iPhone 18 Pro Hits Stores Today at $1,199 With 2nm A20 Pro Chip

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max went on sale Friday, September 18. The phones are available through Apple's website, the Apple Store app and Apple Stores, and the first preorder deliveries are arriving today, reported by Digital Trends.

The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 for 256GB of storage. The iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299. Storage options run from 256GB to 2TB, the first time Apple has offered 2TB on an iPhone, and the phones come in Burgundy, Glacier, Silver and Black. Both starting prices are $100 higher than last year's iPhone 17 Pro models, according to MacRumors.

Preorders opened Saturday, September 12, at 5 a.m. Pacific Time. The initial launch covers the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and other markets, with 20 more countries to follow on September 25, according to Apple's launch announcement reported by MacRumors.

A 2nm chip, bigger batteries and a variable-aperture camera

The headline hardware change is the A20 Pro, Apple's first iPhone processor built on a 2nm process. It pairs a 6-core CPU with a 7-core GPU and a dual 16-core Neural Engine, according to Macworld's specifications roundup. The chip is cooled by a vapor chamber that takes up three times more area than the iPhone 17 Pro's, which Apple says supports up to 40 percent faster sustained performance, according to MacRumors' first-look coverage.

Battery capacity is up this year. The eSIM-only models are rated for up to 36 hours of video playback on the iPhone 18 Pro and 45 hours on the Pro Max, according to Digital Trends.

The camera's biggest change is a physical variable aperture on the 48MP Fusion Main camera, which can switch between f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4.0 to control light intake and depth of field, according to NeoTeo's hands-on coverage. The Camera app also adds manual controls for aperture, shutter speed and white balance. The Dynamic Island is smaller and can show up to three Live Activities at once.

Design tweaks are subtle. The 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch sizes are unchanged, but Apple has color-matched the glass back to the aluminum frame, a fix for last year's two-tone look that many buyers covered with a case, according to 9to5Mac's review. The site calls Burgundy the year's flagship color and says the black model is the darkest Pro iPhone Apple has ever made.

Reviews, deals and what else launched

Early reviews are favorable. Gizmodo's Raymond Wong tested the phones for a week and concluded the new features justify the $100 price increase, writing that "the answer is unequivocally 'yes,' and it would be even with half as many new features." The review also praised Apple's rebuilt, LLM-powered Siri as actually good.

Not every detail won over reviewers. Gizmodo noted that the Camera Control button does not support the new manual camera settings, and that the aluminum body scuffs as easily as before. MacRumors also cautioned that owners of the iPhone 17 Pro are unlikely to notice a day-to-day difference between the A19 Pro and the A20 Pro, though the new phones may run cooler.

Buyers who do not want to pay full price up front have options. Apple sells the phones through its Apple Upgrade program starting at $34.99 a month over 24 months, and customers trading in an iPhone 14 or newer can get up to $1,200 off, according to MacRumors. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are each offering up to $1,200 in credits with an eligible trade-in and qualifying plan, according to Digital Trends' deal coverage.

The iPhone 18 Pro is not arriving alone. The Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4 and AirPods 5 also go on sale today, with in-store demos and setup assistance available, according to Digital Trends. All of the new hardware runs iOS 27, which Apple released Monday, September 14.

The foldable iPhone Duo, unveiled alongside the Pros at Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event on September 9, follows later: preorders open October 16 and it goes on sale October 23, starting at $1,999, according to MacRumors' event recap. Also announced at that event were the iPhone 18 Pro models, the Apple Watch Series 12, the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and the AirPods 5.