Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max on September 9, 2026, and the number that matters most is on the price tag. The iPhone 18 Pro “starts at $1,199 (U.S.)” and the iPhone 18 Pro Max “starts at $1,299 (U.S.),” both with 256GB of storage. On the morning of the event, Apple’s own store still listed the outgoing iPhone 17 Pro “From $1099” and the 17 Pro Max at $1,199, so each new Pro costs $100 more than the phone it replaces. 9to5Mac’s event coverage lists the same two starting prices.
Pre-orders open at 5 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, September 12, and the phones reach stores and doorsteps on Friday, September 18, with 20 more countries following on September 25.
The prices, and the $100
The four storage tiers are 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB, and the four finishes are black, silver, glacier and a new burgundy. Apple’s release quotes the phones as $49.95 and $54.12 a month over 24 months, and its trade-in program offers “$175 to $885 (U.S.) in credit” for an iPhone 13 or newer, which is the main way the $100 increase gets softened at checkout. Carrier deals can go higher, but those depend on the plan you sign, not the phone.
The increase itself was widely predicted. Apple raised MacBook and iPad prices on June 25 and pointed at memory-chip costs, a story covered here in Apple’s price-hike turn. The Wall Street Journal’s estimate of a $1,299 iPhone 18 Pro, quoted on this site’s smartphone rankings, turned out to be the Pro Max price, with the smaller Pro landing $100 under it.
What Apple says the money buys
Both phones run the A20 Pro, which Apple says is “built using the latest 2-nanometer process technology” with a 7-core GPU “up to 40 percent faster than A19 Pro” and 50 percent more memory bandwidth. A redesigned vapor chamber with “three times more surface area than the previous generation on iPhone 17 Pro” is credited with a 40 percent gain in sustained performance, the kind of number that matters for long gaming sessions and 4K video rather than everyday scrolling. These are Apple’s figures from Apple’s tests; independent lab measurements will not exist until review units ship.
The camera change is the one you can see. The 48-megapixel main camera gains a variable aperture, “six laser-cut blades” that move between four settings, opening to f/1.48 for low light and closing to f/4 to keep a whole group in focus. Apple describes it as “bringing aperture control to iPhone for the first time,” which means the phone can now trade light for depth of field the way a dedicated camera does. Apple also introduced Apple Reference Image, a mode in which the new sensor signs the pixels it captures so an unedited reference copy can be kept alongside the photo. The Dynamic Island is smaller and shows up to three Live Activities at once.
The battery number has an asterisk
Apple’s headline claims are “up to 36 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro and up to 45 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro Max,” and Apple calls the Pro Max figure “the largest increase in battery life ever on iPhone.” Read the sentence before it: those figures are for “eSIM-only models,” which use the space where the SIM tray used to be for a bigger battery worth “two additional hours of video playback.” The United States is on Apple’s list of eSIM-only markets, so American buyers get the full claim; buyers in countries that keep the physical SIM should subtract about two hours. Apple also says the 18 Pro reaches 50 percent charge in around 15 minutes on a cable, that five minutes of wired charging gives the 18 Pro Max “around seven hours of video playback,” and that on “a new battery usage model that leverages real-world data” the Pro Max lasts “up to 30 hours of usage on a full charge,” a more honest-sounding figure than video playback and one worth watching in lab tests.
Dates that matter
- Saturday, September 12, 5 a.m. PT: pre-orders open.
- Monday, September 14: iOS 27 ships as a free update, and the new Siri arrives the same day as a beta in English.
- Friday, September 18: phones available in the United States and more than 65 other markets.
The year-old iPhones got more expensive too
Apple did not announce a standard iPhone 18 on September 9; the release covers only the two Pro models, plus the separate iPhone Duo foldable that arrives in October. The usual September pattern has been a $100 cut on the outgoing standard model and the quiet discontinuation of the outgoing Pros. This year the second half held and the first half reversed. When Apple’s online store came back at about 11:20 a.m. PT, the iPhone 17 Pro was gone, and every carried-over model was listed $100 higher than it had been that morning: the iPhone 17 “from $899” against “from $799” at 10:09 a.m., the iPhone Air “from $1099” against “from $999,” and the iPhone 17e “from $699” against the $599 it listed in August. The iPhone 16 is still on the page “from $799.” The iPhone 17’s price still carries Apple’s footnote that it “includes a $30 connectivity discount that requires carrier activation,” so the unlocked figure is $30 higher again, exactly as before.
That makes September 9, 2026 the first iPhone event in memory where waiting cost money on the old phone as well as the new one. Apple has published no statement on the carried-over prices; the store listings are the only source, so treat them as what Apple charges today and check the buy page before you order. The full iPhone-by-iPhone buying guide, including the $899 iPhone 17 against the $1,199 18 Pro, follows once the store settles and the first lab tests are in.
Sources (5)
- apple.com Apple Newsroom: Apple debuts iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max
- apple.com Buy iPhone
- 9to5mac.com Apple event news hub, iPhone 18 Pro
- reuters.com Apple raises MacBook and iPad prices
- 9to5mac.com products Apple discontinued at the iPhone 17 event
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