iPhone 18 Pro: Hands-On and Initial Impressions

Hi, I have been totally blind since birth too. I’ve really not tried Face ID only because the whole concept of having to look at anything to me is sensitive foreign idea. I really can’t focus my eye on anything so I just just use a passcode. I really don’t think that that’s a particular problem or anything. I just think we’ll have different ways that we want to use our phones. I really loved your question about whether it was easier for somebody who had lost their vision before somebody who had never had any vision. Look that makes a lot of sense to me. And like I said, I know we’re all different. But it makes perfect sense because if somebody has never had a reference to anything visually, they aren’t necessarily going to know how to look at something. I mean, hey I couldn’t even turn my eyes towards the direction of my family when I was an eye doctor just regular eye actors long time ago, but yeah, so it’s just why I don’t do it. I just use my passcode for unlocking the phone.

I don't really understand. Why did they want to do Face ID when touch ID was doing so well? I mean, touch ID definitely wasn't great for those who had wet hands all the time, but it was so easy! You just put your finger on a button and, boom! It unlocks. And at least for me it's a higher success rate. But I'm also the same person who does not understand looking into a camera and accidentally looks in the completely opposite way.

It is more secure according to all who uses it. No issues with face ID, although face ID in 27 is buggy. Hope iOS 27.2 fixes it.

The theory that Face ID is more secure than Touch ID is just a marketing ploy. Apple told customers this when they first introduced Face ID, to get customers to feel confident switching to the new system, and thus buying the newer devices that supported Face ID. If Apple is to be believed, then riddle me this ... a fingerprint is absolutely unique to every single human being on this planet. Even identical twins do not carry the exact same fingerprint. Yet, facial recognition software can be falsified and manipulated by current AI technology.
So, tell me again how Face ID is more secure than Touch ID? 🤔

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_7gLkEON4ZQ&ra=m

https://www.science.org/content/article/why-don-t-identical-twins-have-same-fingerprints-new-study-provides-clues?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Well if we could get back on topic a bit... The thing I am most curious about is if the 18 Pro is noticeably faster with the on device AI work like VoiceOver's image description and the Ask feature. I used the Ask feature the other day to sort out some buttons on a microwave control panel I wasn't familiar with, and I am quite impressed. On my 17 Pro it wasn't the fastest thing around, but not too bad either. Anyone used these on a 17 Pro and then an 18 Pro who can report?

How heavy is it and is the face ID fix? I get message to put my passcode.

If so, only apple would require face ID.

1. You should only be able to unlock your phone by reciting, say, the first 150 lines of Longfellows 'The song of Hiawatha' in an Irish accent...which is to say, an accent south of the border. That'd be secure all right.
2. I wonder how Dennis is getting on with his golf swing?
3. back on topic before everyone gets upset, I've read about a few problems folk have had with not identifying the wifi network correctly, plus battery drain and indexing. How do you know, on IOS27, that the 18 Pro is still indexing? And, do these wifi problems etc. (insofar as they exist) sober down after a time? I remember a couple of years ago there was a very, very annoying bug where Siri voices kept being deleted by IOS of its own accord. I seem to remember that had something to do with the system getting confused about being on wifi. I can't go through all that again - I just can't.

Better to do it in Latin. It takes 2 days to finish doing the index and siri search.

1. You should only be able to unlock your phone by reciting, say, the first 150 lines of Longfellows 'The song of Hiawatha' in an Irish accent...which is to say, an accent south of the border. That'd be secure all right.
It is with deep sadness that I announce that I have a semi-decent Irish accent.
but na, the indexing should end in a few days. i think i've seen it someware in settings or in the part of ios that no one uses anymore, that being spotlight, saying that it is finished indexing

Hi guys, I don’t have any light perception. I wonder if that does make a difference for Face ID. Because I had other friends who were totally blind, but also had light perception so maybe that does make it easier. As far as but with the iPhone 18 Pro runs right now maybe there’s a lot of new systems that have to be put in place for this newer series. That’s probably why it’s taking a few days to process everything. Being a little I like your points. It was pretty funny what kind of things you thought should happen for them to unlock a phone. The funny thing about that is AI can create the same voice and probably still unlock your phone. Lol good one though.

