With the iPhone 17 series Apple made some major upgrades, including whole new designs, new cameras, and more. But there’s still room for improvement.
That’s why below, we’ve listed five of the things that we’d really like to see the iPhone 18 series offer. Some of these wishes are for specific models, and others for the whole line.
It’s early days for iPhone 18 rumors so we can’t say with too much confidence whether we’ll get most of these or not. But we can take some educated guesses, and they’re all things that could massively improve Apple’s iPhone offering.
1. A telephoto camera for the iPhone 18
Even the base model iPhones are expensive phones, with the iPhone 17 for example starting at $799 / £799 / AU$1,399, yet for all that money you’re still not getting a telephoto camera.
That’s all the worse considering the similarly priced Samsung Galaxy S25 does have a telephoto camera, and that’s probably the iPhone 17’s main rival. The Google Pixel 10 also has a telephoto camera, so it really seems stingy for Apple not to include one.
So that’s one thing we’d like to see with the iPhone 18 – a telephoto camera to go along with its wide and ultra-wide lenses.
We’re not optimistic that this will happen though. After all, Apple only just upped the base model’s refresh rate to 120Hz, and that seems an even more basic feature for a highish end phone to have.
2. Improved AI
Apple is known for delivering great hardware and software on its phones, but one area where it’s notably lacking is AI. Compared to Google’s Gemini and other AI offerings like ChatGPT, Apple’s attempts just can’t compete, so this area is in major need of some upgrades.
Of course, since AI is largely software, any improvements could potentially come to existing iPhones anyway, but the iPhone 18’s superior specs could allow an AI overhaul to really shine.
Thankfully, it looks like we might get some big improvements before too long, though they might not be down to Apple itself. Rather, Apple will reportedly use a custom version of Google’s Gemini to power Siri’s long-awaited AI upgrade.
This upgrade might land in March or April according to reports – so before the September-bound iPhone 18 series. But again, this is likely to be faster, smoother, and generally at its best on the iPhone 18 series, and we may well see some iPhone 18-specific AI features that require next-generation hardware to work at all.
3. Longer distance zoom on the Pro and Pro Max
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max have reasonable telephoto cameras, with 48MP sensors that offer 4x optical zoom. That’s not far off the competition, although the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Google Pixel 10 Pro zoom to a slightly further 5x, but we’d like to see the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max jump ahead.
Specifically, we’d love to see a zoom in the region of 10x – though ideally it would be capable of shorter range zoom too, perhaps by adding an extra lens like Samsung does with its Ultra phones, or by equipping these phones with a variable zoom lens, that can shift between different optical distances.
Doing this would also allow Apple to equip the base iPhone 18 with a zoom camera (like we wished for above) while still being able to point to how the iPhone 18 Pro’s is better, if the base model has say just a 5x or 3x zoom.
4. Better battery tech
When it comes to the batteries and charging specs on Apple’s phones, there’s a lot of room for improvement.
The main thing we’d like to see is higher capacity batteries, especially now that Chinese phones like the 7,300mAh OnePlus 15 are racing way ahead.
Right now, the biggest iPhone battery is only just over 5,000mAh, so we’d like to see a significant boost in capacity for the iPhone 18 series, and ideally that would be achieved by using silicon-carbon batteries. This technology is what OnePlus and some others have used to achieve such high-capacity batteries, as it allows for a higher capacity in the same space, so phones don’t have to get thicker.
We’d also like to see charging speeds increased, as while Apple is a bit vague about charging specs, it claims that the iPhone 17 Pro Max can reach up to a 50% charge in 20 minutes with a 40W adapter or higher, or that it can reach the same charge level in around 30 minutes with a 30W or higher MagSafe charger.
For comparison, the OnePlus 15 supports 120W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, which in both cases is dramatically more charging power than any iPhone supports.
If Apple increases the battery capacities then more charging power would be especially useful, but either way it’s something we’d like to see.
5. More RAM
Finally, we’d like for the iPhone 18 series to include more RAM than the iPhone 17 line. With the current models, you get 8GB in the iPhone 17 and 12GB in the Pro handsets, which isn’t bad, but is less than many Android flagships offer.
Now, in the past this hasn’t mattered all that much, but RAM is becoming increasingly important in the age of AI, and particularly if Apple is set to improve its AI features it would be good if that was paired with an increase in RAM.
Ideally, we’d like there to be at least 12GB in the base iPhone 18 and 16GB in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, and we wouldn’t say no to even more than that.
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