iPhone 18 Pro | ★★★★☆ | From £1,199
Every year a new iPhone comes out and every year my peers at CNET and TechRadar and Wired begin to foam at the mouth over the number of cores on the CPU – how many milliseconds might that shave off the time it takes to open an app? And every year my first thought is OMG, this comes in now? Or holy s**t, check out that orange! Or, this year, wow, burgundy!
The way an iPhone looks and feels – the way it sits in your hand, the smoothness of the aluminium, the curve of the bezel, its hue and vibrancy – is every bit as important as the gubbins whirring beneath the screen. An iPhone is – for better or worse – an irreplaceable part of your life, an extension of your very being. It needs to look the part.
The burgundy iPhone 18 Pro
So I am pleased to report that the burgundy iPhone 18 Pro looks lovely, its deep, rich colour bringing to mind the Tom Ford nail polish Plum Noir. The sheet of coloured glass inlaid into the back is now tone-matched with the rest of the body, which you’ll only ever notice if you’re the kind of cowboy who uses their £1,199 iPhone without a cover. It is slightly heavier than its predecessor (five grams) but if you notice that without using scales, you’re more attuned to the universe than I.
Apart from the colour, this is very much an iterative upgrade: it’s faster and has more battery life, which Apple reckons will get you about 34 hours of video playback. In that time you could watch the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy three times and still have enough battery left to get through the director’s cut of Blade Runner. I just spent 90 minutes playing the puzzle game Machinika: Atlas, which is relatively graphics intensive, and my battery is still at 86 per cent. We’re creeping closer to the day when you’ll be able to go two sleeps before plugging your phone in, although by that time the AI apocalypse will be well under way and we’ll be back to telling the time using a sun dial and playing games with sticks and bits of string.
Speaking of playing Machinika: Atlas: I was sitting in the sun and could still make out what was happening thanks to the incredibly bright screen (3,000 Nits!). Putting the brightness up to full when you’re in bed feels like you’re being interrogated by a 1940s policeman.
You will notice that the “dynamic island” that houses the front-facing camera is now smaller, giving you more screen space when it’s not in use and allowing you to display three “Live Activities”. In theory you could watch a timer, track an incoming Uber see the current song playing on Spotify.
All you need to know about the camera
And then there is the camera, which is a genuinely impressive upgrade. The 18 Pro introduces a variable aperture for the main camera, which gives you more control than ever over your photographs. Most people will never leave “automatic” mode but if you crave faster shots in low light with less blurring, you’re in luck.
The photography suite now includes a 48MP main camera, 48MP ultra-wide camera and 48MP 4x telephoto lens, in addition to the 18MP selfie camera. Shooting out and about in the City shows off just how good this set-up is. Image stabilisation that borders on witchcraft coupled with that telephoto lens means you can snap a picture from atop a skyscraper and see what kind of trainers someone at street level is wearing.
There’s also a new AI-assisted focus tracking feature that’s great for taking pictures of your pets, which, let’s face it, is about 90 per cent of the world’s photography output. Google’s Pixel has made huge strides in photography in recent years but these improvements keep Apple’s flagship ahead of the competition.
And finally, for anyone who has accidentally ended up here instead of TechRadar, let me tell you about the new A20 Pro chip, which replaces the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro: it’s 20 per cent faster, with 40 per cent faster graphics performance. You won’t get close to testing its limits through normal use. Make of that what you will.
• The iPhone 18 Pro is available now priced from £1,199