Apple has unveiled the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, its latest flagship slab smartphones. They promise significant improvements across all facets, including the camera.

The iPhone 18 Pro series smartphones look mostly familiar but embrace a refined aluminum design and striking new colorways, including Deep Black, Silver, Burgundy, and Light Blue.

As expected, Apple Intelligence, or artificial intelligence, is a significant focus for the new iPhone. As Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026 when it showed off iOS 27, the newest flagship iPhone will incorporate a new Siri, Siri AI, that promises to be more personal, productive, and ideally, useful. Siri AI is a full-fledged app across Apple’s entire ecosystem that works alongside apps, like the camera. Siri mode in Camera introduces advanced Visual Intelligence to the iPhone’s built-in Camera app.

The key takeaway here is that Apple Intelligence is getting much more “personal.” Siri AI rolls out in beta in October. Some features will have usage limits, and increased access will come with “most” iCloud+ plans. PetaPixel will dig into this more soon.

There are significant improvements to photo editing. Apple Intelligence in Photos promises to make the Pro Camera system more versatile, per Apple. There’s improved cleanup tools, generative expand, and a Spatial Reframing tool that adjusts the perspective of a photo after it was captured.

A20 Pro

These new Apple Intelligence features rely on the brand new, 2-nanometer A20 Pro. It has a 6-core CPU with 2 new super cores, promising up to 20% better performance. Apple says the super cores are the fastest CPUs in any smartphone, and are “desktop class.”

The new A20 Pro’s GPU has a seven-core design and up to a 40% graphics improvement. The Neural Accelerators are up to twice as fast as before and power advanced AI, like third-party LLMs.

The A20 Pro’s has two Neural Engines, delivering a total of 32 cores designed explicitly for powering on-device AI tasks.

The A20 Pro has custom packaging inspired by Apple’s M-series chips which the company says dramatically improves thermal performance.

Thermals and Performance

Apple’s focus on the iPhone 18 Pro’s thermal design goes beyond the A20 Pro. The entire phone has been designed for improved thermal performance, which improves mobile gaming, AI performance, and, presumably, high-resolution video recording.

The iPhone 18 Pro’s vapor chamber has three times the surface area of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple promises the highest sustained performance on any iPhone ever, including a 40% sustained performance gain versus iPhone 17 Pro.

“These are giant leaps,” Apple says.

Despite iPhone 18 Pro’s thinner design, the battery life is better. The iPhone 18 Pro offers similar battery life as the iPhone 17 Pro Max, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max has 45 hours of video playback, the best battery life of any iPhone to date.

The Biggest Camera Improvement In Years

As rumored, the iPhone 18 Pro series is getting a redesigned aperture system. iPhone 18 Pro has a new 48-megapixel Fusion Main camera with variable aperture, promising “creative control taht wasn’t possible before.”

As expected, it’s Apple’s “most advanced” iPhone camera yet. The aperture blades are each thinner than a human hair, and are designed to be very lightweight but durable. There’s a new custom-designed lens to ensure image quality across the entire aperture range.

In darker environments, the aperture opens to let in about 50% more light, improving low-light performance and Night Mode photography.

Control carries over the upgraded Camera app, too. Photographers can control the aperture, of course, but also easily change the shutter speed and white balance. These features have been available in third-party apps before, but Apple is bringing significantly enhanced Pro controls to the built-in app.

Authenticity

Apple Reference Image is a new content authenticity tool. The new iPhone 18 Pro camera signs photos at the sensor level, and the authenticity image lives with the original file indefinitely. Apple says it’s like a digital negative to visual confirm what was actually in the shot at the time of capture.

Developing…