iPhone 18 Pro teardown reveals variable aperture
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are the first Apple devices to feature a variable aperture camera. The iFixit team has now published its well-known teardown of the new Apple phones, showcasing all the new components and explaining the new variable aperture system in detail.
You can fast-forward to minute 7:25 in the video, where the presenter begins to examine the camera. The system is driven by its own magnets, and the six leaf-shaped blades that make up the aperture are extremely small.
Variable aperture
To give you a better idea, the iFixit team examined them under a microscope, and Apple wasn’t exaggerating when they said they were as thin as a human hair. The aperture blades are mounted on a delicate ring driven by tiny electromagnets.
Vapor chambers
The rest of the teardown is fairly straightforward for an iPhone, but there are some interesting observations. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max have significantly larger vapor chambers that cover almost the entire back of the devices.
Batteries
The disassembly confirms the battery capacities of the pure eSIM models:
- iPhone 18 Pro: 4,288 mAh (+0.8% compared to 4,252 mAh in the iPhone 17 Pro) iPhone 18 Pro Max: 5,567 mAh (+9.4% compared to 5,088 mAh in the iPhone 17 Pro Max)
The eSIM-based models are sold in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait. In all other countries, the devices have a SIM card slot.
The US model of the iPhone 18 Pro Max is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X75 modem, making it the only device in the series with this technology. All other variants of the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max use Apple’s own C2 modem.
In the end, the 18 Pro series achieves a repairability rating of 7/10, which is the same as the result for the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
