iPhone 18 Pro Review: All About that Chip — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:16So if this were back in
2. 0:182011,
3. 0:19this is what we would call
4. 0:21an S update.
5. 0:22The iPhone 18 Pro is basically an iPhone 17 Pro with a chip update,
6. 0:25a camera upgrade, and better battery life,
7. 0:27plus some new colors to make sure people know it's the new one...
8. 0:30That's an S update if we've ever seen one.
9. 0:33And I think it's tempting to be disappointed in that,
10. 0:35but after using it for the past week, I actually think it's underrated.
11. 0:38I know, I know. Cue all the shill comments.
12. 0:40"What do you mean a $1,200 iPhone is underrated??"
13. 0:43I said underrated, not underpriced.
14. 0:46It's expensive,
15. 0:48but it's underrated.
16. 0:49For two straight years now,
17. 0:50the Pro iPhone has gone under the radar and sort of lived in the shadow of
18. 0:54Apple trying their riskier new ideas
19. 0:56on other phones.
20. 0:57Last year, the iPhone Air stole the spotlight.
21. 0:59That's about the only thing anyone wanted to talk about...
22. 1:01This year, it's all about the first folding iPhone.
23. 1:04The Duo.
24. 1:05The flagship Pro iPhone has not had a groundbreaking new
25. 1:07feature in over a decade now,
26. 1:09like, that's what the other models are for.
27. 1:12But in the Pro iPhone, you will find
28. 1:14simply
29. 1:15the best... iPhone that they make.
30. 1:16And it's been quietly getting
31. 1:18really good. So let's start with the camera system.
32. 1:21Right?
33. 1:22Really, there isn't much physically new.
34. 1:24We're looking at the same three cameras as last year's 17 Pro.
35. 1:27A 48-megapixel primary camera, 48-megapixel ultrawide,
36. 1:30and 48-megapixel 4x telephoto.
37. 1:31But the main camera now gets this variable aperture lens...
38. 1:34So for the entire history of the iPhone and basically every other smartphone
39. 1:38that's not made by Samsung,
40. 1:40smartphones have had
41. 1:41fixed aperture lenses. You know,
42. 1:42you'd see that aperture as one of the camera stats.
43. 1:45It would be like f/2.2 or f/2.0... or f/1.8.
44. 1:48Fellow camera nerds already know all about this,
45. 1:51but essentially the lower the number,
46. 1:52the bigger the relative aperture and the more light that lens is letting
47. 1:56through to hit that sensor.
48. 1:57And that's what we all want.
49. 1:58The biggest aperture possible for the most light hitting the sensor...
50. 2:02most of the time.
51. 2:03But my fellow photography nerds also already know that sometimes
52. 2:07you want a little more in focus.
53. 2:09So you can always open up the aperture and have it wide open to
54. 2:12let more light in to hit the sensor. But also now
55. 2:15the background
56. 2:16is blurrier.
57. 2:17But if you want more in focus and you want it to be more sharp,
58. 2:19you can stop down that lens to something like this.
59. 2:22Which of course is letting less light in, but is now
60. 2:26more in focus, a sharper overall image... And then of course
61. 2:29there's a middle ground.
62. 2:30So the iPhone 18 Pro gets a variable aperture that opens all the way
63. 2:34up to a new maximum of f/1.48,
64. 2:36which is awesome.
65. 2:37But it can also stop down in stages to f/1.8,
66. 2:40fold... f/2.8 or f/4 when you want to,
67. 2:42and apparently third-party apps will be able to do infinite stages,
68. 2:46so smoothly moving through this range...
69. 2:48Anyway, how much of a difference does this make?
70. 2:51Well,
71. 2:52from a whole bunch of photos I've taken in a whole bunch
72. 2:55of different situations... on this phone,
73. 2:57it actually doesn't really make a huge difference.
74. 3:00It's pretty subtle.
75. 3:01Like this is wide open f/1.48
76. 3:03and this is f/4.
77. 3:04And you can see more is in focus here with that background.
78. 3:07Again, f/1.48,
79. 3:08f/4,
80. 3:09more sharpness, deeper plane of focus.
81. 3:11It's one of the more subtle things that you can change about a photo.
82. 3:15So, you know,
83. 3:16can the regular person tell the difference between f/1.48
84. 3:18and f/4 at first glance?
85. 3:20Not really. But also,
86. 3:21can the regular person tell the difference between
87. 3:254800 Kelvin and 5400 Kelvin white balance?
