iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable

Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro and its first foldable phone at an event on September 9, 2026, the first product launch under new chief executive John Ternus. The foldable is called the iPhone Duo, and 9to5Mac reports it arrives in October 2026. For iOS developers, the Duo matters more than the spec bumps: it puts a new screen shape into the iPhone lineup for the first time.

There was no standard iPhone 18. Apple showed only the Pro models and the foldable.

What the Pro models got

Both Pro sizes run the A20 Pro chip, built on a 2nm process. Apple's own product page lists three 48-megapixel cameras on both models: a Fusion main camera, an ultra-wide and a telephoto.

	iPhone 18 Pro	iPhone 18 Pro Max
Display	6.3-inch	6.9-inch
Chip	A20 Pro (2nm)	A20 Pro (2nm)
Main camera	48MP, variable aperture	48MP, variable aperture
Starting price	$1,199	$1,299

The variable aperture is the detail worth pausing on. It steps through ƒ/1.48, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8 and ƒ/4.0, which lets the camera control depth of field in hardware rather than simulating it in software.

Both Pro models have it. That is not what earlier reporting expected. This site covered a claim in August that the smaller Pro might not have room for the mechanism, making it a Pro Max exclusive. Apple shipped it on both.

Apple claims the Pro Max reaches up to 45 hours of video playback and calls it the longest battery life in an iPhone. Fast charging is quoted at up to 50% in around 15 minutes with a compatible adapter. The colors are Burgundy, Glacier, Silver and Black. Storage runs from 256GB up to 2TB. Pre-orders open September 12 at 5:00 a.m. Pacific, with devices available September 18.

The iPhone Duo

Apple describes the Duo as "The largest display of any iPhone. Foldable. Posable. And durable." It uses a dual display system and a 48MP Dual Fusion camera, and comes in Star White and Night Sky. It runs the same A20 Pro chip as the Pro models.

"Posable" is the word to notice. It suggests the hinge holds intermediate angles rather than only open or shut, which is the behavior that creates work for app developers.

The base iPhone 18 is still missing

Apple did not announce a standard iPhone 18, and 9to5Mac ran a separate piece explaining why. This is the plan this site reported in August: Pro models in the autumn, the rest of the line pushed to 2027.

Apple also announced the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, both with an upgraded health tracking system. AirPods 5 arrive with improved active noise cancellation, and watchOS 27 lands September 14.

What this means for developers

The foldable is the item that will land on your backlog. A posable, dual-display iPhone means your layouts need to survive geometry the iPhone has never had: a fold, an intermediate angle and two display states. If you ship an iOS app with fixed assumptions about aspect ratio or a hardcoded layout, that is now technical debt with a shipping date of October.

Apple's public pages do not spell out the developer story yet. The product pages and the launch coverage read for this article contain no new API names, no Live Activities changes and no Apple Intelligence capabilities exposed to third-party apps. Watch the iOS 27 SDK documentation rather than the marketing pages for what you can actually call.

The 2nm A20 Pro is the piece to watch for on-device model work. A denser process usually means more performance inside the same thermal budget, which is the constraint that decides whether a local model is usable on a phone. Apple published no inference benchmarks, so treat this as a reason to re-measure your own models rather than a number to plan around.

One more feature is worth flagging with a caveat. 9to5Mac's coverage indicates the iPhone 18 Pro can authenticate that a photo was not edited with AI, which would matter to anyone building around image provenance. The sources read for this article did not explain the mechanism, so check Apple's documentation before assuming it maps onto an existing standard like C2PA.

This article was first published on Tech AI Wire.