IndiaAIFounders — iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo: The MacStories Overview

The iPhone Duo.

Apple’s iPhone lineup is taking a different shape this year.

At today’s Surprise and Shine event, the company introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max alongside the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone. The Pro models build on the familiar design introduced last year, while the Duo marks the debut of an iPhone with a brand new form factor that combines a smaller, outer display with a larger, almost iPad mini-like internal display.

As a longtime iPad user who’s long been fascinated by foldables (and I’ve tried some over the years, too), I’ve been eagerly anticipating Apple’s debut in this space. Based on what we’ve seen today, it looks like Apple was able to deliver on the promise of a new iPhone category that combines the best of iOS with concepts borrowed from iPadOS, turning the iPhone into a versatile pocket computer that epitomizes Apple CEO John Ternus’ concept of the “personal hub”.

As we’ll see in this article, while the iPhone 18 Pro’s story largely revolves around the camera (unsurprisingly) and improved performance (some of the A20 Pro’s numbers are, in fact, a surprise merely a year after the A19 Pro), the iPhone Duo marks a new beginning for iOS, which now supports features that never existed on the platform before, as well as a series of interactions that Apple is exploring for the first time.

Let’s dive in.

iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

Let’s start with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which follow a familiar approach: take the existing design from last year’s Pro models and improve the cameras, performance, and battery life.

Both phones feature the same 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch displays as last year, respectively, with 3,000 nits of peak outdoor brightness (also unchanged). The Dynamic Island is smaller, and because of that, it can now show more data – up to three Live Activities at once – without sacrificing Face ID.

The new Dynamic Island with more Live Activities in the iPhone 18 Pro.

“With iPhone 18 Pro, we’ve made advancements to the areas our users care about most: camera, performance, battery, and intelligence. And we didn’t just make incremental improvements in these areas — we took huge leaps forward to create the best Pro iPhone we’ve ever made,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPhone 18 Pro makes it easy for anyone to capture stunning photos and videos using variable aperture, while providing more versatility for creators and more control for pros. Paired with impactful upgrades to Photographic Styles and powerful video capabilities, iPhone 18 Pro unlocks entirely new ways for users to express themselves.”

Cameras

As you know, I’m not a professional photographer, and I seldom take advantage of the latest “pro” features in the iPhone’s camera. But I, too, have to admit that the camera additions to the 18 Pro line sound remarkable.

The biggest change is the 48MP Fusion Main camera’s variable aperture. Six blades physically move inside the camera and adjust the opening between four settings: ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8, and ƒ/4. In practice, this means the camera can let in more light in a dark scene or keep more people in focus in a group photo.

This can happen automatically, but you can also take over with the Camera app’s new Pro controls, which include aperture, shutter speed, white balance, and a histogram. As of the release candidate version of iOS 27 released a few hours ago, the Camera app supports the long-rumored control customization (on all iPhone models, including the current 17 Pro), too, giving you even finer control over the, well, controls you want to see available at all times.

New customizable controls in the Camera app for iOS 27.

Of course, there are also 48MP Ultra Wide and 4x Telephoto cameras, plus the usual optical-quality 8x option. On the software side, Photographic Styles is gaining texture and grain controls, Cinematic effects can be applied after capture to videos shot at up to 60 fps, and time-lapse now supports 4K Dolby Vision. Audio Mix is getting improved voice processing and music isolation as well.

What I find especially interesting, however, is the concept behind Apple Reference Image. When you take a photo in Reference mode, the Main camera captures signed sensor data that Private Cloud Compute authenticates and turns into an unalterable reference image. You can think of it as a digital negative. You can view the authenticated version of an image alongside the main one in Photos to see what was changed after capture, and, as Apple notes, this has interesting implications when it comes to AI. In an era where validating image authenticity is turning into a real challenge, I think we have to commend Apple for trying to do something in this field.

Apple Reference Image in the Photos app.

It’s also worth noting that Apple will add support for SynthID, the industry standard for watermarking images created with AI adopted by OpenAI, Google, and others. According to Apple, “SynthID will be available in a software update later this year and will be included for most edited images, depending on the edits applied”.

Performance and Battery

The new 2 nm A20 Pro features a 6-core CPU, 7-core GPU, and Dual 16-core Neural Engine. According to Apple, it offers up to 40% faster graphics and twice the AI processing power of A19 Pro.

Now, having recently written about the potential of the M5 Ultra and M6 for local AI on the Mac, I’m obviously very keen to see what the A20 Pro will mean for running local LLMs on the iPhone 18 Pro (and iPhone Duo, since it has the same chipset). For instance, would this chip run an edge-optimized model such as Liquid’s LFM2.5-8B-A1B at higher than 30 tokens per second? What about small specialized models such as Desert Ant Labs’ family of small language models – how much more efficient would they be on the A20 Pro compared to the A19 Pro? I can’t wait to find out.