88. 3:28Also not really.
89. 3:29And the difference between a 60th of a second and a 48th of a second
90. 3:32shutter speed is also pretty subtle.
91. 3:33But that's what these Pro tools are all about,
92. 3:36in my opinion.
93. 3:36Helping creative people make what they're trying to make slightly easier and
94. 3:40giving them more control over more parts of the image to do that.
95. 3:44So adding that variable aperture is just one more thing you can control,
96. 3:47whether it's to bring the background slightly more into focus
97. 3:51or have slightly sharper overall images,
98. 3:53or even to mess with the little point lights making artistic-looking
99. 3:56starburst shapes when you stop down,
100. 3:58thanks to the six aperture blades not being a perfect circle,
101. 4:01little stuff like that...
102. 4:03For those wondering,
103. 4:04auto mode seems to mostly default to f/1.48...
104. 4:06or f/1.8. The brighter two apertures,
105. 4:08just to let as much light in as possible.
106. 4:10pretty much all the time.
107. 4:11And I never saw it actually automatically close beyond that,
108. 4:15but that doesn't actually surprise me.
109. 4:17And the new f/1.48 max aperture kind of flew under the radar.
110. 4:20That is really nice.
111. 4:21And it means shutter speeds can be faster, you can freeze action a little more,
112. 4:25and ISOs can be lower for slightly less noise in low light.
113. 4:28So why is it underrated?..
114. 4:29Well, as you can see,
115. 4:30it's not making a huge difference on this camera with this generation of phone.
116. 4:34But...
117. 4:35but variable apertures make a bigger difference,
118. 4:37the bigger the sensor is, as you can see with this huge sensor here.
119. 4:41And if you've been subscribed for a bit,
120. 4:43you also know I've reviewed some other phones in the past couple
121. 4:46years with these absolutely huge...
122. 4:481-inch-type sensors.
123. 4:49Just absolutely massive, right? And on those
124. 4:51the natural depth of field from the photos they take is super shallow.
125. 4:55But
126. 4:56we've also noticed it's sometimes too shallow.
127. 4:57Like I'll take a photo of a close-up subject and it...
128. 5:00it'll look kind of bad because the object isn't even entirely in focus,
129. 5:04and sometimes autofocus is a bit slower because the plane of focus
130. 5:07is so shallow it'll miss and it'll have to hunt a little bit.
131. 5:10And so that variable aperture feature would be awesome...
132. 5:13on those sensors.
133. 5:13So if this feature sticks around long enough until the iPhone gets
134. 5:17to those much bigger sensors,
135. 5:18that's when it becomes a huge win.
136. 5:21So ideally on the way there we can see it start to get more and more refined.
137. 5:25And maybe some other camera phones...
138. 5:27bring it back too.
139. 5:28Shoutout to the Galaxy S9.
140. 5:29Apple taking a page out of Google's book and adding more granular Pro controls to
141. 5:33the camera app of just the Pro phones
142. 5:35honestly makes a bigger difference to the user experience than any
143. 5:38of the hardware in my opinion.
144. 5:40They've always had the same simple camera app across every iPhone,
145. 5:43which I think kind of hamstrung the Pro phones for a while.
146. 5:46So you'd always count on grabbing like the best third-party camera app to
147. 5:49actually get the most out of the camera.
148. 5:51But now this stock camera app is great.
149. 5:54You can hold down this bar...
150. 5:55and add whatever you want up here in whatever order you want.
151. 5:59Shutter speed...
152. 6:00format, there's manual focus,
153. 6:02and oh my God, there's finally...
154. 6:04manual white balance.
155. 6:05Now that is so sick. So hey Apple,
156. 6:07as long as you're still in the mood for making these Pro phones more pro,
157. 6:11I have a couple more suggestions.
158. 6:13One, can you let us, while we're recording log video,
159. 6:15can we get a Rec.
160. 6:16709 preview of what it will look like so we can get exposure right...
161. 6:20instead of looking like the flat log as we're recording?
162. 6:22That would be nice. Also,
163. 6:24can you finally let us record
164. 6:278K... video
165. 6:28please?
166. 6:29The sensor's big enough, it's 48 megapixels,
167. 6:32just 8K 30.
168. 6:33You even just added in iOS 27 this new setting where we can set a limit to
169. 6:37how much storage we want our ProRes footage to take up so it never
170. 6:41goes over that maximum...
171. 6:43I swear, Apple, this is now the perfect time
172. 6:46to add that 8K. It'll be great.
