There is no plain iPhone 18 yet. In the US, the iPhone 18 Pro costs $1,199, the iPhone 18 Pro Max $1,299 and the folding iPhone Duo $1,999. In Nigeria, retailers are charging about ₦2.06 million for the 256GB Pro and about ₦2.65 million for the 256GB Pro Max (prices checked 8 October 2026).
Updated 8 October 2026: added what every iPhone Apple sells costs now, and fresh Nigerian retail prices. First published 9 September 2026, hours after Apple’s keynote. Corrections are logged at the foot of the article.
At the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) official rate, the Pro would be about ₦1.6 million, so Nigerian buyers are paying about 29% more.
That gap is the first thing worth understanding about this phone. The second is that although the spec sheet lists three 48MP cameras on the back, only one of them changed this year.
Everything here comes from Apple’s announcement and published specifications, checked on 11 September, with prices rechecked on 8 October.
How much is the iPhone 18?
There is no plain iPhone 18 on sale yet. Apple’s 2026 lineup starts at the iPhone 18 Pro, which costs $1,199 in the US. The iPhone 18 Pro Max costs $1,299, and the folding iPhone Duo costs $1,999.
Apple has not announced a standard iPhone 18. If you want a new iPhone for less, Apple’s store still sells last year’s models:
| Model | Starting US price | About this much in naira* |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone Duo | $1,999 | ₦2.66 million |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | $1,299 | ₦1.73 million |
| iPhone 18 Pro | $1,199 | ₦1.60 million |
| iPhone Air | $1,099 | ₦1.46 million |
| iPhone 17 | $899 | ₦1.20 million |
| iPhone 16 | $799 | ₦1.06 million |
| iPhone 17e | $699 | ₦931,000 |
Not sure which one fits you? Read which iPhone is worth your money.
iPhone 18 Pro price: $1,199, and $1,200 more for 2TB
The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 for 256GB. The iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299 for the same storage. Both are $100 more than the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max were at launch.
Apple added a 2TB option to the Pro models for the first time, which gives buyers four tiers instead of three.
| Model | Storage | Starting US price |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone 18 Pro | 256GB | $1,199 |
| iPhone 18 Pro | 512GB | $1,399 |
| iPhone 18 Pro | 1TB | $1,799 |
| iPhone 18 Pro | 2TB | $2,399 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | 256GB | $1,299 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | 512GB | $1,499 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | 1TB | $1,899 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | 2TB | $2,499 |
Look at what the storage ladder does to the bill. Going from 256GB to 512GB adds $200. Going all the way to 2TB adds $1,200 to the entry price, which is more than the phone itself costs at the bottom of the range. Unless you are shooting ProRes RAW regularly, you are paying flagship money for space you will not fill. Our guide to which iPhone 18 storage size to buy walks through it.
What the iPhone 18 Pro costs in Nigeria right now
Apple has no store in Nigeria, so prices come from retailers and they move week to week. We checked Pointek’s online store on 8 October 2026 and compared each price with a straight dollar conversion at the CBN official rate of ₦1,331.27 to the dollar on 7 October 2026.
| Model | Pointek price | US price in naira | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone 18 Pro 256GB | ₦2,056,725 | ₦1,596,000 | ₦461,000 more (29%) |
| iPhone 18 Pro 512GB | ₦2,516,496 | ₦1,862,000 | ₦654,000 more (35%) |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max 256GB | ₦2,647,566 | ₦1,729,000 | ₦918,000 more (53%) |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max 512GB | ₦3,073,869 | ₦1,996,000 | ₦1,078,000 more (54%) |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max 1TB | ₦3,679,668 | ₦2,528,000 | ₦1,152,000 more (46%) |
Prices have come down since launch week, when pre-order sellers were asking ₦2.5 million for the 256GB Pro. Part of the gap that remains is real cost: shipping, import duty, VAT and the dealer’s margin. But the Pro Max carries a much bigger premium than the Pro. If you are buying in Nigeria, the 256GB iPhone 18 Pro is the better deal of the two by a wide margin.
Before you pay, confirm the exact storage size, whether the phone is eSIM-only or takes a physical SIM, which country it was made for, and what warranty the seller gives. Those details explain most of the price differences between sellers quoting the “same” phone.
iPhone 18 Pro release date
- Announced: 9 September 2026
- Pre-orders: 12 September 2026
- On sale: 18 September 2026 in the first launch markets, 25 September in a second wave
Apple did not announce a standard iPhone 18 alongside the Pro models. Coverage of the launch points to the base model arriving later, possibly in 2027, but Apple has not confirmed a date or a name for it. Treat that as an open question rather than a plan.
What Apple did announce instead was its first foldable. The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999, with pre-orders on 16 October and sale on 23 October. If you are weighing a Pro at $1,199 against a 2TB Pro Max at $2,499, the Duo sits inside that range and you should know it exists before you commit.
The camera: one lens changed, and it is the interesting one
Apple gave the 48MP Fusion main camera a variable aperture. It is the first iPhone camera that can physically change how wide the lens opens, using six laser-cut blades to move between four settings: f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4.0.
