Apple has finally unveiled the long-awaited iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. While they stick with the familiar look of the previous generation, there is plenty changing under the hood.
You get the same crisp 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch LTPO Super Retina XDR OLED displays as before, with matching resolutions, refresh rates, and brightness levels. The main visual tweak up front is a slimmer Dynamic Island that lets you keep track of up to three live activities at once. But the selfie camera did not receive any upgrade, as it keeps the same 18MP sensor.
Colour choices get a new tweak this year, with burgundy taking centre stage as the flagship hue. It sits alongside glacier, black, and silver options.
The real headline upgrade is the new Apple A20 Pro chip, built on a cutting-edge 2nm process. It packs an extra CPU core, a new GPU core, and a second neural engine compared to last year’s silicon. That brings the total CPU count to six, featuring two desktop-class super cores, while the 7-core GPU promises graphics processing that is 40% faster than the A19 Pro. Apple has also stacked the machine learning side of things with 32 neural cores across two engines and boosted memory bandwidth by 50%.
To keep all that power running smoothly, Apple reworked the thermal design inside. There is a next-generation vapour chamber that is three times larger than the one in the iPhone 17 Pro. Taking cues from its M-series chips, Apple used updated silicon packaging to link the processor and memory directly to the vapour chamber, keeping thermal throttling at bay far more efficiently.
Over on the back, you still get a triple 48MP camera setup, but the main lens now features a variable aperture. You can tweak it manually all the way down to f/4.0 and adjust shutter speeds, letting in up to 50% more light for low-light shots while opening up new possibilities for cinematic video. Photographers also get finer control over image texture and grain using the updated photographic styles.
Battery life sees a serious jump, especially on the eSIM-only 18 Pro Max, which Apple claims offers the longest battery life ever on an iPhone at up to 45 hours of video playback. The smaller eSIM 18 Pro achieves an impressive 36 hours. Fast charging gets a nice speed boost as well, getting you to a 50% top-up in just 15 minutes.
On the software front, both models launch with iOS 27, deep-set Siri AI integration, and expanded Apple Intelligence features. Siri now hooks into a broader selection of third-party apps, complete with a dedicated app that saves your chat history and syncs seamlessly across your Apple gear.
Pricing and Availability
You can pick up the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage options across all four colours. Prices start at RM5,499 for the 18 Pro and RM5,999 for the 18 Pro Max.
Pre-orders go live in Malaysia this Saturday, 12 September, before official sales begin the following week on Friday, 18 September.