Apple's “Surprise and Shine” keynote brought two new Pro iPhones and the company's first foldable, the iPhone Duo. Here's every model, every price, the release date, and which one is worth your money.
Apple has announced the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro Max and the iPhone Duo, the first foldable iPhone, and the biggest change to the shape of the range since the iPhone X. It was also the first keynote led by John Ternus, who took over as chief executive on 1 September after Tim Cook moved to executive chairman.
Three phones, one new form factor and a price list that has moved in one direction. Below is the full picture: what's new on each model, what it costs, when you can buy one, and how to work out which of the three actually suits you.
The two Pro models keep a familiar shape. Same aluminium unibody construction, same all-screen front, same 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch sizes as last year's Pro range. Pick one up and it reads as an evolution rather than a redesign — the changes are mostly in the chip, the camera and the finish.
Both screens are Super Retina XDR OLED panels with ProMotion up to 120Hz and an Always-On display. The Action button and Camera Control both carry over, so anyone moving up from an iPhone 16 Pro or 17 Pro will find the controls immediately familiar.
Colours are Burgundy, Glacier, Silver and Black across both Pro models — a lineup that trades last year's orange for a deep, wine-toned red as this year's standout finish.
The headline camera change is a variable aperture on the 48MP Fusion Main camera. Every iPhone until now has had a fixed opening — the phone controls exposure with shutter speed and ISO alone. The 18 Pro can physically open and close the aperture, which does two useful things.
Wide open, it pulls in more light, so low-light shots need less computational rescuing and hold onto more real detail. Stopped down, it deepens the field of focus, so a group photo or a landscape stays sharp from front to back instead of quietly blurring whatever wasn't the focus point. Compact cameras have done this for decades; getting it into a phone body this thin is the achievement.
Apple has paired the new sensor with new Pro controls and Photographic Styles 3, which add finer adjustment over texture and grain after the shot is taken — more creative range for anyone shooting RAW or editing on the phone itself.
This is the one people will be talking about. The iPhone Duo is a book-style foldable: a 5.4-inch outer screen you use like a normal phone, opening to a 7.6-inch inner display — Apple's largest and thinnest iPhone screen ever. Closed, it's a phone. Open, it's a small tablet that fits in a jacket pocket.
Both panels are Super Retina XDR OLED, running ProMotion up to 120Hz and hitting up to 3000 nits outdoors. The build is Grade 5 titanium with Ceramic Shield on the front and back, and the whole thing is IP68 rated for splashes and dust.
On camera, the Duo leans on software as much as optics. Smart Take uses on-device AI to spot when everyone in frame is posed and fires the shutter automatically, and both the inner and outer screens can preview the shot at the same time. There are trade-offs, and they're worth knowing before you get attached to the idea:
There isn't room for the Face ID sensor array in this chassis, so authentication moves to a fingerprint reader in the side button. It works well — it's just a change if you've spent years not touching your phone to unlock it.
Two rear cameras: a 48MP Main and a 48MP Ultra Wide. For a phone at this price that's a genuine omission, and it's the clearest sign that the Duo is about the screen rather than the camera.
Elsewhere it's well equipped: the same A20 Pro chip as the Pro models with a vapor chamber to keep it cool, up to 2TB of storage, and a body that's just 5.2mm thick open and 11.3mm closed, weighing 254g. Colours are Night Sky and Star White.
The iPhone Duo ships a month behind the Pro models — pre-orders open 16 October, with sales starting 23 October in the UK and more than 70 other countries. This is Apple's first foldable, and with limited volumes expected early on, ordering promptly will matter more than it usually does for a new iPhone.
All three phones run the A20 Pro, which Apple describes as the most powerful and efficient chip it has ever put in an iPhone. It's vapor-cooled across all three models, and purpose-built for on-device AI, with Neural Accelerators and a new dual 16-core Neural Engine feeding everything from image generation to the phone's smarter camera features.
That efficiency is where the battery gains largely come from — the same jobs, done for less energy, for longer. It also underpins Siri AI, Apple's more conversational assistant built on Apple Intelligence, which is rolling out in English with a new dedicated app.
Apple's own figures put the iPhone 18 Pro Max at up to 45 hours of video playback — six hours more than the iPhone 17 Pro Max — and up to 30 hours of general use per charge. The iPhone Duo is rated for up to 24 hours of typical use and up to 44 hours of video playback on its outer display.
| Model | Video playback |
|---|---|
| iPhone 18 Pro | Up to 33 hours |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | Up to 45 hours |
| iPhone Duo | Up to 44 hours (outer display) |
Independent battery testing takes a week or two to land, so treat Apple's own figures as a comparison against last year's iPhone rather than a promise about your day. We'll add measured figures here once reviewers have run them.
Prices have moved up again this year. According to Apple's UK store, the iPhone 18 Pro now starts at £1,199 and the iPhone 18 Pro Max at £1,299 — both for the entry 256GB configuration.
| Model | 256GB | 512GB | 1TB | 2TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone 18 Pro | £1,199 | £1,399 | £1,799 | £2,399 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | £1,299 | £1,499 | £1,899 | £2,499 |
| iPhone Duo | £1,999 | £2,199 | £2,599 | £3,199 |
The iPhone Duo matches the iPhone 18 Pro Max's entry price almost exactly once you go up two storage tiers, and comfortably outprices every iPhone Apple has made — by a distance. It also makes the outgoing iPhone 17 Pro look like a considerably better buy than it did a week ago — more on that below.
The “Surprise and Shine” keynote streamed from Apple Park at 6pm UK time, John Ternus's first as chief executive.
From 1pm UK time for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. Popular configurations slip to later delivery dates within the hour, so it pays to be ready.
First deliveries land and the phones reach shops.
From 5am Pacific time, a month behind the Pro models.
Launching in the UK and more than 70 other countries, with a second wave of markets following on 30 October.
The sensible flagship. Everything that matters this year — the chip, the variable aperture camera — in the size that still works one-handed.
Buy it for the battery and the screen. If your phone is your main device all day and you'd rather not think about charging, this is the one.
For people who genuinely want a tablet in their pocket and will use the inner screen daily. Not the camera phone, and not the value pick — and you'll be waiting until October.
If none of those descriptions fits comfortably, there's a fourth answer worth taking seriously: buy last year's Pro. The iPhone 17 Pro has the same design language, an excellent camera system and a chip that will be supported for years — and it's several hundred pounds cheaper than the phone that replaced it.
There isn't one this autumn. Apple has split its iPhone launches across the year: the Pro models and the Duo arrive in September and October, and the standard iPhone 18 lands in spring 2027 alongside a new iPhone 18e.
If you were waiting for the normal iPhone — the one most people buy — you have a wait ahead of you. For a lot of people the practical answer between now and then is an iPhone 17 or 17 Pro, which are the same phones they were last week and now cost meaningfully less than the new models.
The iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and iPhone Duo are coming to Mozillion. In the meantime, the launch has done what every launch does: made the previous generation a much easier decision.
The iPhone 17 Pro is available brand new or Good as New, in Deep Blue, Cosmic Orange or Silver, from 256GB up to 1TB. Every Good as New handset comes checked and graded, so you know exactly what you're getting before it arrives — and prices on the outgoing range move quickly in the weeks after a launch, so it's worth checking what it's at today.
Pair either with a Pay Monthly SIM and you keep the running cost down for as long as you own the phone — which, with several years of iOS updates ahead of it, is likely to be a while.
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