iPhone 18 Pro review: The standard setter

The yardstick that all phones, including the Duo, will be measured by.

The iPhone Duo may have hogged the limelight at last week's "Surprise and Shine" event, but it won't be available for a while. And as there was no mention of a standard iPhone 18, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max became the de facto new handsets for anyone considering a "candybar" smartphone from Apple right now.

If I can bring back that somewhat retro term , I feel I can resurrect another: The "S" year. Compared to the redesign on the iPhone 17 Pro, this year's release feels iterative — reminiscent of when the company made "S" versions of iPhones that tended to deliver smaller improvements.

In addition to a tinier Dynamic Island, the iPhone 18 Pro's updates largely revolve around photography, performance and battery improvements. Oh, and of course, there are the new features coming with iOS 27, including Siri AI and that whole shebang. I've spent almost a week with the new phone and have done my best to put all these features to the test to see how they perform in the real world.

Let's start with what's most obviously new. The Dynamic Island on the iPhone 18 Pro is noticeably smaller than the one on its predecessor. Yet despite that, it's able to cram one more ongoing live activity in. Apple achieved this with some clever display engineering, which it showed us under a microscope at a demo last week. It was able to create a region of brighter pixels that would allow just enough infrared light through for Face ID to work beneath it. That way, the "cutout" that is Dynamic Island's black space doesn't have to be as big.

Meaningfully, though, it has yet to hugely improve my life. It's nice to have a shortcut for ongoing activities, and to be able to keep three up at a time. Most often, I rely on the Dynamic Island for music playback controls or to keep an eye on timers or Instagram uploads. While I don't frequently have three tasks happening at once, it is nice to know that I can quickly access or keep tabs on them whenever I do.

Aside from the smaller Dynamic Island and the lovely new Burgundy and Glacier color options, you'd have a hard time spotting any physical differences between the iPhone 17 Pro and 18 Pro (and their Max variants).

I have to say, I adore the Burgundy and Glacier hues of my iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max respectively. But from my experience with the burnt orange iPhone 17 Pro, it's probably worth noting that their aluminum frames are likely more prone to scratches and nicks than the titanium of the iPhone 16 Pro and older. If you're as clumsy as I am, I'm sad to say it, a case is probably your friend.