Hey bingo little, I remember which iOS had the voices deleting. That was the most annoying freaking bug ever. And the worst thing is it wasn’t just voices that we’re doing this. I had Kait delete on me and Daniel saying that it was Kait being selected on an iPhone and an iPad. And the other really awful bug and iOS 16 was the constant announcement of screen curtain on if you were reading any blocks of Text to get jumped back to the top of whatever you were reading. This bug actually still occasionally comes up for me. Not nearly as much as what it used to do but now it’s so random that it’s going to be really hard to reproduce it to tell Apple that it’s coming back slowly. The worst thing about the bug now though is that it doesn’t matter which kind of quality of moisture you’re using. At least with iOS 16, I was able to work around the issue by reverting to built-in invoice rather than enhanced or premium voice that had to be downloaded or voice that had to be downloaded. Now it doesn’t matter. I can use a regular preinstalled built-in invoice and I will still get the screen curtain on announcement every once in a while. Crazy. I honestly hope these pro phones will not have these kinds of issues since they hopefully have better processing hardware and things like that. These issues that I experienced were on an iPhone 8, which was quite literally the oldest phone at the time still being supported, and iOS 16 was the last iOS that that phone ever received. So it all it could’ve very well been that I was using literally the oldest device supported. OK I need to get off of here now. I was trying to keep this on topic but I just thought that you would want to know which iOS it was that was having all the issues. That was the one that got a whole bunch of new voices at once but that’s when all the bugs came too. Yeah I really hope you never experienced that again. Auto deleting voices was literally the worst.

I got my iPhone 18 Pro yesterday, and the sound on this thing is amazing!! I did update to the 27.2 beta because before that, VO sounded like it was almost in mono. Now everything is perfect. I'm usually one that updates to the new phones often. But I believe I will be keeping this one for a long time, because I'm completely content with its sound quality.

There is also a 27.0.1 update on the way though I'm not sure if any of the 27.2 fixes will be in there. I suspect 27.2 beta will be released as 27.1 when it's on general release. They've not used 27.1 because they've reserved that for the Duo and don't want people poking through the code base before its released. Most likely the forks will be recombined mid October for the Duo release.

Not much to do with the 18 pro, but useful to know if you're unhappy with the current general release OS.

Hi Brooke, really glad you’re enjoying your new phone. :-) Just out of curiosity, what device were you coming from? I really wish I could hear the sound on this thing. I know recording a demo over speaker is really not going to do it justice, but I really wish I could check it out. Maybe I’ll have to go to my Apple Store here and see if I can turn on voiceover on approach to see if I can hear the differences. I mean big speakers are so important. Well, I guess I don’t mean big I mean more like you know the quality but yeah I use our speakers all the time so I would definitely be very curious about this.

mabey if the price of the phone falls drasticly in the next 3-5 years i might get it.

I'm sorry to go against what others say regarding the sound but really, it's just fine. It gets loud, certainly, but it's just two tiny speakers with very little bass. I'd say, pretty impressive for what it is, but it's certainly not day and night between my 15 pro and 18 pro.

I say this more for expectations and to alleviate too many feelings of FOMO.

At the end of the day, it's just another iPhone. A little more responsive, a little more future proof, a little heavier and a lot more expensive. Unless you are really bothered about Siri AI, which is at best okay, then there's very little difference between this and a phone from the last 6 years. Battery is the only real improvement I've noticed, even then do I think it's work the upgrade price? Probably not.

I have an iPhone 16E. for the things that I use this phone for, I am not finding the battery life good enough anymore. but also, I do pretty much all my college assignments on it, because a phone and a braille display takes up way less space on a desk than a macbook and that same display. the braille display is non-negotiable for me, since I'm in a math class... I'll be using the mac when classes actually start requiring it, like computer science classes or tech based classes where a mobile operating system simply isn't enough. As this is the case, I will be upgrading to the 18 pro max when finances allow for it.

Hello everyone,
I did not purchase the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max, but I have visited the Apple Store near my home multiple times to try out both models. I have noticed an issue: when VoiceOver is enabled, touch gestures on the screen frequently malfunction. Please note that this problem is very likely limited to the demo units at the Apple Store and may not necessarily occur on the iPhone you purchase for yourself. The general behavior is that all VoiceOver gestures suddenly stop working or become extremely unresponsive. For example, if you double-tap on an item and then try to swipe to browse other content, the iPhone will repeatedly execute the double-tap action you performed previously instead of responding to your swipe gesture at all. Alternatively, you might swipe on an item, but the iPhone executes a different gesture instead. In short, if you encounter this situation, simply toggling VoiceOver off and on will not work; you must lock the iPhone and unlock it again to resolve the issue. I hope this is just a bug specific to the Apple Store demo units.

Hey Oliver, just wanted to thank you for coming on here to put things in the perspective. They definitely think they’re expectations built up, but the sound was gonna be so amazing coming from like a 15 broad 18 bro. I’m glad you came on here to kind of bring us back down to earth at the end of the day you know because you’re right it is just another iPhone. Another iPhone is another iPhone is another iPhone. I’m definitely keeping my devices for sure. Yeah, I can’t really justify the cost of that thing to upgrade to be honest. Just like my devices are in perfectly good working order anyway. I literally just got my 15 last year in August so yeah it’s gonna be a while before it gets upgraded. And like like both of my both of my devices are still being supported so I’m definitely keeping what I have for sure. Thanks again for your perspective.

