Review: The iPhone 18 Pro is Apple’s coolest smartphone (but only literally)

评测：iPhone 18 Pro 是苹果最“酷”的智能手机（仅限物理意义上）

As Apple’s Tim Cook era draws to a close, we’re seeing more experimentation with the iPhone’s design than we’ve seen in a long time, but you wouldn’t know it from the iPhone 18 Pro. This absurdly fast, full-featured handset might be eclipsed by the hype around the iPhone Duo this year, but it’s still just as good as its immediate predecessor. 随着苹果蒂姆·库克时代接近尾声，我们看到的 iPhone 设计实验比过去很长一段时间都要多，但你从 iPhone 18 Pro 上可能感觉不到这一点。这款速度极快、功能齐全的手机今年或许会被 iPhone Duo 的热度所掩盖，但它依然和前代产品一样出色。

Of course, not too much has changed since the iPhone 17 Pro. There’s the new variable aperture and other camera controls for those who want to get granular with their mobile photography, a welcome addition given the iPhone’s reputation for inflexibly opinionated computational photography. Beyond that, though, all the most important changes are under the hood: a new chip, better battery life, and much-improved thermals that both give the phone better sustained performance and make it cooler to the touch in many situations. 当然，自 iPhone 17 Pro 以来并没有太多改变。对于那些想要精细化调整手机摄影的用户来说，新增的可变光圈和其他相机控制功能是一个受欢迎的补充，毕竟 iPhone 此前在计算摄影方面一直以“固执己见”而闻名。除此之外，所有最重要的变化都在内部：全新的芯片、更长的电池续航，以及大幅改进的散热性能，这不仅让手机拥有了更好的持续性能，还在许多使用场景下让机身触感更凉爽。

I think we’re seeing something of a transition for the “Pro” iPhones. They may still be the flagships in a sense, but Apple is at least for now saving its flashier design ideas for new products like last year’s iPhone Air or this year’s iPhone Duo. The Pro phones aren’t the sexy, cool ones right now; they’re the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, cover-for-every-kind-of-obsessive-user workhorses. I think that’s a great space for them to occupy, and this year’s iteration is no exception. 我认为“Pro”系列 iPhone 正在经历某种转型。从某种意义上说，它们可能仍然是旗舰产品，但苹果目前至少将更具噱头的设计理念留给了像去年的 iPhone Air 或今年的 iPhone Duo 这样的新产品。Pro 系列手机现在不再是那种性感、酷炫的代名词；它们更像是功能应有尽有、满足各类极客用户需求的“工作马”。我认为这是一个非常适合它们的定位，今年的迭代也不例外。

Design / 设计

The iPhone 18 Pro mostly looks and feels like last year’s flagship. It’s a function-over-form design (at least compared to something like the iPhone Air) with good materials. I’m not normally one to care too much about color in these phones. For my personal phone, I’ve always just grabbed whatever was closest to black. (Apple says this year’s black is the blackest yet, of course.) But I have to admit the new burgundy color of my review unit is appealing, even though it’s quite the fingerprint magnet, in a long tradition for iPhones. iPhone 18 Pro 的外观和手感与去年的旗舰机基本一致。这是一种功能重于形式的设计（至少与 iPhone Air 相比），且用料考究。我通常不太在意手机的颜色。对于我自己的手机，我总是选择最接近黑色的那款。（当然，苹果声称今年的黑色是史上最黑的。）但我必须承认，我评测机型的这款新勃艮第酒红色确实很吸引人，尽管它依然延续了 iPhone 的传统，是个不折不扣的“指纹收集器”。

The main design difference this time around is a smaller Dynamic Island, that cut-out at the top of the screen that houses the front-facing camera and sensors. Apple has achieved this by moving the IR camera underneath the OLED panel, now in the top-left corner of the screen. A new pixel arrangement allows infrared light to pass through in that spot, while the pixels in this region operate at twice the brightness to compensate for lower density, so there’s little visible effect on the image on the display. 这次设计上的主要区别在于更小的“灵动岛”（Dynamic Island），即屏幕顶部容纳前置摄像头和传感器的开孔。苹果通过将红外摄像头移至 OLED 面板下方（现在位于屏幕左上角）实现了这一点。一种新的像素排列方式允许红外光穿过该区域，同时该区域的像素以双倍亮度运行以补偿较低的密度，因此对显示图像几乎没有可见影响。

