iPhone 18 Pro Max hands-on: Apple finally lets you control the camera

The welcome design tweaks

Perhaps we should get the design out of the way first, simply because it's the thing that's least changed since last year. This is, of course, aside from the fact that we have two new colors this year: burgundy and glacier. Both of these look very classy. Burgundy is perhaps somewhat strict, while glacier is definitely the fresher colorway. To be honest, Apple's current design language still looks perfectly modern and likable, so I wouldn’t complaint about the lack of changes to the exterior.

Actually, there is one interesting detail worth mentioning: the glass window on the back of the phone is now much better color-coordinated with the rest of the body, which I very much like.

The new, 2nm A20 Pro chipset will be a beast, but I'm more excited about the improved vapor chamber

The big changes, though, are on the inside. The one that comes up first on my personal list of notable upgrades is the new A20 Pro chipset. This is a big one because it's Apple's first 2nm chipset in the iPhone. We can basically expect both more power and better energy efficiency. Apple is promising up to 20% faster CPU performance, 40% faster graphics performance, and up to 40% better sustained performance against last year's A19 Pro.

Now, you may be thinking that Apple's iPhones already have more than enough power, but I would actually disagree. Take a look at the Liquid Glass UI that Apple introduced last year. It’s mesmerizing, sure, but that thing is also super-hungry for resources. So much so that I feel like Apple's current chips struggle to maintain steady high refresh rates.
By the way, I think I'm actually the most excited about the promise of better sustained performance. Don't get me wrong: peak performance is great for certain situations, but sustained performance is really difficult to achieve on a phone, especially if you're doing demanding workloads like long 3D gaming sessions, shooting video in 4K at high refresh rates and editing that video directly on the phone, or maybe even carrying out some local large language model tasks.

These are typically the things that would heat your phone a lot, and after a while it would need to throttle performance in order to maintain safe temperatures. That is why Apple is really investing a lot of energy into improving its vapor chamber cooling design – to enable better sustained performance.

Much improved battery life

The variable aperture is a party trick, but Pro Controls is a game-changer

The other big upgrade in this year's iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max is the brand-new main camera. It's still 48 MP, but now it has a variable aperture, and this is a first for an iPhone. Yes, I know Samsung was first to do that with the Galaxy S9, and that was many years ago. The S9 had two steps to its variable aperture.

There are also some modern, specialty cameraphones out there, like Huawei's Pura 90s Pro Max, which actually has a 10-step variable aperture. The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max come with a 4-step variable aperture, which adds a new level of control to the camera experience. The variable aperture can be beneficial for achieving certain creative effects and controlling depth of field, but typically, in a phone, we would prefer a wider aperture because, with the smaller sensors that we have on phones, we'll take every bit of light that we can get.

Still, not every situation calls for the widest possible aperture. For example, you might be outside on a bright, sunny day. In that situation, you rarely need the widest possible aperture.At the end of the day, to me, the big story here is that Apple is putting more control into the hands of mobile photographers. Why is that? Well, here comes the other interesting bit: we finally get a Pro mode in the iPhone camera application. Who would have thought? Apple calls this Pro Controls, and they allow you to tweak the standard camera-related settings, like the shutter speed, the aperture, the ISO, the white balance, and so on.

Whether or not I will be using the variable aperture setting, I don't know. Most of the time, I would probably leave it on auto, which means that the phone is going to choose the best aperture setting on its own. That’s the cool thing: you'll still be able to benefit from the variable aperture without having to do anything.

The iPhone for those who want a premium, perfected experience

At the end of the day, it seems to me that we have a typical iPhone upgrade here. If you only do a surface-level analysis, it may seem like the phones have not changed much.

However, once you start using them in day-to-day life, you quickly find out that there are numerous meaningful improvements that make a real difference. This includes essential areas like battery life, performance, and the camera.

I'm yet to spend more time with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, but it seems to me that these are very worthy successors to the 17 Pro series. And that's actually good news because I'm sure that not everyone would be willing to reach for the iPhone Duo this year, nor would everyone be willing to experiment with a brand-new form factor. That means you can safely go for the more mature mainstream flagship, the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max, and get a phone that actually has a better camera and better performance at a significantly lower cost.

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