That’s interesting. I definitely would’ve thought that it would’ve been the other way around. I would’ve thought that a bigger phone any bigger sound. I suppose I’m physically bigger phone doesn’t necessarily mean bigger speakers in it. Wow, that is kind of disappointing. Just saying. Wait for the amount of money that we’re paying for these things you know you’d hope they have good speakers in them. I know you said it wasn’t a dealbreaker for you, but still, I could totally see that being a disappointment especially for us because you know we were in the sound so much. But yeah, that’s very interesting.

If it comes out it might to fix face ID. Nothing for us blind people bugs.

Yes, I remember that from last year. I just really would think it would be the other way around that’s all. I’ve never had any pro or Pro Max phone. Might have always been stated basic models. I’m pretty sure it’s going to stay that way for me.

It's maybe still early days, and I've only had one day where I've used it for more than very basic tasks, but I am finding my 18 Pro's battery is noticeably worse than my 13 Pro Max (even 4-5 years in). Given that this was billed as being on pair with the 17 Pro Max, I thought it would be better than my old phone.

Maybe it's the background AI stuff (although it has finished indexing now), or maybe it's iOS 17. But it does feel a bit underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for what I usually use it for. And it does seem to charge incredibly fast.

Other than that, though, I'm generally happy with it. I'm not missing a bigger screen. I think I almost like the dynamic island, except it does seem to get stale. For example, the Sonos live activity appears there, but it shows e a song that was playing a few tracks ago, or it says it's not playing when I can hear it. I was getting scores from England v Spain game from, I think BBC Sports, but it was also a little out of date. But in principle, having something giving me some live info on top of other apps is actually more helpful than I thought.

Camera button seems like a waste given how little you can do with it. I like the action button but time will tell how much I use it.

As per usual with these things, you get all excited for the new model but tend to just end up doing the same old things with it. But hopefully it will open up a little more once I find time to play with Apple Intelligence a bit more.

That’s too bad that you’re not getting good battery life from your 18 Pro especially after upgrading from a 13 Pro Max that you should actually had better battery life. It’s kind of ironic. Especially considering the amount of money that we pay for these things. I’m just curious about something though, does anybody keep their old phones after they’ve upgraded to a new one to use their old one as an iPod? I did that. When I got my iPhone 15 I kept my iPhone SE 2022 as an iPod. I don’t know that I’ll do it all the time but I like that I do it this time. This time I did it because it’s the last device with a home button so I really wanted to be able to use that for as long as possible. Hopefully the issues with battery life will get resolved in the next speed or updates because I’ve had a pen. We are on our phones. We need the battery relief to be really good. Because I’ve had dependent that we are on our phones because of the way we have to use them. We need the battery life to be really good.

Hey guys, so I’m going to be upgrading soon but my carrier is on backorder until the 20th. I think so it’s making me wait but which one does everyone think is better the pro or the pro Max I have reservations about the Pro Max because I’m worried that it would fall out of my pockets because of it’s bigger size also, if the promax is heavier than the pro that might cause some issues as well withholding it up while taking photos for OCR and using the camera, but I would be curious to hear everyone’s thoughts.

This topic came along about the time I am moving from the IPhone 11 to the IPhone 18 pro. I am really hoping I will not regret the upgrade. I have some apps on my IPhone that is currently not in the appstore. Not too sure what I am going to do about those apps. Need to do some digging to see if they still run. Guess I will have to see if I can’t find out what platform IMazing works best on when it comes to the accessibility front. All I know for sure is that JAWS and NVDA sees a lot of buttons and a tree view and the like. Guess I could see if IMazing works better on the 2014 MacBook pro I have lying about. As for the IPhone 18pro, what do you think I will noticed first? My IPhone 11 has been in use for around 6 years and battery health is around 84%. I should have my new phone in next week sometime.

In my possession at the moment, I have, an Opo find X5 light, Moto G04S, Google Pixel two running lineage OS 22.2, iPhone 4s running iOS 9.2 now 9.3.6, and an iPhone 8 running iOS 12. So yes I do keep my old phones. That's not even including the 256 GB iPhone 7 that I have somewhere.

That’s awesome. If you wanted to, you could update your iPhone 8 to iOS 16. That would be the highest it could get. I’m a you obviously wouldn’t have to but you definitely could if you wanted. This is actually the first time I kept an old phone after an upgrade. But I did it because I wanted an iPod. I never got the chance to have an iPad so this is the closest I can get. Oh let’s face it. I still wanted a home button. So yeah that’s why I’m not sure if I’ll keep my 15 when I change to a new phone, we’ll see.