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The iPhone 18 Pro isn’t worth $1,200, and the Pixel 11 Pro proves it
Confirmed
In Short: The iPhone 18 Pro, despite its internal improvements, faces a value challenge from the Pixel 11 Pro, according to Android Authority. The new iPhone model starts at $1,200 for 256GB of storage, with prices reaching up to $2,400 for the 2TB variant.
In contrast, the Pixel 11 Pro has a starting price of $1,099 for 256GB of storage, increasing the starting price by only $100 from last year. This makes the Pixel 11 Pro a more budget-friendly option for consumers stretching their budget over $1,000.
The gap widens further when moving up the storage tiers, with the Pixel 11 Pro saving users upwards of $200 compared to the latest iPhone.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro boasts better battery performance and a new physically adjustable camera aperture, but these features do not seem to justify the higher price point.
Google's Pixel 11 Pro also offers compelling features, such as improved computational photography capabilities that make everyday life challenges easier.
Apple has introduced a new security feature called Apple Reference Image on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which signs captured pixel data and creates a second, cryptographically signed copy of the photo.
This feature, however, does not provide a public path back to the photographer, unlike SynthID, which embeds its signal directly within the pixels of the image.
While the iPhone 18 Pro has received a lot of fanfare, the standard iPhone 18 Pro is expected to drive most of Apple’s sales.
Despite the iPhone's dominance with 69% market share in the US, Android devices are still more feature-rich and offer more hardware flexibility.
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max both have an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, tying Google's Pixel 11 Pro Fold in this regard.
The iPhone 18 Pro's value proposition is being challenged by the Pixel 11 Pro, which offers better storage options at a lower price point.
The new security feature on the iPhone 18 Pro, while innovative, does not provide a public path back to the photographer, limiting its utility.
Background
The iPhone 18 Pro, despite its internal improvements, faces a value challenge from the Pixel 11 Pro, according to Android Authority. The new iPhone model starts at $1,200 for 256GB of storage, with prices reaching up to $2,400 for the 2TB variant.
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max start at $1,199 and $1,299, respectively, with significant improvements in battery life and performance.
What's confirmed
- In contrast, the Pixel 11 Pro has a starting price of $1,099 for 256GB of storage, increasing the starting price by only $100 from last year. This makes the Pixel 11 Pro a more budget-friendly option for consumers stretching their budget over $1,000.
- The gap widens further when moving up the storage tiers, with the Pixel 11 Pro saving users upwards of $200 compared to the latest iPhone.
- Apple's iPhone 18 Pro boasts better battery performance and a new physically adjustable camera aperture, but these features do not seem to justify the higher price point.
- Google's Pixel 11 Pro also offers compelling features, such as improved computational photography capabilities that make everyday life challenges easier.
- Apple has introduced a new security feature called Apple Reference Image on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which signs captured pixel data and creates a second, cryptographically signed copy of the photo.
- This feature, however, does not provide a public path back to the photographer, unlike SynthID, which embeds its signal directly within the pixels of the image.
- While the iPhone 18 Pro has received a lot of fanfare, the standard iPhone 18 Pro is expected to drive most of Apple’s sales.
- Despite the iPhone's dominance with 69% market share in the US, Android devices are still more feature-rich and offer more hardware flexibility.
- The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max both have an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, tying Google's Pixel 11 Pro Fold in this regard.
- The iPhone 18 Pro's value proposition is being challenged by the Pixel 11 Pro, which offers better storage options at a lower price point.
- The new security feature on the iPhone 18 Pro, while innovative, does not provide a public path back to the photographer, limiting its utility.
What's still developing
- All those features do seem tempting at first glance, but I’d still go with the Pixel 11 Pro any day — just because it’s a much better overall purchase than its Apple counterpart.
- The iPhone 18 Pro now starts at $1,200 for the same 256GB of storage, and its subsequent storage upgrade tiers are significantly more expensive, going all the way up to an eye-watering $2,400 for the 2TB variant — add another $100 for the bigger Pro Max sibling.
- For someone already stretching their budget over $1,000 (which, by the way, is already pretty generous for a smartphone), the Pixel 11 Pro gets you a much better bang for the buck than the iPhone.
- Apple announced the feature on September 9 alongside the iPhone 18 Pro, and its security team published the full technical description on September 15 on the Apple Security Research blog.
- Apple's version proves a real iPhone sensor captured the scene inside a specific time window.
- We observed that users can set up Surfshark on their iPhones in less than 2 minutes.
- We’ve compiled and analyzed the 10 best VPNs for iPhone to ease your decision-making.
- Here, we’ve reviewed the top 10 iPhone VPNs to help you find an appropriate VPN to secure your online activities.
- NordVPN is a paid service, but it’s a great VPN for iPhone.
- The reference image will have a unique ID embedded in the image’s metadata that proves that the image was actually captured by a real iPhone camera, not generated by GPT-Image, Nano Banana, or any other AI image model.
- Capture telemetry data (like hardware IDs and sensor signatures) is sent up to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which then creates a unique signature tying the reference image to that specific iPhone. (Apple promises it doesn’t see the actual photo, only data about it, and the process only runs on photos you choose to sign.) If you think of SynthID as a tag that follows an image around the web, Apple Reference Image is more like a receipt the photographer can show later as proof of origin. (Apple calls it a “digital negative.”) If AI-doctored versions of a photo start circulating online, a photojournalist could produce the reference image to conclusively prove what the camera sensor originally saw.
- With the feature turned on, iPhone photos can be, in effect, saved twice — once as a normal, editable photo and once as an Apple Reference Image.