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Apple unveiled its latest premium smartphone lineup, the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, at its “Surprise and Shine” event on Sept. 9, setting up pre-orders that open Saturday, Sept. 12, at 5 a.m. Pacific time ahead of official store availability on Sept. 18.

Unlike some past generations, where the larger Pro Max model came with meaningful performance or camera advantages over its smaller sibling, this year’s lineup is nearly identical across the board. According to Apple’s own published specifications, the two phones differ on essentially four points: screen size, physical dimensions and weight, battery life ratings, and price. Everything else — from the processor to the camera system to charging speeds — is shared equally between the two models.

Same chip, same cameras, same colors

Both the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are powered by Apple’s new A20 Pro chip, built on a 3-nanometer process and described by the company as its fastest ever, designed to run what Apple calls the “most advanced on-device” version of its Apple Intelligence AI tools. Both models pair that chip with a hexa-core processor and Apple’s 6-core GPU.

Camera hardware is also identical across both sizes, with each phone featuring a triple-camera system built around a 48-megapixel main sensor with variable aperture. Storage and memory configurations line up as well, with both offering 12GB of RAM and options ranging up to 2TB of storage on the larger model, and up to 1TB on the smaller one in some configurations.

Design language also carries over unchanged from last year’s iPhone 17 Pro lineup. Both the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max keep an aluminum frame and a large rear camera bar, continuing Apple’s move away from the titanium builds used during the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro era. Both phones use Apple’s new Ceramic Shield 2 glass on the front for display protection, are rated IP68 for water and dust resistance, and come in the same four color options: black, silver, glacier and burgundy.

One notable shared upgrade this year is a smaller Dynamic Island cutout at the top of the display, freeing up additional screen space and allowing users to track three live activities simultaneously in the Dynamic Island interface, up from two on previous models.

Where the two phones actually differ

The most obvious distinction between the two devices is screen size. The iPhone 18 Pro features a 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max steps up to a 6.9-inch panel. Both use the same LTPO OLED technology with a 120Hz refresh rate and support Dolby Vision for HDR content, meaning picture quality itself should be comparable despite the size difference.

That larger display comes with a larger, heavier chassis. The iPhone 18 Pro measures 8.75 millimeters thick and weighs 211 grams, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max shares the same thickness but weighs a substantially heavier 249 grams, making it the heaviest iPhone Apple has ever released.

Battery life is the other major differentiator, and it’s tied directly to the larger phone’s bigger body. Apple rates the iPhone 18 Pro Max for up to 45 hours of video playback, calling it the largest increase in battery life the company has ever delivered on an iPhone in a single generation. The standard iPhone 18 Pro, by comparison, is rated for up to 36 hours of video playback. Apple has cautioned that these figures represent maximum lab-tested conditions, and that based on research into how people actually use their phones, real-world battery life is likely closer to 24 hours for the iPhone 18 Pro and 30 hours for the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Both phones support the same fast-charging capabilities, reaching up to 50% charge in 15 minutes and roughly six hours of video playback from just five minutes on a charger.

Pricing

The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 for the base 256GB configuration, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299 for the same storage tier, putting a flat $100 premium on the larger model at every equivalent storage level.

How to decide

With performance, cameras and connectivity effectively identical across both models this year, the purchasing decision comes down to a more personal set of trade-offs: screen size and one-handed usability versus battery endurance and $100 in additional cost.

Buyers who prioritize a more compact, easier-to-hold device, or who don’t typically push their phone’s battery to its limits in a single day, may find the standard iPhone 18 Pro delivers everything the larger model offers in terms of raw capability, at a lower price and lighter weight. Those who rely heavily on their phone throughout long days, frequently stream video, or simply prefer a larger canvas for media consumption and multitasking may find the extra battery life and screen real estate of the Pro Max worth both the added bulk and added cost.

Apple confirmed that both the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will become available in an initial wave of markets starting Sept. 18, with 20 additional countries gaining access the following week, on Sept. 25. Pre-orders open globally Saturday morning, giving prospective buyers a narrow window to weigh screen size against battery life and decide which version of Apple’s latest flagship best fits how they actually use their phone day to day.

Apple unveiled two very different flagship phones at its “Surprise and Shine” event on Sept. 9: the iPhone 18 Pro Max, an evolution of its familiar premium slab design, and the iPhone Duo, the company’s first-ever foldable iPhone and the biggest structural change to the product line in nearly two decades. With both now heading toward release this fall, buyers face a genuinely different kind of decision than in past years — not just how much phone to buy, but what kind of phone to buy.