You can tell there’s something subtly going on in that corner if you know what to look for and look closely, but I don’t think most people will notice. As I wrote when the Dynamic Island was first introduced, the way Apple combines the per-pixel brightness and absolute blacks of the OLED panel with creative software to turn what should be something of an albatross—a big, chunky hole in the screen—into an appealing feature by displaying live activities and other information around the sensors is one of the company’s more impressive design ideas in recent years. The execution is excellent and remains so. 如果你知道该看哪里并仔细观察，你会发现那个角落有些微妙的变化，但我认为大多数人不会注意到。正如我在灵动岛首次推出时所写的那样，苹果将 OLED 面板的像素级亮度和纯粹的黑色与创意软件相结合，将本应是“累赘”的大块屏幕开孔，转化为通过在传感器周围显示实时活动和其他信息的吸引人功能，这是该公司近年来最令人印象深刻的设计理念之一。其执行力非常出色，且至今依然如此。

Now, that hole is less big and chunky, making it sensible for Apple to now show up to three live activities at once in the region, not just one. The middle one has more information, while those on the left and right are basically dots with just enough to tell you something useful. 现在，这个开孔变得更小、更精致了，这使得苹果能够合理地在该区域同时显示多达三个实时活动，而不仅仅是一个。中间的活动显示更多信息，而左右两侧的基本上是圆点，足以提供有用的提示。

It’s also now possible to show more information on a second live activity when there are just two being displayed; I found this even more appealing than showing three live activities. This isn’t enough of a reason to upgrade from an earlier Dynamic Island phone, of course, but it has made a good feature a little bit better. 现在，当只显示两个实时活动时，第二个活动也可以显示更多信息；我发现这比显示三个实时活动更吸引人。当然，这不足以成为从旧款灵动岛手机升级的理由，但它确实让这个优秀的功能变得更好了。

Performance and thermals / 性能与散热

Let’s talk specs, performance, and the main story with this phone—heat management. For most specs, this is last year’s iPhone 17 Pro. But the A20 Pro chip has some improvements that make this one of the more notable performance steps in a while. 让我们谈谈规格、性能以及这款手机的核心故事——热管理。在大多数规格上，它与去年的 iPhone 17 Pro 相同。但 A20 Pro 芯片的一些改进使其成为近期性能提升最显著的机型之一。

First up is the new A20 Pro chip. Apple has gone from a 3-nanometer process node in the A19 Pro to 2 nm here. It has a 6-core CPU with four efficiency cores and two performance cores—nothing new there. The GPU has seven cores, each with a Neural Accelerator that Apple says helps improve GPU-based AI workloads. (There’s hardware-accelerated ray-tracing support, too, though few games or apps utilize it.) Also for local AI features (which are a big emphasis for this year’s iOS 27), there’s the dual 16-core Neural Engine. Apple also says the A20 Pro has “the widest memory interface ever shipped in an iPhone” (naturally) with 50 percent more bandwidth. Based on what Apple has said so far about it, that seems to be mainly to improve AI performance. I’m speculating here, but given that Apple Intelligence and Siri AI features work fine on other recent iPhones… 首先是全新的 A20 Pro 芯片。苹果从 A19 Pro 的 3 纳米工艺节点升级到了 2 纳米。它拥有一个 6 核 CPU，包含四个能效核心和两个性能核心——这一点并无新意。GPU 拥有七个核心，每个核心都配备了神经加速器，苹果称这有助于改善基于 GPU 的 AI 工作负载。（此外还有硬件加速的光线追踪支持，尽管很少有游戏或应用利用它。）同样为了本地 AI 功能（这是今年 iOS 27 的重点），它还配备了双 16 核神经网络引擎。苹果还表示，A20 Pro 拥有“iPhone 史上最宽的内存接口”（理所当然），带宽增加了 50%。根据苹果目前的说法，这似乎主要是为了提升 AI 性能。我在这里推测一下，但考虑到 Apple Intelligence 和 Siri AI 功能在其他近期 iPhone 上也能正常运行……