In the year of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, Honor Robot Phone, and recently released iPhone Duo, it feels almost blasphemous to hand TechRadar’s Phone of the Year award to the iPhone 18 Pro, but there is something quietly brilliant about Apple’s latest flagship.
Contrary to those aforementioned headline-grabbers, the iPhone 18 Pro is not a flashy product in almost any way. Heck, it even swaps the Cosmic Orange excitement of the iPhone 17 Pro for a more sophisticated, wine-tasting-in-Sonoma Burgundy shade, as if it wants to emerge from your pocket with as little fanfare as possible.
And yet underneath the iPhone 18 Pro’s muted exterior is a phone so consistently competent that it’s hard to find anything to complain about. Not only is it one of the best camera phones money can buy, but it also brings market-leading performance, a gorgeous OLED display, impressive battery life, and refreshing software simplicity to the table.
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The iPhone 18 Pro’s well-roundedness is what makes it a cut above the rest. Sure, you’ll find larger camera sensors on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra or bigger batteries in the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and Xiaomi 17 Ultra. You’ll even find a variable aperture feature on a handful of Android phones from the last decade (Huawei Mate 50 Pro, anyone?). But if I had to recommend a phone that does everything at an 8/10-level or above, it’s the iPhone 18 Pro.
And I really do mean everything.
In recent years, Apple’s flagships have been excellent phones with embarrassingly limited AI capabilities compared to the competition. But following Siri’s long-awaited glow-up in iOS 27, the iPhone 18 Pro no longer feels like a hamstrung device (don’t let the naysayers fool you — Siri AI is good).
Even if you’re not fussed about AI and are wondering whether the iPhone 18 Pro is a meaningfully different device to the iPhone 17 Pro, I’m inclined to say, “no, but that’s not really the point.” Most people aren’t upgrading from a previous-generation flagship, and Apple is hardly alone in shipping iterative upgrades year after year. The iPhone 18 Pro is familiar but formidable.
(Image credit: Future/Jacob Krol)
I also think the arrival of new form-factor devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and iPhone Duo will remind people not to take the iPhone 18 Pro for granted. Consumers have long berated Apple for shipping ‘boring’ new-generation iPhones, and yet critics of the Duo are lamenting its thickness, awkward button placement, and lack of Face ID and Pro camera components.
We’ve been spoiled by the consistency of Apple’s flagship phones, just as soccer star Erling Haaland — who regularly scores 30+ goals every season — is rarely mentioned in conversations surrounding the most exciting players in the world. Haaland’s excellence has been normalized so as not to be exciting anymore: he’s the iPhone 18 Pro of the soccer world (Lamine Yamal is the iPhone Duo in this metaphor — I won’t be explaining further).
The question now is: where do candybar flagships go from here? It feels like we’re approaching the end of an era, not only because the margin for year-on-year improvements is as small as it’s ever been, but also because foldables are finally entering the mainstream conversation.
What’s more, smartphones as we know them might soon be replaced by smartphone-adjacent wearables, especially if OpenAI and Jony Ive get their way.
But if you’re asking me right here, right now, for my pick as the best smartphone of 2026, my answer is the iPhone 18 Pro. It’s the boring choice, but in my opinion, the right one. We’ve reached ‘peak smartphone,’ and the iPhone 18 Pro is what ‘peak smartphone’ looks like.
I now invite you to (*deep breath*) debate me in the comments.
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axel.metz@futurenet.com (Axel Metz)
