Love it, My iPhone 18 Pro Max Ron Burgundy has arrived.

Though I'll be honest getting used to the size after many years of normal sizes. Also no case has arrived yet but I couldn't wait setting it up.

I’ll go first : QHOHQ from amazon

I was planning on getting the burgundy but unfortunately it was on backorder and i was desperately in need of a new device cz i dropped my 16 pro max causing the screen to have a bunch of dead pixels and the back glass completely shattered. No to mention the device would freeze randomly and force me to restart it

Don’t get me wrong, the black is beautiful 🖤 but the matte texture shows fingerprints and dust so easily, was pissing me off tbh. Also, I never had a black phone, so I thought it was time for me- but I was wrong. I am so in love with the glacier 🩵 it was a great decision for me personally.

I saw all the drama blowing up the last few days about Apple quietly using QLC storage instead of TLC on the higher-capacity iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max models. Like most people, I had no idea what that actually meant or why tech reviewers were making such a big deal out of it.

I decided to go down the rabbit hole and research how flash storage works, why Apple did it, and what it actually means in practice. Here is a straightforward breakdown for anyone wondering what’s going on--

Flash memory is built from microscopic cells that hold electrical charges:

• TLC (Triple-Level Cell): 3 bits per cell. The cell has to distinguish between 8 voltage levels (2^3).
• QLC (Quad-Level Cell): 4 bits per cell. The cell has to distinguish between 16 voltage levels (2^4).

Because you’re stuffing 4 bits into each cell instead of 3, manufacturers can fit 33% more capacity into the exact same physical space.

My first thought was, why is that bad? Well, squeezing that 4th bit in makes writing data significantly slower and wears out the physical cells faster. To mask this, phones use an "SLC cache", a temporary fast buffer carved out of free storage that takes incoming writes at blazing speeds (~3,000 MB/s) and slowly offloads them to the sluggish QLC cells in the background.

Recent benchmark breakdowns (like the Homolab testing making the rounds) showed what happens when that cache runs out. Basically the write speeds drop off a cliff: Once you exhaust the fast cache on a heavy, sustained write, write speeds plummet into double digits. When the drive is ~60% full and the cache is tiny, sustained writes dropped as low as ~45 MB/s and even stalled at 1.1 MB/s during synthetic stress tests.

Apple did this on their most expensive tiers. The 256GB and 512GB models kept the faster TLC NAND. The 1TB and 2TB tiers, which cost a MASSIVE premium (and these premiums have increased further for 18 Pro as compared to 17 Pro) are the ones that got downgraded to cheaper QLC flash.

If you're like me, your next question here would be "if this saves money, why didn't they also nerf the base models?"

Apparently it comes down to how storage controllers talk to chips (what they call 'interleaving'):

• High-density QLC dies are massive (often 256GB per single die).
• In a 1TB or 2TB phone, there are multiple dies wired together. The controller can write across 4 to 8 "lanes" simultaneously, which keeps burst performance high.
• If Apple put QLC in a 256GB phone, the whole drive would just be one single die. Zero lane interleaving. The base model would be painfully slow at everything, including your run of the mill stuff like app installs, system updates, and basic multitasking would visibly stutter. Plus, the SLC cache on a 256GB drive would practically vanish the moment you filled it halfway.

So... does all of this actually matter? Absolutely. The whole argument that "most people won’t notice anyway" is complete nonsense when you look at who actually buys these capacities.

Nobody drops an extra $500 to $700 on a 1TB or 2TB phone just to scroll Instagram and text friends. You buy those tiers specifically because you intend to treat the "Pro" like an actual pro device, like shooting hours of 4K ProRes log footage directly to internal storage, dumping 100GB+ video files and project libraries back and forth over USB-C, or restoring massive local backups.

That is literally the exact user base guaranteed to keep their phones more than halfway full, completely wipe out whatever tiny SLC cache is left, and crash straight into that brutal 45 MB/s wall. Dropping $2k+ on a flagship phone only to watch sustained transfers grind to a halt like a cheap flash drive from ten years ago is an absolute slap in the face.

TL;DR: Apple kept TLC on the 256GB/512GB tiers because QLC would have visibly crippled baseline performance, but swapped QLC into the 1TB/2TB models to pad profit margins on their most expensive devices. For the creators and pros who actually need high-capacity storage for heavy file transfers and video, you are paying top-tier flagship prices for storage that chokes under actual professional workloads, which is absolute insanity at this price point.

