iPhone 18 Pro: Hands-On and Initial Impressions

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Sounds like a great first impression. I can’t wait to hear more about how this goes for you as you continue using this device.

I was very happy to read this! I can't wait for my 18 Pro Max to arrive. Hopefully, the sound on the Pro Max will be the same as you described on the Pro. I'm coming from a 16 Pro Max. I'm sure there will be many differences between my current device and the 18 Pro Max.

Hello, in couple of hours time, I will be receiving my brand-new iPhone 18 Pro Max, And I am hoping that the speaker quality would be outstanding, as I can remember, last year, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max had different speaker qualities

Sounds promising. My pro max will be here in just a few hours, hopefully those speakers are upgraded. I Love me some new speakers hahaha

I know it’s a big difference between my iPhone 15 speakers and my iPhone SE 2022 speakers. The SES are much more like 10 or sound like us and definitely not as like rich and the 15. It seems to be the same case with the iPhone 17 pro 18 from what this stock post is saying. Hope you enjoy your new phone and let you get good speakers in it. I always use the internal speakers of my devices so hopefully yours will be really good.

I will probably upgrade in the next 3 to 5 years as I just got my new phone a few months ago. But I will be very excited to find out the results of this review, especially if it's a good phone or not. Whether I want to return back to iOS is a whole different point, but who knows. Maybe the 18 pro/promax will be such amazing phones that I would want to switch back. Or maybe the 20th edition would be better. Who knows. Anyway, for those getting the new 18 pro phones I hope you enjoy them.

Had issues trying to complete face ID enrolment. Had to restart setup five times. It's complaining there is no internet connection when it is connected to a 1 GB network....

Aside from that, and hopefully this will all be resolved once everything is set up, I agree with Michael's views. I'm coming from an iPhone 15 Pro. The 18 Pro is heavier, slightly taller and wider. I do very much like the texture of the sides and back. I went black so not sure if this differs, but it's got a mat kind of feel to it. Nice having an even camera bump too. I've got a case for it as I think people who don't case up are lunatics.

I love that sound quality has improved!! That's something I'm always curious about when new phones are released.

It's not the smooth experience I'd hoped for. I've had to nudge along all the apps to download from a iCloud backup, I can't add my esim as it says I need an internet connection even though I'm on wifi, whatsapp isn't able to restore from its backup... Yeah, I had to do the same with face ID it just kept crashing out saying Face ID isn't available. I've upgraded to 27.2 but that doesn't seem to have helped with much.

For a £1200 phone I can't say I'm very impressed. The battery is a beast though.

So, for anyone else facing issues, you need to let it finish restoring before things start working it seems. Only took me... Ooo, four hours.

Don't think this will have any baring on face ID though.

I am curious if the A20 Pro's new advanced AI processing will be noticeable with image description. The iPhone 17 Pro does the new image description in three seconds or so which isn't bad at all. Curious if this would be the most noticeable opportunity for VoiceOver with an A20 Pro chip?

Hi Michael:
I'm looking forward to reading your full review. One question, on Applevis, is there a podcast or guide to set up a new phone without sighted assistance? Thank you and so grateful for Applevis!

Why is there always a pro and a pro Max? I’m not really getting that much what the differences are between those two in general. It just seems to me like maybe there’s just like a size difference physically but it seems like the internals are pretty much the same, but maybe I’m wrong about that. It’s just something I’m not really quite sure of the differences of not necessarily just this year just in general thanks.

Since the A19 and A20 chips have more ram, I'm curious if that means image descriptions on the 17 Pro and 18 Pro can be generated on device. On most of the devices that support Apple Intelligence, image descriptions are generated in the cloud. I suspect they're using Apple's Private Cloud Compute for that.

If you try to get a photo description without an Internet connection, it'll sit there and play the processing sound for a long time, and then just come back with the short single sentence descriptions we've had since around iOS 15. There's also a setting in VO settings for on-device descriptions that says if you turn it on, descriptions won't be as detailed. From playing with this, it also seems to revert to the older shorter descriptions.

I'm curious if this is any different with the devices that have more ram, that enable things like the expressive Siri voices and the better dictation.

One word. Money. If apple could do another phone, someone will get it.

OK, yeah that makes sense. I forgot there was actually a difference between the screen sizes and the batteries. I kind of remember that no but I guess I forgot. Lol.

then why didn't they make the ipHone 18 ultra pro max turbo pluss premium supreme mega 6g, i forgot other names i could of said, but you get my point?

Great question. I wish I had a good answer for that. I love it. Apple‘s not getting any more of my money for a little while only because my device is totally work and I don’t need to upgrade them.

Money. RAM, there is not enough. Next time it will be the Omega Supreme. That is a cool name. Hope the transformers let them use the name.

Thank you, Michael. This is encouraging, I get my new iPhone 18 Pro tomorrow afternoon. Since I'm picking it up from the Apple store, I'll have help if there are setup issues.

I have received my 18 Pro today, upgrading after a while, from the 15 pro. I have seen the other devices like the 17 pro for long enough though due to work purposes and have been driving a 17 pro daily but not in a personal capacity, but they were not my personal devices. Here in Israel, we get the model with the physical Sim card, so battery life will be a bit shorter compared to the ESIM only model. If I compare it to the 17 pro, side by side, it sounds like the 17 pro has a little more base, and yes, this is after installing the 17.2 beta with the fix for the VoiceOver audio profile. Lets see how it goes after a few days of usage and what I think of it.

I heard that pro max is heavy. Is that correct?