I hope the iPhone 18 Pro’s unnecessary camera tech doesn’t make it to the iPhone 20

Source Domain: www.phonearena.com

The iPhone 18 Pro doesn’t need to start a new fire. It just needs to keep the iPhone 17 fire alive until the iPhone 20 – the anniversary job – arrives in 2027.

The phenomenal success of the iPhone 17 family is happening in a very interesting context. While the US’ overall smartphone market is declining almost 6% in Q1 2026 (compared to 2025), Apple’s smartphone sales grew 1.3% year-over-year at home.

And we’re in the middle of the RAMpocalypse storm. Hey, I hope it’s the middle; fingers crossed that this isn’t only the beginning.

Because of it, both the vanilla Galaxy S26 and the iPhone 17 Pro arrived with a $100 price hike last September. But not even Apple’s new $1,099 price drove people off: Apple really hit a gold mine with the iPhone 17 series.

We got meaningful upgrades both on the outside and inside and people responded. We voted with our wallets.
Dreaming about a repetition of that same phenomenon with the iPhone 18 is unreasonable.

The iPhone 18 series is shaping out to be a nice, safe, boring and predictable upgrade over the iPhone 17. There’s nothing wrong with that – real upgrades happen once every two years (or more).

But Apple is about to make a mistake if it pours unnecessary upgrades on the iPhone 18 Pro.

Miss me with that variable aperture!

Unofficial iPhone 18 Pro renders. | Image by Macworld

Word on the street is that the iPhone 18 Pro Max (and iPhone 18 Pro, for that matter) might adopt a variable aperture for their camera systems.This, if rumors hold true, could cause prices to go up once again, since a variable aperture requires more hardware.

I hope this doesn’t happen and if Apple manages to keep the $1,099 starting price for the iPhone 18 Pro by NOT installing a variable aperture, that’d be great.

Beyond money, there’s the actual question of practicality.

A variable aperture is…

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