Apple’s first variable-aperture iPhone camera is a feat of miniature engineering. It is also, iFixit says, essentially unfixable at the component level.
In a teardown published September 20, 2026, iFixit opened the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max and zeroed in on the year’s headline camera feature: a six-blade mechanical iris in the main lens. The blades are about as thin as a human hair and are driven by electromagnets, independently of the optical image-stabilization system. When technicians heated and pried the lens stack apart, one of those blades shot across the room. That, the team wrote, is a preview of what a real repair would look like.
If the aperture sticks, owners should expect to replace the entire main camera assembly. A blade-level fix is not realistic for shops or DIY repairers. iFixit called the mechanism the phone’s first “winking eye” — and made it the title of the teardown.
The rest of the phone is a mix of familiar strengths and new complications.Apple moved the Face ID infrared camera under the display, shrinking the Dynamic Island. Under a microscope, every other row of pixels is missing above the sensor so infrared light can pass through. An IR-pass filter sits beneath the OLED; it does not quite reach the edge of the opening, creating what iFixit described as an “eclipse” effect. The selfie camera and dot projector remain in the island.
Cooling got a major redesign. The A20 Pro package puts the die beside the memory instead of stacking memory on top of the hot silicon. That lets the chip sit against a vapor chamber iFixit says is much larger than last year’s — Apple has claimed about three times the surface area. Thermal material presses the SoC directly onto the chamber, which now spans a large portion of the chassis.
Batteries are bigger than in the iPhone 17 Pro lineup. Capacities reported from teardowns and Apple’s regional listings: about 4,056 mAh (Pro with SIM tray), 4,288 mAh (Pro, eSIM-only), 5,391 mAh (Pro Max with SIM), and 5,567 mAh (Pro Max, eSIM-only). The glue-free battery tray and modular camera modules carry over from recent Pros.
The worrying find was not the camera. On three of the four units iFixit opened, the plastic display frame cracked during removal. That frame is not sold separately; damage typically means a full display module. A cracked frame can keep the screen from sitting flush and may hurt water resistance. Other public teardowns have not shown the same breakage, and Apple has used a similar frame since the iPhone 15 Pro. iFixit said four phones are not enough to call it a widespread defect. Heat from the new cooling system may also be pulling warmth away from the adhesive while technicians try to loosen the display. They plan more tests, including isopropyl alcohol to soften glue more evenly.
Most serious repairs still start by taking off the screen. The USB-C port remains buried. Those constraints, plus the unserviceable iris, keep the phones in familiar territory.
iFixit’s provisional repairability score: 7 out of 10 for both the Pro and Pro Max — the same as the 16 and 17 Pro models — pending parts availability and more display-removal testing.
MacDailyNews Take: The 18 Pro line is more thermally ambitious and photographically more mechanical than last year’s phones. The iris is the star of the teardown and the clearest reminder that shrinking camera physics into a sealed slab still leaves some parts you can admire, but not readily mend.
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