The iPhone 18 Ain’t Bad, It’s Just Big and Expensive - DTNS 5354

Tom Merritt (0:08)

This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, September 16th, 2026 We tell you what you need to go, give you important context, and try our darndest to help each other understand these crazy tech times.

Jenn Cutter (0:20)

Today, we've got some inside info on Flock Cameras, and we do mean from inside. We're also going to talk a whole bunch about the Apple iPhone 18 Pro reviews.

Tom Merritt (0:30)

Indeed. I'm Tom Merritt.

Jenn Cutter (0:32)

I'm Jenn Cutter.

Tom Merritt (0:33)

Let's start with what you need to know with that big story.

Jenn Cutter (0:37)

So yes, all the reviews around the net are in for the iPhone 18s, and they are, you're not going to believe this, but they're really kind of positive.

Tom Merritt (0:46)

Shocker.

Jenn Cutter (0:47)

No, it's unbelievable.

Patrick Holland at CNET has my favorite description of the 18 Pro and Pro Max. He called them heavy boys, because obviously they've got their aluminum unibody design going on. But he also kind of spins that into a positive, saying, quote, the heft reassures me, though, as the phones feel like they were built like tanks.

Tom Merritt (1:09)

Big boys. I could show them.

Jenn Cutter (1:12)

For all the shutterbugs out there, all the reviews I've read, Endgadget, 9-5 Max, Cnet and more, they all praise the auto settings, especially when it comes to low light and night photography. There's tons of examples out there, so you can see the difference. People have really gone all out in comparing all the photos from various models from the past five years. So you can really see where you're at if that's what you are interested in. And then the kind of consensus is from Cnet, I don't know why I keep saying that wrong, but for Cnet, they suggest that if you've got an older phone that you're happy with, upgrade the battery rather than upgrade the whole phone. If you're not a creative, who's going to use all of the fancy features.

Nine to Five Mac was very specific. They said that if you have a 17, there's very little reason to upgrade, but 16 and under users might want to actually consider it. And Engadget fell pretty much exactly in the exact same place there.

Tom Merritt (2:09)

Yeah, honestly, I always expect iPhones to be reviewed well, but they are often more critical than this. Especially when it's a sort of a talk. Is it the talk that's the less evolutionary upgrade or is it the tick? I think it's the tick is the one where you change a lot in the talk, in the TikTok settings. Anyway, this is not a big change over the 17

And yet these reviews are incredibly positive. And I think that's because this is a mature form factor. And Apple didn't take away anything that works well. The things they added seem to improve things, according to these reviewers. So I thought it was interesting to see CNET saying like, you know, if you've got a 14 upgrade, anybody else just replace your battery. Whereas most people say 16 I feel like the 16 is, I have a 16 and it's still fine. Like I wouldn't need to upgrade it if I wasn't doing the show.

So I'm kind of leaning more towards the CNET side, especially given what I saw of these reviews here. Did you, any of your spidey senses get activated reading this? Do you feel anybody's inside the bubble too much?

Jenn Cutter (3:20)

No, like because of the reserve suggestions to upgrade under like the very specific circumstances. I really like that everyone brought up the battery life. They're saying like, listen, the new battery, pretty fantastic.

People testing it, test it really heavily. And they're like, yeah, I had to charge it like three times in a week. And that was it. And I was using this thing like 12 hours a day.

Tom Merritt (3:41)

Oh, I love Joanna Stern's Poke the Pickle battery test.

Jenn Cutter (3:45)

Me, a dedicated app to poke the pickle as a, here's how I'm going to test all the phones exactly the same way.

Tom Merritt (3:51)

Yeah, that's good stuff. So honestly, this probably will be skipped by a lot of outlets because it's so uncontroversial. But I think that's one of the things that made us pick it as the big story today is, hey, everybody's talking about the foldable, don't forget the 18

You may not need to upgrade to it, but if you are in the market for a new phone, whether you're coming from Android or another iOS phone, look at this, it is a solid phone if you can afford it. That is the one universal criticism that I saw on every review is, it's expensive.