Though the new iPhone Duo might’ve captured a lot of headlines for its foldable design, the iPhone 18 Pro remains Apple’s standard-bearer due to its top-of-the-line camera, superb features and excellent battery life. One of the more impressive new features this year is the camera’s variable aperture, which lets you control exposure.
But while the iPhone 18 Pro has a lot going for it, it really isn’t too different from its predecessor, the iPhone 17 Pro. The design, features and internal specs have very minor differences. If you really care about having variable aperture, perhaps the iPhone 18 Pro is the better choice. But if you care more about saving money, the 17 Pro, which retails for about $100 less, might be the wiser option.
Here’s a closer look at how last year’s flagship compares to this year’s.
Design and display
When you look at the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro side-by-side, there really isn’t a whole lot to differentiate them. They have the exact same dimensions of 5.91 by 2.83 by 0.34 inches, and both have 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR LTPO OLED displays. You can even use the same phone cases for the iPhone 17 Pro and 18 Pro.
The iPhone 18 Pro is ever so slightly heavier — 7.44 ounces compared to the iPhone 17 Pro’s 7.27 ounces — likely due to the variable aperture’s polymer blades. Another change is that the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 18 Pro is slightly smaller, plus it supports up to three Live Activities at a time. On the inside, the 18 Pro has a redesigned vapor cooling chamber, which could be important if you intend to use the phone for more intensive tasks like gaming or lengthy video capture — the newer phone should be able to stay cooler for longer than the 17 Pro.
Unfortunately for those who love the color orange, you won’t find an iPhone 18 Pro in that shade. Still, the colors for the 18 Pro are quite lovely. The iPhone 18 Pro ships in glacier blue, burgundy red, black and silver. The iPhone 17 Pro comes in cosmic orange, deep blue and silver.
Camera features
Both the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 18 Pro feature a triple 48-megapixel rear camera array. The key difference, however, is that the iPhone 18 Pro has variable aperture, which allows you to control light exposure at the hardware level. You can switch between four aperture presets (f1.48, f1.8, f2.8, and f4.0 f-stops) to adjust the amount of light that hits the sensor. This allows for greater depth of field in close-up shots and improved low-light photography, among other things.
Aside from that, the front-facing camera remains largely unchanged. Both have an 18-megapixel selfie camera with a Center Stage feature that automatically frames the people in the shot, plus it can switch between horizontal and vertical orientations without having to rotate the phone.
Performance and battery life
The iPhone 18 Pro ships with the brand-new A20 Pro chip, which is an upgrade over the 17 Pro’s A19 Pro chip. The processor is Apple’s first to use a 2-nanometer process, which means the chip is denser — possibly allowing Apple to make room for a bigger battery. We still have more testing to do, but in our initial tests, we’ve found that the A20 chip is quite the beast, never stumbling on videos or games.
As for battery life, we have so far found it to be the same on both the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro, with both phones lasting for close to 24 hours before needing to be recharged. The 18 Pro is one of the fastest-charging phones we’ve tested, with it charging from 0% to 82% in 30 minutes. That’s substantially faster than the 17 Pro, which recharged to 69% in the same test.
Check out more comparisons between the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro in the below specs chart.
