the U.S., the chip supports mmWave 5G.
• There is now a 2TB storage capacity for both the Pro and Pro Max models — it was previously exclusive to the iPhone 17 Pro Max.