The iPhone 18 Pro brings back the cameras, battery headroom and proper speakers I gave up for the iPhone Air. After my first day with it, the biggest question is whether it’s worth giving up the Air’s wonderfully thin, light design.
I switched from the iPhone 16 Pro Max to the iPhone Air last year, and I’ve loved using it every single day. What now feels like a precursor to the iPhone Duo turned out to be a phone I was perfectly happy living with on its own merits. I understood the sacrifices Apple had made to get it that thin and light, and most of the time, I was happy to make those trade-offs.
A year later, I’m wondering if it’s time to change things up. That brings me to the iPhone 18 Pro. I’ve started testing it out, and based on how things go in a week or two, I will decide if I am going back to Pro this year, although not quite back to Pro Max.
The question for me isn’t simply whether the iPhone 18 Pro is faster or takes better photos. It’s whether what I gain is worth giving up a design I’ve enjoyed using every day. That’s what I’ll be exploring as I make it my daily driver, starting with these first impressions and expanding this article into a full review after more testing.
Review in progress: These are my initial hands-on impressions of the iPhone 18 Pro. I’ll be adding extended camera comparisons, battery testing, performance results and a final score after spending more time with the phone.
iPhone 18 Pro price in the UAE
The iPhone 18 Pro starts at AED 5,099 in the UAE and is available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. Apple offers four finishes this year: Black, Silver, Glacier and Burgundy. UAE availability begins on 18 September. You can see the full range in our Apple UAE pricing roundup, while our iPhone 18 Pro launch guide covers the major specifications and changes.
I’m reviewing the 1TB Burgundy version, and I’m glad Apple sent this colour because it looks fantastic.
Just like last year, this year’s models are also eSIM-only. The company says removing the physical SIM hardware lets it use a larger battery and adds two hours of rated video playback.
Design: Burgundy makes a strong first impression
The Burgundy finish looks amazing in person. I showed it to my wife and kids, and it received unanimous approval, which is about as close as consumer electronics ever get to passing a focus group in my house.
It is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, though. That’s unfortunate because the colour itself deserves to be seen rather than wrapped inside a case.
Construction quality is excellent. The edges around the body are nicely rounded, and the phone feels beautifully finished in the hand. The camera plates are the one exception, with edges that feel sharper than the rest of the chassis.
Apple lists the iPhone 18 Pro at 150mm tall, 71.9mm wide, 8.75mm thick and 211g. For comparison, the iPhone Air I’ve been using for the past year weighs just 165g.
Specifications
Apple iPhone 18 Pro
Body
Camera
Hardware
Battery
You notice that difference immediately.
The Pro feels a touch smaller than the Air in my hand, but also substantially thicker and heavier. Initially I thought the weight would be pretty manageable, and it still is, but I’ve become more conscious of it the longer I’ve used the phone. I notice it most when the bottom edge rests on my little finger. A year with the Air has clearly spoiled me.
The smaller body makes one-handed typing easier
The reduced width does have an immediate benefit. When typing one-handed on the iPhone Air, I have to stretch my thumb slightly uncomfortably to reach the far side of the keyboard. On the iPhone 18 Pro, I don’t. It’s a surprisingly noticeable improvement. With two-handed typing, that difference disappears.
Scrolling tells a slightly different story because neither phone is small enough for my thumb to comfortably reach the top of the display. The Pro hasn’t magically transformed into a truly one-handed phone, but its smaller body does feel more manageable overall.
In short, the Pro is easier to reach across, but its additional weight makes it more tiring to support. Whether I still feel that way after a week is something I’ll revisit in the full review.
Display: I can’t see the under-display Face ID hardware
One thing I actively tried to find was the section of the display covering the Face ID hardware. Apple has changed the pixel arrangement in this area, so I looked for differences in sharpness, uniformity, or anything else that might reveal where the hardware sits underneath.
I simply can’t spot it.
More importantly, Face ID itself doesn’t seem compromised either. On my first day of use, it has worked just as reliably as it did on the iPhone Air. With new display hardware sitting between you and the sensors. I’ll test this more extensively with sunglasses, awkward angles and different lighting conditions before the final review.
Outdoor visibility is very similar to the Air
Dubai provides a fairly effective display test simply by opening the front door. I turned the brightness up to maximum on both the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Air and stood outside under direct morning sun for around two minutes. Both screens remained equally visible to me, and neither showed an obvious reduction in brightness during that short period.
What did differ was heat. The Air started feeling noticeably warmer much sooner than the Pro. That matches another observation I made during setup, although it’s far too early to turn two informal tests into grand declarations about thermal engineering.
Apple says the iPhone 18 Pro uses the A20 Pro alongside a next-generation vapour chamber designed to improve sustained performance. For now, all I can say is that in these two early situations, the Pro felt cooler.