That matters in two ways. At f/1.48 the lens takes in about 45 percent more light than the fixed f/1.78 aperture on the iPhone 17 Pro, which helps in a dim room or after sunset. At f/4.0 it does the opposite, holding more of the scene in focus, which is what you want for a group photo or a flat-lay. Apple says the camera picks a setting on its own in automatic mode: wide open in low light, f/1.8 for portraits, f/4 for groups.
Here is the part that does not appear in most coverage. The variable aperture works on the main camera only. The moment you frame wider than 24mm or zoom past 2x, the headline feature is gone and you are back to a fixed lens.
What did not change
The other three cameras carry over from the iPhone 17 Pro unchanged, against Apple’s own published specifications:
- 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide, 13mm, fixed f/2.2, 120-degree field of view
- 48MP Fusion Telephoto, 100mm, fixed f/2.8, tetraprism, with a 12MP optical-quality crop at 200mm
- 18MP Center Stage front camera, fixed f/1.9
The iPhone 17 Pro already had three 48MP rear cameras, so a spec sheet listing three 48MP sensors is not evidence of a new camera system. One lens got a genuinely new mechanism. The rest is last year’s hardware with this year’s processing.
Pro controls in the Camera app
The Camera app now exposes manual shutter speed, white balance, focus and aperture, plus focus peaking, which highlights the part of the frame that is actually sharp. For anyone who shoots stills seriously, these controls are a bigger practical change than the aperture range, because they turn a phone that guesses into a phone that does what you tell it.
On video, Apple added 4K Dolby Vision HDR time-lapse. The top video ceiling is unchanged from the 17 Pro: 4K Dolby Vision at up to 120fps, with ProRes RAW, Apple Log 2 and Genlock still there.
A20 Pro: the numbers Apple published
The A20 Pro is Apple’s first 2-nanometer phone chip. Against the A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro, Apple’s announcement claims:
- A 6-core CPU with two performance cores, up to 20 percent faster
- A 7-core GPU, up to 40 percent faster
- A dual 16-core Neural Engine, 32 cores in total, with double the AI processing
- Up to 50 percent more memory bandwidth
The chip sits on a redesigned vapor chamber with roughly three times the cooling surface area of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple ties that to up to 40 percent better sustained performance, which is the figure that matters more than peak speed. A phone that exports video or runs a game for twenty minutes without throttling is doing something you will actually feel.
RAM is not in Apple’s published specifications. Information surfaced through developer tools points to 12GB on both Pro models, the same as the iPhone 17 Pro generation, which means the speed gains are coming from architecture rather than extra memory.
Only the smaller Pro gets Apple’s new modem
This is the strangest thing in the specification sheets, and it cuts against the phone that costs more.
Apple’s press release says the iPhone 18 Pro introduces the C2, its next-generation in-house cellular modem. It makes no equivalent statement for the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Apple’s US technical specifications page lists the C2 for the Pro and leaves the field blank for the Pro Max. The supported LTE band lists point the same way: the US iPhone 18 Pro includes Band 106 and the Pro Max does not, which suggests different hardware rather than a missing line on a web page. The iPhone Duo also carries the C2.
Apple has not explained the split, and it looks like a US-market distinction rather than a global one. Apple’s specification pages in several other markets, including Canada, list the C2 for both sizes. Since units sold in Nigeria are international models rather than US ones, this may not affect you at all. Check the tech specs page for the exact model number your seller is offering.
What it means for a US buyer today: on the current published specifications, the $1,299 phone appears to ship with older cellular silicon than the $1,199 one. Apple says the C2 uses 15 percent less energy than the C1X and applies on-device processing to hold connections in crowded or weak-signal areas. Whether it beats the Qualcomm modem in daily use is a question for teardowns and independent testing, not for a spec sheet. Nobody has that answer yet.
One thing a newer modem does not do is fix coverage. On MTN, Airtel, Glo or 9mobile, real-world speed depends on the spectrum your operator has deployed where you are standing. A better modem helps at the edge of a cell. It does not build a cell.
Battery and charging: bring your own adapter
Apple rates the iPhone 18 Pro Max at up to 45 hours of video playback and the iPhone 18 Pro at up to 36 hours. On the Pro Max that is six hours more than the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
On capacity, Apple does not publish mAh figures in its standard specifications, but it does list them on its EU product pages for physical-SIM models. MacRumors reported those figures on 9 September: 4,056mAh on the iPhone 18 Pro against 3,988mAh on the 17 Pro, and 5,391mAh on the Pro Max against 4,823mAh. Capacity is not the same thing as endurance. A bigger cell, a more efficient 2nm chip and software optimisation are all doing work here.
Charging is meaningfully faster: up to 50 percent in around 15 minutes, against roughly 20 minutes on the iPhone 17 Pro.