173. 6:47Now. Okay, we got to talk about this new chip.
174. 6:50The 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max have the new...
175. 6:53A20 Pro chip inside. Side note,
176. 6:55are they going to sync up the chip name and the phone name ever?
177. 6:58Because 18 and 20, and the 19, 21...
178. 6:59Am I the only one bothered by that? Maybe.
179. 7:02Anyway,
180. 7:03this is
181. 7:04a new...
182. 7:052-nanometer chip inside alongside the simultaneously announced M6.
183. 7:08And after using this phone for the past week,
184. 7:12I really do think this chip is highly underrated.
185. 7:15Now,
186. 7:16I could try to show this with benchmark scores,
187. 7:18you know, that shows peak improvement in power,
188. 7:20of course, but that's not the whole story...
189. 7:22I could also try to show this with, you know,
190. 7:24whipping around iOS and multitasking and how fast things open,
191. 7:28but honestly, it's...
192. 7:29it's fast on every new iPhone, that isn't impressive anymore.
193. 7:32I think the best way to show this... is by seeing
194. 7:35all of that... and...
195. 7:36getting a battery life that's meaningfully longer.
196. 7:39And... in the same size phone.
197. 7:41typically with an S update or you know, the chip update, we see like,
198. 7:44here's the bump in performance...
199. 7:45You know, it's just more powerful.
200. 7:46It's not gonna be more efficient or have better battery life,
201. 7:49but okay, more power, great.
202. 7:51Or... you'll see like, here's more efficiency.
203. 7:53It's not gonna be more powerful, but at least the battery life is longer.
204. 7:58Cool... But to see both...
205. 7:59in one chip update get significantly better,
206. 8:03that's the 2-nanometer effect right there.
207. 8:05Now, behind the scenes, they've talked a little bit about this,
208. 8:08but they moved the DRAM off of the CPU where it was stacked
209. 8:11before and put it next.
210. 8:12So it's still really close by.
211. 8:14But that lets them put this new...
212. 8:153x surface area vapor chamber directly on the CPU,
213. 8:18which lets them cool it much better.
214. 8:20So is the power in the chip reaching literally M1 and M2 level is going
215. 8:24to matter for most everyday people?
216. 8:26Absolutely not. But hey, at the highest end,
217. 8:28there are some people doing heavy gaming for long sessions...
218. 8:31or even like me shooting a ton of 4K video outside when it's really hot.
219. 8:35I can't tell you how hot the iPhone has gotten while shooting autofocus videos
220. 8:39in the summer here in New Jersey.
221. 8:41But having this huge new vapor chamber and connected mid
222. 8:44frame for better cooling...
223. 8:45definitely helps with that.
224. 8:46That's what the Pro is for.
225. 8:48And then obviously bursty stuff is still going to be great.
226. 8:51It's a modern iPhone. But now,
227. 8:52like exporting videos is significantly faster,
228. 8:55image processing is faster,
229. 8:57and actually the AI stuff.
230. 8:58So now that the neural engine is doubled,
231. 9:00it is actually running this like, I know it's just Siri,
232. 9:03and I honestly didn't think it would matter that much for this,
233. 9:06but
234. 9:07Siri has been running pretty slow on some, even some newer phones,
235. 9:11like even the iPhone 16, which was...
236. 9:13built from the ground up for AI...
237. 9:15But even on those phones, it's running kind of slow,
238. 9:18but it is running a lot of that stuff where Siri has to work on-device
239. 9:22much faster... So that's another thing that's nice.
240. 9:25Honestly, this chip
241. 9:27gets me excited for the next-generation MacBook Neo.
242. 9:30That's how good it is.
243. 9:32Because the MacBook Neo...
244. 9:33runs the A18 Pro.
245. 9:34The binned A18 Pro with 8 gigs of RAM. This...
246. 9:37A20 Pro with 12 gigs of RAM
247. 9:40would kill in the MacBook Neo.
248. 9:42It's essentially an M1-level chip. So I...
249. 9:45I'm excited for that.
250. 9:47If you haven't already watched my whole video,
251. 9:49on the ridiculous scale...
252. 9:50of these processors where I shrink down and walk around on these chips,
253. 9:54I'll link that below the like button.
254. 9:56It took a lot to work on that and make it.
255. 9:58It's one of my favorite things we've ever done.
256. 10:01But...
257. 10:01that was based on the last generation's 3-nanometer architecture.
258. 10:04This is a new 2-nanometer node that just proves Moore's law
259. 10:08still isn't dead...
