With a fresh folding form factor, the new iPhone Duo is Apple’s most radical redesign in years. It lands alongside the more familiar-looking iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. There’s no regular iPhone 18, or at least, not yet. Rumors suggest we may see a more affordable base model, perhaps flanked by an iPhone 18e and a second-generation iPhone Air, in spring 2027.
The two new Pro iPhones are available to preorder on September 12 and ship on September 18. You can preorder the iPhone Duo from October 16, ahead of a full release on October 23. But which iPhone 18 model is right for you? I’ll break down the differences and what these phones have in common, so you can choose with confidence. For options beyond the iPhone 18 lineup, read our Best iPhones guide.
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Why You Might Not Need to Upgrade
Before you drop all those hard-earned dollars, remember that you probably don’t need the latest iPhone. If you have an older iPhone, Apple does a good job of updating the software (the iPhone 11 Pro is still supported), and for hardware issues, your iPhone might be repairable; maybe it needs a battery replacement or these troubleshooting tips. Don’t feel like you have to spring for Apple’s shiny new thing.
Sadly, Apple raised iPhone Pro prices this year, so both models are $100 more expensive than the iPhone 17 Pro series.
If you’re set on upgrading, consider raising funds by selling your old iPhone. Just be sure to back up your iPhone, and factory reset it before you sell or give it away. Once the new device arrives, we have tips on how to set up your new iPhone and what settings to change to get the most out of it.
Which iPhone 18 Is Right for You?
We’ll start by looking at what’s the same across the iPhone 18 models this year.
All three new iPhones have Apple’s A20 Pro chip inside, and, you guessed it, this is Apple’s most powerful chip ever. Now, iPhones are already the most capable phones for raw compute power, but the A20 Pro promises a significant jump in performance (around 20 percent faster and 30 percent more efficient than the last generation). It also packs a new neural engine to power on-device AI and a new thermal design with a larger vapor chamber to keep things cool. For the iPhone Duo, the A20 Pro has a display engine to ensure smooth transitions between two screens. While Apple doesn’t list the RAM, every model is rumored to have 12 GB.
While they come in different sizes and the Duo has two, every iPhone features an OLED screen that Apple calls a Super Retina XDR display. They also have ProMotion technology, otherwise known as a 120-Hz refresh rate. These adaptive refresh rates can drop as low as 1 Hz when there’s little activity on the screen, enabling features like the always-on display without draining the battery too much.
The displays are protected by the scratch-resistant and antireflective Ceramic Shield 2, the same as last year’s iPhone 17 range. And they can go from 1 nit up to 3,000 nits of brightness. Only the iPhone Duo has a custom nano-texture finish on the interior screen, giving it a matte look that’s designed to reduce glare and crease visibility.
All the phones have an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, meaning they can survive a short dunk in fresh water. They all come in four storage options (256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB), support Qi2 magnetic wireless charging (MagSafe), USB-C 3.2, Dual SIM, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread, and Ultra-Wideband (UWB). It also has Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, Emergency SOS via Satellite, and Crash Detection.
To help you better understand which model to buy, here’s precisely where they diverge.
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