Setup took nearly four hours
Moving everything from my iPhone Air to the iPhone 18 Pro took around three hours and 45 minutes.
The initial estimate was almost seven hours, so thankfully Apple’s progress bar proved about as reliable as progress bars have been since computers first discovered the concept of lying politely.
Both phones got hot during the transfer, which isn’t unusual given the amount of background work, but the Air was noticeably hotter across both its front and rear surfaces.
Again, that was an observation by touch rather than a controlled thermal measurement, so I’m not calling the Pro a thermal champion quite yet.
Cameras: I’d forgotten how useful multiple focal lengths are
This is where going back to the Pro starts to feel significant. The single rear camera was one of the obvious compromises I accepted with the iPhone Air. In everyday use, it was surprisingly easy to live with, and I generally liked the photos it produced. But every once in a while I’d want a wider view or proper telephoto reach and be reminded that physics remains stubbornly unwilling to fit three lenses into one.
The iPhone 18 Pro gives me built-in 0.5x, 1x, 4x and 8x options in the Camera app, and after almost a year with the Air, I’d forgotten how useful that flexibility is.
Apple has equipped the phone with a new 48MP Fusion Main camera with variable aperture. If you want the technical explanation of what that actually changes rather than another recital of aperture numbers, we have a separate iPhone 18 Pro variable-aperture explainer. I haven’t tested that just yet.
What surprised me is that the 8x option is surprisingly usable in good light. Fine detail starts looking a little more processed than it does at 4x, particularly when you examine leaves and textured surfaces closely, but it still gives me a useful photograph rather than merely a marketing-friendly number.
At the other end, 0.5x lets me capture considerably more of a scene. None of this is new for a Pro iPhone, but after a year without those focal lengths, I appreciate them considerably more.
Low-light photography shows a subtler difference
My first low-light comparisons against the iPhone Air have been interesting because the Pro didn’t annihilate the Air. In one outdoor night shot, the Air produced the brighter image, lifting shadows much more aggressively across the grass, walls and interior of the building. The iPhone 18 Pro produced a darker, moodier shot that looked closer to life.
In a second, much darker indoor scene, however, the differences were much smaller. Both phones retained similar levels of detail, particularly around plant leaves and textured surfaces.
The processing philosophy still seemed slightly different. The Air tended to lift the overall scene a little more, whereas the Pro kept deeper shadows and slightly stronger contrast.
These are only early samples, so I’m deliberately avoiding declaring a winner. So far, they suggest the difference between the phones may be less about one producing dramatically better pictures and more about how Apple interpret’s difficult lighting.
The speakers are not even a comparison
This surprised me more than I expected. Switching from the iPhone Air to the iPhone 18 Pro is like going from the speakers built into your TV to adding a soundbar.
The Pro sounds considerably richer and louder, but the biggest improvement is balance. Audio feels properly centred and full, whereas the Air sounds noticeably lopsided once you switch directly between them. I had honestly forgotten how underwhelming the Air’s speakers were.
That probably says something about my usage- I almost always use AirPods or headphones when listening to music or watching longer videos, so the Air’s weaker speakers rarely bothered me during the past year.
If you regularly use your phone’s built-in speakers, though, this is one of the clearest differences.
Haptics feel basically identical
Not every comparison needs a dramatic conclusion. Typing, tapping controls and interacting with apps feel essentially the same across both phones. I haven’t noticed any meaningful difference in haptic feedback between the iPhone 18 Pro and the Air.
Battery life: Much too early to judge
It would be ridiculous for me to judge battery life after barely a day with the phone. Over the past year, the iPhone Air mostly got me through an entire day. Once a week or so, depending on what I was doing, I’d need to reach for a charger in the evening.
I expect the iPhone 18 Pro to give me considerably more breathing room, especially since Apple has increased battery capacity this year. I’ll track battery behaviour across normal workdays, heavier camera days and weekends before coming to a conclusion in the full review.
Early thoughts on the iPhone 18 Pro
After my first day, the iPhone 18 Pro already feels very different from the phone I’ve used for the last year. The Air still wins immediately on the form factor, and there’s no pretending otherwise. Pick them both up, and the difference is substantial; I’m especially aware of the Pro’s extra weight when holding it one-handed.
But I’m also rediscovering everything I gave up to get the Air into that remarkable form factor.
The speakers are dramatically better. The smaller width makes one-handed typing more comfortable. The additional cameras give me considerably more freedom over how I frame photographs. Face ID works just as well despite the changes beneath the display. And in my very limited early testing, the Pro appears to stay cooler than the Air under sustained workloads and direct sunlight.
None of that answers the question I care about most.
After living with the Air for almost a year, will I actually want to go back to a thicker and heavier Pro permanently?
Twenty-four hours isn’t enough time to answer that. Give me a couple of weeks. That’s what the full review will be about.