Two fundamentally different designs

The iPhone 18 Pro Max sticks with Apple’s established form factor: a single 6.9-inch OLED display, an aluminum frame, and the same general shape iPhone users have grown accustomed to over the past several generations. It represents a refinement of an already mature design.

The iPhone Duo, by contrast, opens like a book. Closed, it functions as a compact phone with a 5.4-inch outer display; opened, it reveals a 7.6-inch inner screen, which Apple describes as the largest display ever fitted to an iPhone, offering roughly 50% more screen area than the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Apple built the Duo around a titanium frame rather than aluminum, and the device uses a nano-texture finish on its inner display designed to minimize glare during extended viewing.

Pricing gap is substantial

The price difference between the two phones is significant. The iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299 for 256GB of storage, while the iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 for the same base storage tier, climbing as high as $3,199 for a 2TB configuration. For many buyers, that roughly $700 gap alone may settle the decision before specs even come into play.

Where the hardware diverges

Both phones share Apple’s A20 Pro chip, though the version inside the Duo includes vapor-chamber cooling, an addition Apple says helps sustain performance inside the thinner folding chassis. Battery life is close between the two: Apple rates the iPhone 18 Pro Max for up to 45 hours of video playback, while the iPhone Duo is rated for up to 44 hours, meaning battery endurance is unlikely to be a deciding factor either way.

Camera hardware favors the Pro Max more clearly. The iPhone 18 Pro Max carries a full triple-camera system, including a telephoto lens, while the iPhone Duo’s setup — built around dual 48-megapixel Fusion cameras plus additional front and inner-facing cameras for its folding design — notably lacks a telephoto lens altogether, a trade-off Apple made in favor of the device’s foldable mechanics and dual-screen camera features like Duo Preview and Smart Take, which use the outer display to let subjects preview shots before they’re taken.

Biometric security also differs sharply between the two devices. The iPhone 18 Pro Max uses Apple’s established Face ID system. The iPhone Duo instead relies on Touch ID built into its side power button, since the folding hinge and dual-screen design made a traditional Face ID sensor array impractical to implement, at least in this first-generation model.

What each phone is built for

The iPhone 18 Pro Max is designed for buyers who want the most refined version of the traditional iPhone experience: strong all-around cameras, a proven design, broad accessory compatibility, and a form factor that fits comfortably into existing habits, cases and one-handed use, despite its already large 6.9-inch screen.

The iPhone Duo is aimed at a different kind of user entirely — someone drawn to the versatility of a larger canvas for tasks like split-screen multitasking, gaming, video-heavy work, or hands-free FaceTime calls, where the phone can stand upright on its own in a partially folded position. Apple has rebuilt core elements of iOS around the Duo’s dual-screen capabilities, including StandBy mode without requiring a charger, layouts that shift fluidly between the outer and inner displays, and multitasking features specifically designed to take advantage of the larger unfolded screen.

Trade-offs to weigh

Choosing between the two ultimately comes down to a handful of practical trade-offs. Buyers prioritizing camera versatility, particularly zoom photography, and a lower price point are likely better served by the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Buyers who value screen real estate, multitasking flexibility, and are willing to pay a premium for Apple’s first generation of foldable hardware — while accepting the absence of a telephoto lens and a shift away from Face ID — may find the iPhone Duo’s novelty and functionality worth the added cost and, in some cases, added bulk when folded.

It’s also worth noting that first-generation hardware categories often carry more risk than established product lines. As Apple’s first foldable device, the Duo represents new engineering territory, including a hinge mechanism and dual-battery system that haven’t been tested over multiple years of real-world use the way the traditional iPhone form factor has.

Release timing

The two phones are also arriving on different schedules. The iPhone 18 Pro Max opened for pre-order on Saturday, Sept. 12, with retail availability beginning Sept. 18. The iPhone Duo follows several weeks later, with pre-orders opening Oct. 16 and the device becoming available in stores on Oct. 23, giving prospective buyers extra time to weigh their decision against real-world reviews and hands-on impressions as they roll out in the coming weeks.

For now, the choice boils down to a familiar flagship refined to its highest point yet, or a genuinely new kind of iPhone built around a folding screen — a decision that, for the first time in years, is less about incremental upgrades and more about which type of device fits how someone actually wants to use their phone.

