This is our own footage: our team was at Apple TRX in Kuala Lumpur on iPhone 18 Pro launch day, and the video above is what we filmed at the pickup counter as buyers walked out with their new phones.
We had already covered the Malaysia pricing when the iPhone 18 Pro launched, RM5,499 for the 256GB model and RM5,999 for 512GB. This time we wanted the queue itself: who showed up first, what they picked, and whether the variable aperture camera we tested in our full review actually mattered to the people buying it.
We asked buyers what colour they got as they left the counter: black, blue, silver and green all came up, but burgundy came up more than any other colour we heard on camera. Standing at the counter watching box after box get handed over, our own host called it on camera before we even started counting: "it seems like the most popular colour here is burgundy by far, almost everyone I saw had the burgundy phone."
One buyer had queued for zero hours, walking in and picking up his phone on the spot; another told us this was his first time queuing and he was number 12. A few answers stuck with us: one buyer's first ever iPhone was the 4s, and another pointed out Izami Gadget, one of the first people to own an iPhone in Malaysia, had shown up again for this one in Burgundy.
Nobody we filmed brought up the variable aperture or the new photographic styles unprompted, they were there for the colour and the software. We put the camera itself through a full week of testing against the iPhone 17 Pro in our iPhone 18 Pro camera review, and the short version is that the upgrades are real but mostly matter if you already shoot deliberately. That is also the gap our own Pocket Cinematic course teaches you to close: getting a cinematic result out of the phone that is already in your pocket, on launch day or otherwise.
Our host wrapped up at the counter by pointing buyers toward trying more of the lineup at TRX before October 23rd. We will follow up once we know exactly what that date brings.
