iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max variable aperture camera explained — here's what it actually does
Phones iPhones iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max variable aperture camera explained — here's what it actually does Features By John Velasco Published 14 September 2026 It opens a new world for shooters When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. With the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, Apple is introducing something entirely mechanical that aims to give photographers more creative control than ever before: a variable aperture camera.To be fair, Apple isn't the first to embrace this technology. Samsung introduced a dual-aperture system on the Galaxy S9 and S10 as far back as 2018, while more recent flagships like the Huawei Mate 50 Pro and Xiaomi 14 Ultra have considerably refined how multi-stop mechanisms function.
- ▪Phones iPhones iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max variable aperture camera explained — here's what it actually does Features By John Velasco Published 14 September 2026 It opens a new world for shooters When you purchase through links on our site, w
- ▪With the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, Apple is introducing something entirely mechanical that aims to give photographers more creative control than ever before: a variable aperture camera.To be fair, Apple isn't the first to embrace
- ▪Samsung introduced a dual-aperture system on the Galaxy S9 and S10 as far back as 2018, while more recent flagships like the Huawei Mate 50 Pro and Xiaomi 14 Ultra have considerably refined how multi-stop mechanisms function.
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| Original publisher | Tom's Guide |
| Canonical URL | https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/iphone-18-pro-and-pro-max-variable-aperture-camera-explained-heres-what-it-actually-does |
| Publication time | Mon, 14 Sep 2026 04:30:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-14T04:36:51.681Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-14T04:36:51.681Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | SWlWLzzv3UHe · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Phones iPhones iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max variable aperture camera explained — here's what it actually does Features By John Velasco Published 14 September 2026 It opens a new world for shooters When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Future) Jump To: How It Works What It Can Do Copy link Facebook X Reddit Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Every major iPhone camera upgrade over the past decade has followed a familiar playbook: larger sensors, higher megapixel counts, and heavier doses of computational photography.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Tom's Guide.
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