GoKawiilProbably the most outstanding of the iPhone 18 Pro's updates are related to its cameras. There is a bit of a laundry list here, so bear with me.
The highlight of the lot is variable aperture, which involves six blades that are controlled by a rotor mechanism to cover and expose the camera sensor. These can be controlled by the user from the Camera app, which offers four aperture settings: f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4.0. Apple said last week that developers can access a more granular aperture range, so third-party photography apps may eventually have other options.
The other features I will list in order of how excited they make me: Cinematic effects on regular videos, Apple Reference Image, Photographic Styles 3 and Audio Mix for music.
In the interest of staying on topic, I'll focus this section on these new features. But before that, I'll quickly tell you that the Pro continues to have the best camera performance of any iPhone. Photos I took were bright and vibrant, and I particularly loved being able to adjust them after the fact. They still fall short of Google's Pixel series when it comes to Portrait and Night shots, but the addition of variable aperture has meaningfully narrowed the gap. That is, in my experience so far anyway.
Variable aperture's impact lies beyond point and shoot
I've long complained about the rigidity of Apple's Portrait mode, because it forces you to be a certain distance away from your subject and you can't really achieve the effect unless the phone deems you're far enough away. While Variable Aperture doesn't specifically fix Portrait mode on the iPhone 18 Pro, it does offer an alternative means to get a pleasant-looking soft focus effect.
After setting up the redesigned camera app to feature easy access to the new aperture and shutter speed settings, I tried out the iPhone 18 Pro on any subject that seemed suitable. For instance, I stood for a while in front of a plant along a hallway at the San Francisco airport, switching between all four aperture settings to see just how much of the long walkway in the background would come back into focus.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
As expected, the difference between shots taken at f/1.48 and f/4.0 (the current ends of the spectrum) isn't very stark. In fact, there's only a very subtle softness in the background in the f/1.48 sample, but the picture was still lovely to look at, thanks largely to the amount of light.
Before I get too far ahead, it's worth noting that by default the camera app will automatically adjust aperture settings on the fly, based on what it thinks is right for the scene. I didn't pay very much attention here, again since the difference between the four currently available levels is so subtle. Plus, upon looking back through all the pictures I took on auto, the settings were almost always at f/1.48, which seems odd in hindsight.
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