260. 10:09And we're closing in on transistors the size of...
261. 10:12individual... atoms.
262. 10:14It's pretty crazy.
263. 10:16So, okay,
264. 10:17the last big bullet point for this new iPhone was them touting the longest
265. 10:21battery life ever in iPhones, which...
266. 10:23Okay, yeah,
267. 10:24I would hope that you're improving your battery life on your
268. 10:27highest-end phones every year.
269. 10:29But if you remember... last year
270. 10:31they finally did the thing that we were all hoping for,
271. 10:34the iPhone Air really freed up the iPhone 17...
272. 10:36Pro...
273. 10:37to be the most pro version of the iPhone yet.
274. 10:38And they just went ahead and made it thicker and heavier and gave it
275. 10:42the biggest batteries the iPhone's ever had and was pretty
276. 10:45universally praised for that.
277. 10:46So the fact that these 18
278. 10:48Pros make another significant
279. 10:49leap is actually kind of interesting...
280. 10:51On stage, they were saying all these numbers,
281. 10:53you know, 36 hours of video playback, 30 hours of mixed usage, blah,
282. 10:57blah, blah... That's never meant very much to me.
283. 10:59But the stat that did stick to me was that the 18...
284. 11:03Pro
285. 11:04has the same battery life expectation... as the 17...
286. 11:07Pro... Max.
287. 11:09And it does!
288. 11:10I have been mostly testing the smaller 18 Pro all week,
289. 11:13and...
290. 11:14turns out this is easily a day-and-a-half phone without charging overnight,
291. 11:17and it can sometimes be stretched into a two-day-long battery life if you have
292. 11:21have like a chill, light day... Still,
293. 11:23with all of my high-brightness use and all my photo-taking...
294. 11:26CarPlay for two hours every day, everything...
295. 11:28that is pretty sick.
296. 11:30But the thing is, the battery's not bigger.
297. 11:32It's,
298. 11:33maybe it's like 3% bigger or something like that.
299. 11:35But the point is,
300. 11:36it is not some massively larger or more dense battery that is making
301. 11:39this better battery performance.
302. 11:42It's the A20 Pro.
303. 11:43Still, it is all the efficiency gains...
304. 11:46from the 2-nanometer architecture. It's...
305. 11:48It's silicon chops instead of silicon-carbon.
306. 11:51Imagine if they did both. But yeah,
307. 11:53they haven't actually changed much with the battery.
308. 11:56What they did change is they added faster charging.
309. 11:59And it is actually significant.
310. 12:00After finally running this thing dead,
311. 12:02I plugged it in on a 67-watt charger and this thing pulled 45
312. 12:06watts for quite a while...
313. 12:07So their seven hours of video playback after five minutes of wired charging...
314. 12:12seems legit.
315. 12:12And the Pro Max, by the way, actually does have about a 10% larger...
316. 12:16battery capacity than the last generation.
317. 12:18So it seems like it's right around 5,500 milliamp-hours.
318. 12:22Which,
319. 12:23another side note, it's kind of crazy that Apple doesn't just
320. 12:27tell us,
321. 12:28right?
322. 12:29I mean, you're a, it's a smartphone, you're a tech company.
323. 12:31Just,
324. 12:32just tell us!
325. 12:33That we have to wait for someone to disassemble the phone to actually
326. 12:36look and see what the capacity is... It's funny,
327. 12:39in Europe they have this SIM card tray version of the phone,
328. 12:42but they are required, required to submit like the energy labels.
329. 12:46So we get the actual numbers. So we know...
330. 12:48it's 4,056 milliamp-hours for the Pro...
331. 12:51and 5,391 for the Pro Max. Great.
332. 12:53The US gets the eSIM-only version,
333. 12:56so we think it'll be roughly a few percent more.
334. 12:59But again,
335. 13:00we just have to wait and see.
336. 13:02It'll be around 5,500.
337. 13:04Shout out to the EU.
338. 13:05There's some other little things that are new on this phone,
339. 13:08too. The C2 modem,
340. 13:09that should also contribute to efficiencies and battery life,
341. 13:12and new colors.
342. 13:13You've probably already seen this new burgundy all over the place...
343. 13:15I'm not gonna lie.
344. 13:17I just think it's ugly.
345. 13:18I think it's an ugly color.
346. 13:19But there's also a new Glacier Blue color, which is sort of a light sky blue.
347. 13:23I think it's nice. And there's also...
