iPhone 18 Pro Malaysia Price: RM5,499 and RM5,999, Pre-Orders 12 Sep

Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max tonight. In the keynote stream, which began at 1am Malaysian time as set out in our keynote preview, we watched Apple CEO John Ternus introduce the phones on stage. Apple's release, now on its newsroom, confirms the new Pro phones run a 2nm A20 Pro chip, get a 48MP Fusion Main camera with the first variable aperture on an iPhone, are rated by Apple at up to 36 hours of video playback on the 18 Pro and 45 hours on the 18 Pro Max for its eSIM-only models (Apple Malaysia rates the models sold here at 34 and 43 hours), and start at USD 1,199 in the US and RM5,499 in Malaysia, with pre-orders opening Saturday 12 September (8pm Malaysian time) and the phones in stores on Friday 18 September. Malaysia is in the first wave, and the ringgit prices are the same as last year's iPhone 17 Pro line.

Source: every figure below comes from Apple's release, dated 9 September 2026, unless we say it was said on stage; the ringgit prices and Malaysian dates come from Apple Malaysia's release, dated 10 September 2026. Where a live blog and Apple disagreed, Apple wins, and we have corrected our earlier text accordingly.

What Apple announced

• A20 Pro chip. Built on a 2nm process, with a 6-core CPU that has integrated Neural Accelerators, a 7-core GPU Apple says is up to 40 percent faster than the A19 Pro, 50 percent more memory bandwidth than the A19 Pro, and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine with 32 cores in total, which Apple says doubles the A19 Pro's AI processing power. The chip sits in a new M-series style package with the memory beside the die rather than on top of it, attached directly to a vapour chamber with three times the surface area of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro; Apple attributes to that thermal redesign a gain of up to 40 percent in sustained performance over the iPhone 17 Pro. Both phones also get Apple's N1 wireless chip (Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread) and the new C2 cellular modem, which Apple says uploads meaningfully faster than the C1X while using 15 percent less energy.
• Camera. Apple calls the 48MP Fusion Main camera the most advanced camera it has ever made. The variable aperture uses six laser-cut blades on a new rotor mechanism, with four aperture settings, of which Apple's release names three: it opens as wide as f/1.48 for low light, shoots portraits at f/1.8, and closes to f/4 to keep more of a group in focus; the fourth waits for Apple's specifications page. The camera adjusts the aperture automatically, and the four settings can be set by hand in the Camera app; developers get an API across the aperture range. There is a new sensor and a new computational imaging pipeline, and Photographic Styles gain texture and grain controls. New Pro controls put lens aperture, shutter speed, white balance and a histogram in the Camera app. On video, Cinematic effects can be applied after capture to clips shot at up to 60 fps, Time-lapse now records in 4K and Dolby Vision HDR, and Audio Mix can isolate music. Beyond those, Apple's release does not list the recording formats: it does not mention ProRes, Apple Log, genlock or any new frame rates, so whether those carry over or change waits for Apple's specifications page.
• Apple Reference Image. The new sensor can sign every pixel it sees, and when a photo is taken in the new Reference mode, that signed sensor data is developed by Private Cloud Compute into an unalterable reference image, viewable in Photos beside the main image like a digital negative, so a viewer can compare the two and see whether edits were made.
• Battery. Apple's figures are up to 36 hours of video playback on the iPhone 18 Pro and up to 45 hours on the iPhone 18 Pro Max, which Apple states for the eSIM-only models sold in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico and several Gulf countries. Malaysia is not on Apple's eSIM-only list, and Apple says the eSIM-only models get a larger battery worth two additional hours of video playback; Apple Malaysia's release rates the models sold here at up to 34 hours on the iPhone 18 Pro and up to 43 hours on the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Apple also rates the 18 Pro Max at up to 30 hours of typical use on a full charge for the eSIM-only model, and 29 hours on Apple Malaysia's release, under a new usage model built on real-world data. For the iPhone 18 Pro, Apple states wired charging to 50 percent in around 15 minutes with its 40W Dynamic Power Adapter (60W max) and wireless charging to 50 percent in 30 minutes with a MagSafe Charger; for the iPhone 18 Pro Max, Apple states that five minutes on a cable gives around seven hours of video playback.
• Dynamic Island. Smaller, and redesigned to show up to three Live Activities at once, with Face ID still built in.
• Four finishes. Black, silver, glacier and an all-new burgundy, as Apple names them. On materials, Apple's release states that the enclosure is 85 percent recycled aluminium and the phones are 40 percent recycled content overall, and that the battery uses 100 percent recycled cobalt.
• Storage and US prices. 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at USD 1,199 and the iPhone 18 Pro Max at USD 1,299, both at 256GB; Apple's release gives starting prices only, not the price of each tier.
• iOS 27 and Siri AI. The phones ship with iOS 27, and Siri AI, the new Siri built on Apple Intelligence, rolls out as a beta with iOS 27 on Monday 14 September in English first, with Private Cloud Compute for requests that need the cloud.

