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Apple's iPhone 18 Pro adds variable camera aperture and a more powerful chip

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Why This Matters

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro is another iterative refresh, but two things stand out: the industry's first 2 nm smartphone chip and a variable camera aperture that hands photographers manual control instead of relying purely on computational photography. Apple also used the launch to push Apple Intelligence and the delayed LLM-powered Siri, framing on-device context plus privacy as its AI differentiator.

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CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple’s new iPhone 18 Pro is an iterative update that—as usual—focuses heavily on both performance and new camera features. This time around, many of the new camera features are oriented around giving the user more direct control of the image, rather than depending entirely on Apple’s computational photography assumptions.

As usual, the new iPhone has a new chip. It’s called A20 Pro, and it’s the first 2 nm chip for the iPhone. It has a 6-core CPU, with two super-cores that are up to 20 percent faster, and four efficiency cores. A 7-core GPU offers up to 40 percent improved performance and increased bandwidth.

The A20 Pro also has a new Neural Engine—the machine-learning processor on the system-on-chip—which the company says is basically two Neural Engines on one chip.

Apple spent a significant chunk of the iPhone presentation talking up Apple Intelligence, arguing that the iPhone is a perfect place to establish and maintain the context for effective AI features—for example, with access to your calendar and daily habits—but of course tried to differentiate on the basis of privacy within that context. The company also discussed the previously announced new LLM-driven capabilities of Siri. Siri AI, as Apple calls it, will arrive in October.