The caveat Apple puts in a footnote. That 15-minute figure needs a 60W USB-C adapter, and Apple does not put one in the box. Price it in. If you are buying a grey-import unit and charging it with whatever brick you already own, you will not see 15 minutes, and you may not see much improvement at all. Wireless charging reaches 50 percent in around 30 minutes with a MagSafe charger and a 35W adapter.
Design, display and the smaller Dynamic Island
The iPhone 18 Pro keeps the aluminium body and rear camera plateau introduced last generation. Four finishes: Black, Silver, Glacier and Burgundy, with the back glass colour-matched to the frame. Ceramic Shield 2 on the front, Ceramic Shield on the back.
Displays carry over at 6.3 inches on the Pro and 6.9 inches on the Pro Max, both Super Retina XDR OLED with ProMotion up to 120Hz.
| Specification | iPhone 18 Pro | iPhone 18 Pro Max |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 6.3 inches | 6.9 inches |
| Resolution | 2622 x 1206 | 2868 x 1320 |
| Pixel density | 460 ppi | 460 ppi |
| Refresh rate | Up to 120Hz | Up to 120Hz |
The Dynamic Island is smaller and now holds three Live Activities at once instead of two, so navigation, a match score and music controls can sit there together. Face ID still works through it. It is a small change that makes the top of the screen genuinely useful rather than merely clever.
iOS 27, Siri AI and photo authenticity
The iPhone 18 Pro ships with iOS 27 and Apple’s updated Siri, which Apple describes as more expressive and more capable across supported apps. The doubled Neural Engine is the hardware reason it can run more of that on the phone rather than in a data centre, though not everything stays local. Some requests still go to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which is Apple’s own server infrastructure for the heavier requests.
The more unusual addition is Apple Reference Image. The system cryptographically signs sensor data at the moment of capture, producing a reference file that can be checked later to see whether an image has been altered since. Apple is also adding support for Google’s SynthID, which marks AI-generated and AI-edited content.
For photographers, journalists and anyone who has watched a doctored image travel faster than a correction, that is the most interesting software feature on this phone. It is also, for now, unproven outside Apple’s own description of it.
iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max or Duo
The Pro and the Pro Max share the chip, the cameras and the storage tiers. The differences are size, battery and, on current specifications, the modem.
- iPhone 18 Pro, $1,199. Flagship performance in a phone you can use one-handed. Gets the C2 modem.
- iPhone 18 Pro Max, $1,299. Bigger screen, nine more hours of video playback, and the modem question above.
- iPhone Duo, $1,999. Folds from a 5.4-inch outer screen to a 7.6-inch inner one, runs the same A20 Pro, and brings multitasking to iPhone for the first time. It does not ship until 23 October and its camera system is a step below the Pro’s.
Our full comparison of the iPhone 18 Pro against the iPhone 17 Pro goes deeper on the generational jump, and everything Apple announced at the September event covers the Watch and AirPods releases.
Should you upgrade?
From an iPhone 17 Pro: probably not this year. You gain the variable aperture on one lens, the A20 Pro, better sustained performance, faster charging and a few hours of battery. The screen, the design, the other three cameras and the RAM are the same. That is a refinement, not a reason.
From an iPhone 15 Pro or older: yes, and comfortably. You are moving up two or three chip generations, gaining ProMotion if you are on a non-Pro model, and picking up a camera system that has changed substantially since you bought.
If you are cost-sensitive: the iPhone that makes the most sense right now may not be a new one at all. Last-generation Pro models get cheaper the week new stock lands, and the 17 Pro shares more with this phone than the price gap suggests.
What to do this week
Two dates decide this for most people. Pre-orders open 12 September and stock arrives 18 September, which is when Nigerian importer pricing starts moving. The iPhone Duo does not ship until 23 October, so buying a Pro this month means deciding you are not waiting six more weeks for a foldable.
Whichever you choose, price the 60W adapter into the total before you commit, because the 15-minute charging figure does not happen without it.
And if you are buying in Nigeria, treat the first fortnight’s prices as a premium for impatience. Confirm the storage tier, confirm eSIM or physical SIM, compare at least three established sellers, and do not pay a full deposit to an account you cannot trace.
Prices and specifications come from Apple’s 9 September 2026 announcement and published technical specifications, checked on 11 September 2026. US prices for the full lineup were rechecked on Apple’s store on 8 October 2026. Nigerian prices are from a single named retailer on 8 October 2026 and will change. Naira conversions use the CBN official rate of ₦1,331.27 to the dollar on 7 October 2026.
Corrections and updates
11 September 2026: An earlier version said all three rear cameras are now 48MP in a way that implied a generational change. The iPhone 17 Pro also had three 48MP rear cameras, and only the main camera changed this year. The piece also attributed the C2 modem to the iPhone 18 Pro line generally. Apple’s published specifications list it for the iPhone 18 Pro and not the Pro Max. Both have been corrected, and Nigerian pre-order pricing has been added.
8 October 2026: Added a section on what every current iPhone costs, since there is no plain iPhone 18 yet. Replaced the launch-week Nigerian pre-order prices with retail prices checked on 8 October, and switched naira conversions to the CBN official rate.