Apple's release does not state display sizes, weight, or any change to the telephoto, ultra wide or front cameras, and we are not filling those gaps from leaks.

What this means if you film on a phone

We shoot our own videos on iPhone, so the one line that matters to us is the variable aperture. On the 17 Pro the main camera's aperture is fixed (Apple's specifications list a single f-number, f/1.78), so there is no aperture to change on the lens itself; depth of field comes from which camera you pick, where you focus and how close you stand. A mechanical aperture that runs from f/1.48 to f/4 gives a filmmaker a second control: close it down in bright sun to keep a wide shot sharp front to back, open it up for an interview to separate the person from the room. Apple's release describes the new Pro controls (aperture, shutter speed, white balance, a histogram) in the Camera app without saying whether they apply to video; if they do, shutter speed, and therefore motion blur, could be set on purpose at each frame rate, a control that cinema cameras offer, and that is the first thing we will check on the specifications page. We went through what all this changes for a working phone shooter in our piece on what variable aperture would change for filming on a phone; the video formats come once Apple publishes the specifications.

This is what iPhone footage already looks like when the workflow is right, shot on our current phone:

The battery and thermal claims matter for the same reason: in our experience a long shoot day on a phone is a battery problem before it is a storage problem, and anyone who has had a phone slow down mid-recording on a hot day cares about sustained performance. Apple's 40 percent sustained-performance gain and the video playback figures (36 and 45 hours for the eSIM-only models, 34 and 43 hours on Apple Malaysia's release) are Apple's numbers under Apple's tests, not ours; they are the claims we will test against the 17 Pro Max, in our own conditions, once we have a unit.

US price and dates

The iPhone 18 Pro starts at USD 1,199 and the iPhone 18 Pro Max at USD 1,299, both at 256GB, with pre-orders opening at 5am Pacific time on Saturday 12 September (8pm Saturday in Malaysia) and the phones in stores on Friday 18 September. Apple's September 2025 release priced the iPhone 17 Pro from USD 1,099 and the 17 Pro Max from USD 1,199, both at 256GB, so the USD 100 rise on each model is like for like. Apple also lists a US carrier trade-in offer of up to USD 1,200 for an iPhone 14 or later, and Apple Trade In credit of USD 175 to USD 885 for an iPhone 13 or later, both US only. iOS 27 arrives as a free update on Monday 14 September.

Malaysia: price and dates, confirmed by Apple Malaysia

Apple Malaysia's release, dated 10 September 2026, prices the iPhone 18 Pro from RM5,499 and the iPhone 18 Pro Max from RM5,999. Both come in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB, in black, silver, glacier and burgundy; Apple gives the starting price of each model only, not the price of each storage tier. Pre-orders open at 5am Pacific time on Saturday 12 September, which is 8pm on Saturday 12 September in Malaysia, and the phones reach Malaysia on Friday 18 September. Apple Trade In gives RM700 to RM5,250 in credit for an iPhone 13 or later, 0 percent instalments run up to 24 months, and the TechWoven Case with MagSafe is RM249. Apple's Malaysian iPhone pages are at apple.com/my/iphone, where pre-orders open on Saturday night.

Those are the same ringgit prices as a year ago. Apple Malaysia priced the iPhone 17 Pro at RM5,499 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max at RM5,999 at launch in September 2025, both at 256GB, on its own store page as archived on 19 September 2025, the day the phones went on sale here, and as our record of every iPhone launch price in Malaysia since 2017 shows, with Apple Malaysia's own pages as the source for each year. In the US the same two models went up by USD 100 each: Apple's September 2025 release priced the 17 Pro from USD 1,099 and the 17 Pro Max from USD 1,199, and Apple's September 2026 release prices the 18 Pro from USD 1,199 and the 18 Pro Max from USD 1,299, all at 256GB. So a Malaysian buyer pays exactly what the 17 Pro line cost at launch, while the ringgit per US dollar of Apple's price falls from about five to about 4.6 on our arithmetic. Apple does not explain how it sets regional prices, and we are not guessing at the reason.

Malaysia is again in the first wave, as it was for the iPhone 17 line, when Apple Malaysia's September 2025 release set pre-orders for Friday 12 September 2025 and availability for Friday 19 September 2025. Our keynote preview collects the Malaysian prices for the rest of tonight's announcements as Apple Malaysia lists them.

Every iPhone Pro since the iPhone 15 Pro shoots Apple Log, and the difference between footage that looks like a phone and footage that looks like cinema is not the phone, it is the workflow: exposing LOG on purpose, grading it, getting clean audio. That is exactly what our Pocket Cinematic course teaches, on the phone already in your pocket, the workflow we use on our own videos. The course page lists the founder price at RM349 with a free Hollyland Lark A1 mic while the founder boxes last.