Pre-orders for the new iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max started this Saturday. Premium Apple models rarely get discounts and never this early, so we’ll just list their prices here for the sake of comparison with flagship Androids that might lure you away from the siren call of a new iPhone.
So, here are the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. They feature Apple’s first 2nm chip, the A20 Pro, which runs at close to 5GHz (it peaks at 4.93GHz) and posted massive Geekbench scores. Additionally, the new models promise longer battery life, especially the Pro Max. And they have a variable aperture for the 48MP 1/1.28” main camera (f/1.5-f/4.0).
You can save quite a bit of money by getting a Galaxy S26 instead of an iPhone 18 Pro. Both have 6.3” displays (and both are 120Hz LTPO panels at that), but Samsung’s 10MP 3x/67mm telephoto and 12MP ultra-wide cameras are no match for Apple’s Pro setup, which includes a 48MP 4x/100mm telephoto and a 48MP ultra-wide. Samsung still doesn’t do magnetic charging either.
Looking at the 6.9” offerings, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is also a lot cheaper than the iPhone 18 Pro Max (in fact, it’s cheaper than the small Pro too). The Ultra is a lot more competitive when it comes to cameras – it has a 200MP 1/1.3” main, a 10MP 3x/67mm telephoto plus an additional 50MP 5x/111mm telephoto module and a 50MP ultra-wide. The S26 Ultra also offers unique features like the Privacy Display and the S Pen.
Google also has a 6.3” model, the Pixel 11 Pro. However, it’s pretty light on discounts at the moment. The Tensor G6 mostly fixed the battery efficiency woes of the G5, but performance is still nowhere close to the Apple A20 Pro or the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. The Pixel does have a more promising set of cameras than the small S26, including a 50MP 1/1.3” main, a 48MP 5x/106mm telephoto and a 48MP ultra-wide. And would you look at that – it has Pixelsnap magnetic wireless charging.
Google’s Pixel 11 Pro XL has a 6.8” screen and the same set of cameras as its smaller sibling. While the Pixel 11 Pro models are currently cheaper than their iPhone 18 Pro counterparts, we think that the price gap should be wider, given the relative strengths of their hardware.
The Galaxy S26+ has a €300 discount, which is good in a vacuum, but there is no world in which we don’t spend the extra €60 to get the S26 Ultra instead. As for the S26 FE, it might be interesting if you have a Prime subscription, but otherwise we’d skip it for now.
The big news this week wasn’t the unveiling of the iPhone 18 Pro models. No, Apple’s first foldable, the iPhone Duo, stole the show. Cupertino chose to enter this market with a wide foldable. It’s not available yet, though. Pre-orders will start in mid-October and sales will commence a week later. We have some thoughts on the iPhone 18 Pro (Max) vs. iPhone Duo debate that you can peruse while you wait.
Until Xiaomi decides if and when it wants to launch the Xiaomi 18 Fold in Europe, there just aren’t many wide foldable alternatives. This means that the Duo’s main rival is the Galaxy Z Fold8. The Samsung phone is thinner (9.7mm vs. 11.3
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