In any case, to visualize Apple’s numbers announced today against current and previous generations of iPhones, I’ve put together some handy widgets and visualizations to help you put things in perspective.

New iPhones Compared to Yours

Pick your current iPhone model, then the new one. Grey is yours; red is the new one.

14 Pro 14 Pro Max 15 Pro 15 Pro Max 16 Pro 16 Pro Max 17 Pro 17 Pro Max Compare with Same size18 Pro18 Pro MaxDuo Chip iPhone 14 ProA16 Bionic iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 14 ProA16 Bionic iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 14 ProA16 Bionic iPhone DuoA20 Pro iPhone 14 Pro MaxA16 Bionic iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 14 Pro MaxA16 Bionic iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 14 Pro MaxA16 Bionic iPhone DuoA20 Pro iPhone 15 ProA17 Pro iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 15 ProA17 Pro iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 15 ProA17 Pro iPhone DuoA20 Pro iPhone 15 Pro MaxA17 Pro iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 15 Pro MaxA17 Pro iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 15 Pro MaxA17 Pro iPhone DuoA20 Pro iPhone 16 ProA18 Pro iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 16 ProA18 Pro iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 16 ProA18 Pro iPhone DuoA20 Pro iPhone 16 Pro MaxA18 Pro iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 16 Pro MaxA18 Pro iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 16 Pro MaxA18 Pro iPhone DuoA20 Pro iPhone 17 ProA19 Pro iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 17 ProA19 Pro iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 17 ProA19 Pro iPhone DuoA20 Pro iPhone 17 Pro MaxA19 Pro iPhone 18 ProA20 Pro iPhone 17 Pro MaxA19 Pro iPhone 18 Pro MaxA20 Pro iPhone 17 Pro MaxA19 Pro iPhone DuoA20 Pro Apple’s claimfrom its compare page iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 14 Pro CPU up to 60% faster, GPU up to 2.8× faster. Up to 22 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 14 Pro CPU up to 60% faster, GPU up to 2.8× faster. Up to 22 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 14 Pro CPU up to 60% faster, GPU up to 2.8× faster. Neural Engine up to 4.5× faster. Up to 21 more hours of video on the outer display. iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 14 Pro Max CPU up to 60% faster, GPU up to 2.8× faster. Up to 16 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 14 Pro Max CPU up to 60% faster, GPU up to 2.8× faster. Up to 16 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 14 Pro Max CPU up to 60% faster, GPU up to 2.8× faster. Neural Engine up to 4.5× faster. Up to 15 more hours of video on the outer display. iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 15 Pro CPU up to 50% faster, GPU up to 2.1× faster. Up to 22 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 15 Pro CPU up to 50% faster, GPU up to 2.1× faster. Up to 22 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 15 Pro CPU up to 50% faster, GPU up to 2.1× faster. Neural Engine up to 2× faster. Up to 21 more hours of video on the outer display. iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 15 Pro Max CPU up to 50% faster, GPU up to 2.1× faster. Up to 16 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 15 Pro Max CPU up to 50% faster, GPU up to 2.1× faster. Up to 16 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 15 Pro Max CPU up to 50% faster, GPU up to 2.1× faster. Neural Engine up to 2× faster. Up to 15 more hours of video on the outer display. iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 16 Pro CPU up to 30% faster, GPU up to 80% faster. Up to 18 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 16 Pro CPU up to 30% faster, GPU up to 80% faster. Up to 18 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 16 Pro CPU up to 30% faster, GPU up to 80% faster. Neural Engine up to 2× faster. Up to 17 more hours of video on the outer display. iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 16 Pro Max CPU up to 30% faster, GPU up to 80% faster. Up to 12 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 16 Pro Max CPU up to 30% faster, GPU up to 80% faster. Up to 12 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 16 Pro Max CPU up to 30% faster, GPU up to 80% faster. Neural Engine up to 2× faster. Up to 11 more hours of video on the outer display. iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 17 Pro CPU up to 20% faster, GPU up to 40% faster. Up to 12 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 17 Pro CPU up to 20% faster, GPU up to 40% faster. Up to 12 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 17 Pro CPU up to 20% faster, GPU up to 40% faster. Neural Engine up to 2× faster. Up to 11 more hours of video on the outer display. iPhone 18 Pro against iPhone 17 Pro Max CPU up to 20% faster, GPU up to 40% faster. Up to 6 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone 18 Pro Max against iPhone 17 Pro Max CPU up to 20% faster, GPU up to 40% faster. Up to 6 more hours of video on iPhone 18 Pro Max. iPhone Duo against iPhone 17 Pro Max CPU up to 20% faster, GPU up to 40% faster. Neural Engine up to 2× faster. Up to 5 more hours of video on the outer display. Video playbackhours, Apple’s “up to” iPhone 14 Pro23h

iPhone 18 Pro36h

iPhone 14 Pro23h

iPhone 18 Pro Max45h

iPhone 14 Pro23h