Apple unveils iPhone 18 Pro lineup and first foldable iPhone Duo, skips base model

Apple's fall event puts the spotlight on premium hardware

At its "Surprise and shine" presentation at Apple Park on September 9, Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, took the wraps off its first foldable — the iPhone Duo — and showed off a version of iOS 27 that has been substantially reworked for a device that folds in half. All three announcements were covered by The Verge.

iPhone 18 Pro focuses on the camera

According to The Verge's hands-on, the 18 Pro and Pro Max keep the general design, aluminum body, and screen sizes of the iPhone 17 Pro generation. The visible changes are mostly cosmetic and photographic: the phones come in black, silver, "glacier" (a blue shade), and burgundy, with rear glass tinted to match the body more closely than before.

The headline hardware change is a variable-aperture main camera. New pro controls in the native camera app let users leave the aperture on auto or pick from four stops (f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8, and f/4.0), alongside manual shutter speed, white balance, and focus — the last of which includes focus peaking in the preview. The Dynamic Island has shrunk and can now show three Live Activities simultaneously, something The Verge confirmed in person at the event.

Preorders open September 12 ahead of a September 18 release. The 18 Pro starts at $1,199 and the Pro Max at $1,299, which The Verge notes is $100 more per model than last year.

The base iPhone 18 is a no-show

Apple did not announce a standard iPhone 18 at the event. The Verge describes this as an unusual step that lines up with pre-event rumors of a premium-only fall lineup, with the base model expected to arrive in spring. Memory and chip shortages probably played a part, squeezing pricing and leading Apple to favor the higher-priced phones that carry bigger margins.

In place of a new entry-level device, Apple raised prices across its older inventory: existing iPhone 17 models went up by $100, and the still-on-sale iPhone 16 climbed back to its original $799 starting point. A new iPhone Air and a cheaper iPhone 18E are rumored for the first quarter of next year, around the same time the base iPhone 18 is expected to debut.

iOS 27 was redesigned around the fold

The iPhone Duo carries the biggest software story of the launch. As The Verge explains, Apple didn't simply stretch phone-sized iOS across a larger panel — it leaned on the multitasking foundations the company had already built for iPadOS. Apple says the Duo was designed to be as natural and intuitive as an iPad.

When the phone is open, iOS 27 displays two homescreens: a scrollable Today View of widgets on the left and standard app icons on the right. Traditional controls shift toward the sides of the display so they stay within thumb reach, and status indicators like Wi-Fi and the clock relocate to the top-right corner to preserve vertical space. App layouts adjust to the larger interior display, and the wider aspect ratio of the external screen is accounted for as well.

The software also adapts to the device's physical poses. Held partially open like a book, the interface shifts content away from the fold so nothing important gets hidden in the crease. Folded into a tent shape on a table, a dedicated standby mode turns the Duo into a smart display with full-screen widgets for the calendar or weather, or a digital photo frame; the same orientation can be used to watch video on the external screen.

The Duo is also the first iPhone to support the Apple Pencil, working on both the inner and outer displays — though The Verge points out that Apple's press release says support for the Apple Pencil with USB-C arrives "later this year," so it may not be available on day one.

Why it matters

Apple is arriving late to foldables, but it is doing so with operating-system-level adaptation rather than a stretched phone interface — a signal to the rest of the industry that folding hardware may be judged by how well the software grows into it. Just as notable is what Apple did not launch: with the base iPhone 18 pushed to spring and $100 increases applied to new and old models alike, Apple's fall lineup is now entirely premium, a strategy shift driven at least partly by component shortages. Buyers effectively pay more for an iPhone this fall regardless of which model they choose, and the spring refresh — base iPhone 18, a new Air, and an 18E — will determine whether that squeeze is temporary.