iPhone 18 Pro one month later: These features keep impressing me

I’ve had the iPhone 18 Pro for about a month now, and during that time three main features have consistently impressed me.

#1: Battery life

When Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Pro, it compared its battery life to that of the iPhone 17 Pro Max—a model universally praised for its impressive runtime.

After a month of use, iPhone 18 Pro’s battery truly is top-tier. I never even think about charging it during the day, and at the end of almost every day I have about 60% battery left.

I can’t even imagine what I’d end the day with if I had the larger iPhone 18 Pro Max. Suffice to say, Apple’s battery upgrades this year are excellent, and anyone with an older model iPhone should be very happy regardless of which Pro size you choose.

#2: Main camera upgrades

Apple makes the iPhone’s cameras better every year. But it’s actually not too often that the Main camera improves substantially. In the last couple years, for example, Apple has focused more on upgrading the Telephoto, Ultra Wide, and Front cameras.

But iPhone 18 Pro’s Main camera with variable aperture is the star this year, and I’ve been loving it.

I don’t have professional photography training, so the addition of pro controls isn’t appealing to me. And I never manually change apertures with the camera. But just using the ‘Auto’ setting, I keep taking photos that look especially great to me. Most of the time they’re  ƒ/1.48, with some ƒ/1.8 thrown in too. And while I don’t have the expertise to describe why they look so good to me, I’ll just say I’ve been very happy with the camera.

#3: Vapor chamber cooling

I use my iPhone outdoors a lot, on frequently sunny days, and iPhone 18 Pro’s vapor chamber has been a welcome upgrade in keeping the iPhone usable.

Previous iPhone models would often struggle out in the elements, especially on warm, bright days. This proved especially frustrating when I was trying to capture a special moment with the Camera app and my warm iPhone was too sluggish to snap the photo.

With iPhone 18 Pro, while it still occasionally gets slightly warm, I’ve never noticed a delay in performance as a result. Instead, the vapor chamber keeps everything cool enough to deliver the iPhone experience I expect.

Do you have an iPhone 18 Pro? What are your favorite features? Let us know in the comments.

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