The first batch of iPhone 18 Pro "victims" have emerged, as Apple has downgraded the flash memory.

This year's iPhone 18 Pro is quite a sincere offering.

Equipped with the 2nm A20 Pro chip, longer battery life, faster charging, and the newly added variable aperture for the first time, Apple has made up for many of its shortcomings in one go.

But the familiar scenario still happened.

Just a few days after the new phone went on sale, issues like scratches, overheating, and lens flare were quickly exposed by the first batch of users.

More notably, the iPhone 18 Pro also has the problem of mixed use of different flash memory chips. For large-capacity versions such as 1TB and 2TB, most of them use lower-spec QLC flash particles.

The upgrades are real, but if you plan to buy the new device, you'd better be mentally prepared for these issues.

Scratches, Flare, Overheating, and Mixed Flash Memory Chips

At present, the most frequently reported issues first lie in the appearance.

Some users found obvious scratches on the back panel right after unboxing the new phone, and there were even small dents on the edge of the screen.

The scratches on the display units in physical stores are even more obvious. People who don't know the situation would think it's a second-hand iPhone 17 Pro from somewhere.

The iPhone 18 Pro adopts an integrated aluminum alloy body, whose surface is colored through anodization. Once the surface layer is worn and the silvery white aluminum underneath is exposed, the marks on the device will be particularly noticeable.

Friends who have bought the new phone, hurry up and put a case on it.

However, these are all minor visible issues. The problems hidden inside the device are the ones that truly affect the usage experience.

Teardowns and actual tests have found that different capacity versions of the iPhone 18 Pro use different specifications of flash memory in a mixed manner.

Among them, the 256GB and 512GB versions use TLC flash particles, the 1TB version has a mix of TLC and QLC, and the 2TB version directly uses QLC.

What are the disadvantages of QLC in terms of specifications? Simply put, QLC has a lower cost, but its continuous write performance and theoretical lifespan are not as good as TLC flash memory.

For example, when shooting videos continuously or copying dozens of GB of files, once the cache is exhausted, the write speed may drop significantly.

However, Apple has also made optimizations for QLC. By dynamically dividing the TLC and SLC areas, it sacrifices part of the capacity redundancy to bring the speed and lifespan as close to the level of TLC as possible.

What is subtle is that the large-capacity iPhone using QLC is exactly the version with the sharpest price increase.

Take the 2TB version of Pro Max as an example, its price has risen from 17,999 yuan of the previous generation to 21,499 yuan, an increase of 3,500 yuan at one go, which is exactly "buying a lower-spec product at a high price".

In addition, many first batch users said that when they just activated the phone and migrated data from the old device, the iPhone 18 Pro got extremely hot, and some even experienced stuttering and speed throttling.

There were even users who, after finally finishing transferring the old device's data, found that the new phone automatically shut down and restarted as soon as they logged in to WeChat, and eventually it couldn't even boot up.

Returning the product is also rather awkward. To transfer the data in the new phone back to the old device, you have to let it go through another round of overheating.

Apple has increased the VC vapor chamber on this generation, so the heat dissipation capability has indeed been improved. But it seems that the temperature control performance has not fully caught up yet.

The camera system is not completely free of troubles either.

The main camera of the iPhone 18 Pro may still have obvious flare and ghosting when there is a strong light source at night, or the light source directly enters the frame.

Even if you adjust the aperture, the purple ghosting in the frame can only be reduced, and it is difficult to disappear completely.

Quite a Few Pain Points, But the Upgrades Are Also Impressive

Complaints aside, the upgrades of the iPhone 18 Pro this year are indeed more noticeable than those of the previous generations.

The most intuitive one is the battery life. In third-party actual tests, the iPhone 18 Pro achieved a battery life of about 16 hours and 17 minutes, lasting a full 1 hour longer than the previous generation; the Pro Max exceeded 18 hours.

There has also been major progress in charging. Apple officially claims that the battery can be charged to 50% in about 15 minutes.

In third-party actual tests, the peak power of the 18 Pro reached about 46W, and it took only 56 minutes to charge from 0 to full, while the previous generation took 1 hour and 48 minutes. The "narrow charging pipe" that Apple has used for many years has finally become much wider.

The performance improvement is even more obvious. The A20 Pro uses the 2nm process for the first time. The actual measured CPU speed is about 22% to 27% faster than the A19 Pro, and the GPU performance is improved by about 40% to 45%.

The memory bandwidth, which few people usually pay attention to, has also increased by more than 60%. The A20 Pro is definitely not a minor tweak this time.

As for the camera system, leaving aside ghosting and flare for the moment, the variable aperture added to the main camera for the first time this year, as well as controls such as white balance and manual focus Pro, do give photography users more room for adjustment.

In addition, the narrowed Dynamic Island can display up to 3 Live Activities at the same time, which is another minor upgrade.

Apple Has Pushed Out More Than Usual, Its Big Moves Are Still Coming

For many years, people have always joked that Apple is "squeezing toothpaste" (making tiny incremental upgrades).

Shortcomings including battery life, charging speed and heat dissipation have been urged year after year, but Apple always moves at a slow pace.

But with the iPhone 18 Pro, Apple suddenly "fulfilled three wishes at once".

Some people say this is the new executive taking office and making drastic changes, but the new leader has been in office for less than a month. These products entered the R&D phase at least several years in advance, and most of the development routes were determined back in the Cook era.

But no matter who gets the credit, consumers are quite receptive to these new changes.

Data from JD.com shows that the number of reservations for new iPhone products has exceeded 7 million, of which more than 60% of users are targeting the 18 Pro series.

On Tmall, as of September 15, the transaction volume of the 18 Pro series was reported to have reached twice that of the previous generation in the same period, with the Pro Max being the best seller.

And Apple has not played all its cards yet. The standard version of iPhone 18 will not be released until next spring, and Apple's foldable screen iPhone Duo will be officially launched for sale in October, with a starting price of 15,999 yuan for the Chinese mainland version.

The 18 Pro has already pushed out more upgrades than usual, and it remains to be seen whether the upcoming standard version and Duo can continue to bring more surprises, which will be revealed by Apple itself.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Tech Daily Push" (ID: apptoday), written by Xiao Rujian, and published by 36Kr with authorization.