Known Issue · Opinion

Is the iPhone 18 Pro's camera worth the upgrade?

The iPhone 18 Pro changes one camera lens. Here is what that means if you have a 17 Pro or a 16 Pro.

Not today’s newsApple has made small camera changes every year. This year the 18 Pro changes one lens out of three.

Swami Guru4 min read
Close-up of the black iPhone 18 Pro camera plateau with three lenses and the flash
The iPhone 18 Pro in black. Image: Apple.

Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro page opens with six feature tiles. The first is the main camera: “48MP Fusion Main camera with variable aperture and Pro controls.” The fifth is the front camera, an 18MP Center Stage unit that the 17 Pro already had.

Apple’s six feature tiles for the iPhone 18 Pro: the main camera, the A20 Pro chip, battery life, fast charging, the front camera and Siri

Apple’s summary tiles for the iPhone 18 Pro. Image: Apple.

One lens

The main camera used to have a fixed f/1.78 aperture. On the 18 Pro it switches between f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4.0, and the Camera app gets manual controls for aperture and shutter speed along with a live histogram.

Nothing else in the camera system moved. The 48MP ultrawide (13mm, f/2.2), the 4x telephoto and the 18MP front camera are listed exactly as they were on the 17 Pro. Mac Observer compared Apple’s spec pages line by line and found that, and DPReview says the same.

What the new aperture does

At f/1.48 the lens lets in about half a stop more light than the 17 Pro’s. 9to5Mac shot the same dim scene at 1/15 second on both phones. The 18 Pro used ISO 10,000 and the 17 Pro used ISO 12,500, which works out to about a third of a stop. Night Mode shots also finish a little sooner, which helps if your hands aren’t steady.

Depth of field is the other half. DPReview puts the range at roughly f/5 to f/14 in full-frame terms, so background blur won’t change much. Portrait mode already handles that in software.

You’d need both phones side by side and a lot of zooming to see any of this.

The other view

PetaPixel’s reviewer was underwhelmed at the keynote, then shot about 1,000 photos and hours of video and decided the experience is markedly improved. The same review says people coming from last year’s phone may take a while to notice. Most other reviewers end up where I do. 9to5Mac says there’s little reason to upgrade from a 17 Pro, and MacRumors says there’s no general-purpose reason to.

If you have a 16 Pro

The 16 Pro has the same fixed f/1.78 main lens as the 17 Pro, so the new aperture is the only hardware difference in the main camera between your phone and this one. The bigger camera changes came with the 17 Pro. Its telephoto got a much larger 48MP sensor, which DPReview calls the biggest upgrade that camera has had, and it added the 18MP front camera.

Most of what a 16 Pro owner would gain in the camera comes from the 17 Pro, which is now last year’s model. Engadget points out that Apple added $100 to the US prices of the older iPhones it still sells, so check what a 17 Pro costs before you count on a saving.

Price

The 256GB iPhone 18 Pro is ₹1,64,900 in India, according to Cashify. The 17 Pro started at ₹1,34,900 for the same storage, so the increase is ₹30,000. In the US it starts at $1,199 against $1,099 for the 17 Pro, per TechRepublic. The new A20 Pro chip, a bigger vapor chamber and a smaller Dynamic Island are part of that price too. The camera is what Apple leads with.

Color

What people will notice first is the color. Burgundy replaces last year’s orange, alongside black, silver and glacier. PetaPixel notes that 17 Pro cases still fit.

The iPhone 18 Pro in black, silver, glacier and burgundy

The four iPhone 18 Pro colors. Image: Apple.

The call

If you have a 17 Pro, skip it. If you have a 16 Pro, look at the 17 Pro first. If your phone is older than that, the 18 Pro makes sense, but buy it for the whole phone and not for the aperture.

Sources:

Known Issue · The takeWhere we land
Plain about the money

If you shoot in manual mode or in dim rooms and you're on a 16 Pro or older, you'll get something out of it. Everyone else is paying more for three cameras with last year's specs.

The operator’s read

Three of the four cameras carried over, so the launch needed its headline from the fourth.

A mechanical aperture is easy to say in one line and easy to show in a tile. The ISO numbers show it does something. Mac Observer called it the narrowest camera upgrade decision Apple has offered a Pro owner in a while.

Swami Guru · Eleven years leading product
The callskip

17 Pro owners: skip. 16 Pro owners: most of your camera case is the 17 Pro's, so price a 17 Pro first.

Known Issue

Swami Guru

Swami's column on the things that stay broken. Eleven years leading product at Condé Nast and Newsweek before this.

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