Billions of years ago, our young sun may have consumed a planet several times the mass of Earth, and the chemical fingerprints of that ancient collision could still be detectable deep inside the star today, according to new research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The study, authored by Mutlu Yildiz, an astronomer at Ege University in Turkey, presents a model suggesting the sun engulfed a “super-Earth-mass” planet — one estimated at five to 10 times the mass of Earth — early in its history. The finding offers a possible explanation for two longstanding puzzles in solar science that conventional models have struggled to fully resolve.

“Our new study suggests that a planet several times more massive than Earth may have fallen into the young Sun and left a lasting chemical imprint deep inside it,” Yildiz said in a statement.

Two mysteries in search of a common cause

The research grew out of separate, seemingly unrelated problems in solar astronomy. The first involves the sun’s convection zone, the star’s outermost layer, where standard models have consistently had difficulty matching actual observational data. The second concerns lithium, an element that should be among the earliest to survive largely intact through a star’s evolution, yet the sun’s surface shows a notable lithium deficiency compared with other stars of similar size and age.

Yildiz set out to determine whether these two unrelated anomalies might share a single origin. “We were interested [in] whether these problems might have a common origin in the early chemical history of the Sun,” Yildiz said. “Since planets are made of material that is chemically different from the gas in the disc, we wondered whether the early engulfment of a planet could have left a chemical signature inside the young Sun.”

Modeling a cosmic collision

To test the idea, Yildiz used an open-source stellar evolution module to run through a wide range of possible accretion scenarios, essentially testing different combinations of events that could have produced the sun as it appears today. Among the scenarios tested, the one that best matched observed data involved the young sun consuming a super-Earth-mass planet.

The resulting numbers lined up closely with existing measurements of the sun’s internal structure and its surface lithium content, lending additional weight to the scenario. Yildiz noted that the precision of the result came as something of a surprise even to him.

“We thought planetary engulfment might affect the solar structure but did not expect the calculations to converge on such a specific super-Earth mass range,” Yildiz said. “That was one of the most interesting outcomes of the study.”

A possible clue to the makeup of our solar system

Beyond addressing the lithium and convection-zone puzzles, the engulfment scenario may also help explain another peculiar feature of our solar system: the conspicuous absence of super-Earth-sized planets, a category common in many other star systems observed by astronomers. If an early super-Earth once orbited close to the young sun and was ultimately pulled in and destroyed, its disappearance could account for why no planet of that size exists in our solar system today.

Evidence, not proof

Yildiz was careful to frame the findings as evidence supporting a plausible scenario rather than definitive confirmation that the event occurred. In the paper, he wrote that the calculations “strengthen the physical plausibility” of the sun having swallowed a super-Earth-sized planet, while stopping short of claiming certainty. The paper describes the scenario as a promising candidate for the “key missing ingredient” that has been absent from existing solar and stellar models.

Yildiz said the next phase of research will focus on searching for more direct, independently verifiable evidence of the ancient engulfment buried within the sun’s structure. “Our paper asks whether the Sun itself could still carry observable evidence that such an engulfment actually happened, and we believe it could,” Yildiz said. “The next step is to see if these fingerprints can be independently detected.”

Why planetary engulfment matters to astronomers

Stellar engulfment of planets is not considered a rare phenomenon in the broader universe. Astronomers have observed direct evidence of stars consuming nearby planets in other systems, and theoretical models suggest such events are a natural, if violent, part of how planetary systems evolve and stabilize over billions of years. Planets that form too close to their host star, or whose orbits become unstable over time due to gravitational interactions with other bodies, can spiral inward and eventually be pulled apart and absorbed by the star’s immense gravity and heat.

What makes the sun’s case distinctive, according to the new research, is the possibility that this kind of event left behind detectable chemical evidence that has persisted for billions of years, offering scientists a potential window into the sun’s earliest, most chaotic period of formation.

The study adds to a growing body of research using increasingly sophisticated stellar modeling techniques to probe the sun’s distant past, a period that remains difficult to study directly given how much the star’s structure and composition have evolved since its formation roughly 4.6 billion years ago. If future observational work is able to confirm the specific chemical signatures Yildiz’s model predicts, it could mark a significant step toward resolving decades-old questions about the sun’s internal chemistry and, more broadly, about how the current architecture of our solar system came to be.

For now, the case remains open, but the new modeling gives astronomers a specific and testable hypothesis to pursue in the search for what really happened inside our solar system’s earliest, most turbulent chapter.