348. 13:25a new matte black which I've been using.
349. 13:27Shows a bit more fingerprints than I was hoping,
350. 13:29but I don't care. This is the one.
351. 13:30I'm using it. I love it.
352. 13:32This is the greatest color they've ever made...
353. 13:34And the Dynamic Island also does get a little bit smaller.
354. 13:36For the first time ever,
355. 13:38they've done this by moving the infrared Face ID sensor,
356. 13:41which used to be in the middle,
357. 13:43over to the top left corner, and it's behind the display.
358. 13:46And this actually makes a lot of sense.
359. 13:48I'm surprised they didn't do it earlier, honestly.
360. 13:50This is a sensor that doesn't need to be a super high resolution,
361. 13:54unlike a selfie camera.
362. 13:55So they can just cut out some of the pixels to shine the infrared through...
363. 13:58And it's just as effective down there.
364. 14:00And the fact that you need a microscope to see it at that slightly lower
365. 14:04pixel density in the corner
366. 14:06is a pretty good testament to a successful implementation there.
367. 14:09It literally only caught my eye in direct sunlight maybe once,
368. 14:12just noticing a little faded circle in the corner.
369. 14:14So yeah,
370. 14:15now three Live Activities fit up at the top instead of two.
371. 14:18Game-changer for somebody.
372. 14:20At the end of the day,
373. 14:21my take on this phone is it really isn't surprising
374. 14:24at all. Of course it isn't.
375. 14:26It's the Pro iPhone.
376. 14:27For years it's been the one that's kind of treated as like a semi-finished
377. 14:31product and it just gets these slow evolutions over time...
378. 14:35No crazy risks.
379. 14:35The last Pro iPhone was one of the bigger changes they've made in a while.
380. 14:39It has obviously the new metal design...
381. 14:42and the thicker new chassis with the bigger batteries and the camera plateau...
382. 14:46But even a lot of the little things, like the new 3,000 nits max brightness,
383. 14:50and the PWM dimming, and the anti-reflective coating.
384. 14:53So if that was a big tick...
385. 14:54in the tick-tock
386. 14:56cycle of updates,
387. 14:58then this is a pretty good... tock
388. 15:00update.
389. 15:01The 2-nanometer chip is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
390. 15:04And the variable aperture camera, it's subtle if anything,
391. 15:08but it has potential future value...
392. 15:10as cameras evolve.
393. 15:11So is the iPhone 18 Pro perfect? No...
394. 15:14Is it expensive? Hell yeah.
395. 15:16Is it exactly what we were expecting also? Yeah.
396. 15:19And there's some value to that, too.
397. 15:22So get subscribed if you haven't already, because there's a lot more coming up.
398. 15:25It's Techtember, after all...
399. 15:27And you know what??
400. 15:28I think I've also kind of picked up on channel sponsor dbrand's playbook,
401. 15:31because it seems like every time there's a new generation iPhone...
402. 15:34they also release a new category of phone case.
403. 15:37You know,
404. 15:38two years ago it was the Ghost Case with the iPhone 16 Pro...
405. 15:40And I gotta say,
406. 15:41it's looking great on the 18 Pro now that Apple's making black phones again.
407. 15:44And if you've got a burgundy phone, don't worry,
408. 15:46they've got a color-matched Ghost Case for that,
409. 15:48too.
410. 15:49But then last year they launched the Tank Case for the 17 Pro,
411. 15:51and that's back and still looks just as rugged on the 18 Pro,
412. 15:54too.
413. 15:55But that brings us to this year and their latest launch.
414. 15:57Minimal.
415. 15:58And you probably guessed just from the name,
416. 15:59but Minimal is just a really clean... minimalist case.
417. 16:02Comes in four colors, and I gotta say,
418. 16:04it's got this little sandstone-ish texture to the back,
419. 16:06too.
420. 16:07It kind of reminds me of the old-school OnePlus phones.
421. 16:09And you can pick up a Prism alongside your Minimal case
422. 16:12to save 10 bucks in a bundle.
423. 16:13Super easy to install,
424. 16:14highly recommended if you're looking for a screen protector for the iPhone.
425. 16:17So yeah,
426. 16:18tons of dbrand stuff for these new iPhones.
427. 16:19I'll leave a link down below if you want to check it out.
428. 16:22Or also,
429. 16:22you can go to a Best Buy in the US and check it out in person for yourself.
430. 16:26Either way, thanks for watching.
431. 16:28Catch you in the next one... peace.