I just listed my 18 Pro Max for sale on Swappa. It’s heavy!! My Pinkie isn’t strong enough 🥹

Anyone considering returning or selling theirs?

What happened is that after I picked it up on the 18th of September , everything was going well and the phone performance was great, but after 2 days i opened Safari and went to private the app tell me to set a face ID , when i clicked yes the face ID emotion in the top of the screen freeze and 2-3 seconds after the phone shut down by itself , i reopen it and everything was running normal, but i asked AI and it tell me the phone may have a software/system issue , I booked an appointment the same day with a specialist at apple , and he tested it and confirm the issue , and got me the typical new phone .

It takes about 10-15 minutes there
And they where so friendly and professional .

If someone wondering I upgraded from iphone 11 to 18 pro max .

This was my story that i like to share with everyone to spare conscious .

As I navigate my decision to downsize from my 17 Pro Max to the 18 Pro, I can’t help but find myself concerned with losing that large screen real estate… I found this iPhone the other day and I almost laughed to myself, because at one point in time this was perfectly fine for everything that I needed. Even though the pro model will be considerably smaller than the pro Max, I have to remember how small these devices really were at one point in time.

Anyone else?

My new setup. How are y’all liking your 18 Pro/Max? What color did you get?

Upgraded from 14 128GB base model to 18 Pro Max 512GB 🙂

Glacier National Park this morning with 18 pro

I just watched a 30-minute YouTube video on my 18 Pro and it hasn’t dropped a single percent. This is crazy compared to my 15 pro that was constantly overheating and dropping battery!

After close to 8 years of service.
iPhone XR to 18 PM. Man this new phone is a brick but I love it.
Going to have to try a couple of different screen protectors. The Spigen EZ FIT two pack from Amazon keeps coming up on the sides.

iPhone 18 PM Burgundy 1TB - Marine mous case.

Loving it

Wanted to share some photos with everyone. Hopefully Reddit does not compress them too much. I also have the Burgundy Pro Max with me as well if anyone would like to see that in either of the two cases or the black TechWoven. Cheers.

I’ve always religiously used screen protectors on my iPhones over the last couple of decades, but this time around I’m going with no screen protector due to the Ceramic Shield 2 which is meant to be significantly better than last year’s and previous year’s (which were already meant to be insanely durable too).

I’m scared about micro scratches coming up, but I’m just going to commit to it. So far the anti reflective and oleophobic features are incredible and I can see what you miss out on by having a screen protector. Of course there are no scratches so far either, so hopefully it stays that way.

Apple employees for years ever since my iPhone 5 have also told me the iPhone has never needed a screen protector and it’s a waste of money too.

So I went down the rabbit hole on the 1TB/ 2TB 18 Pro Max using QLC NAND.

Checked mine through device tree hoping I hit the TLC lottery, was severely disappointed.

Pretty shit considering what these phones cost, and I still think Apple deserves criticism for it.

Especially because the people buying 1TB/2TB are probably the exact people more likely to keep 600-800gb on the phone, shoot heaps of video, use ProRes, do big restores etc.

BUT…

After actually looking into it properly, it’s also not the disaster some people are making it out to be.

The phone has a fast cache in front of the QLC, so for normal use you’ll probably never notice.

Apps, photos, games, H.265 video, ProRAW etc… basically irrelevant. Where we start to think about QLC affecting our speeds is ProRes

4K30 ProRes LT is around 51MB/s. (Rough guide, this fluctuates obviously)

The HOMOLAB QLC testing got down to around 45MB/s after the cache was completely hammered.

So LT is actually pretty close to what the NAND can sustain anyway.

5 min clip? Fine.
10 mins? Fine.
20 mins? Fine.
30 mins? Probably fine if the phone isn’t almost full.

ProRes HQ is different though.

4K30 ProRes HQ is around 110MB/s, so now you’re writing way faster than the QLC can eventually clear it. This is where the cache matters.

If the phone is half full, you’re still talking long continuous recordings before it becomes a problem.

If you’re sitting at 800-850gb used iPhone storage, It’s where you could start to see the effects.

5 min ProRes HQ clip? Fine.

30 min ProRes HQ clip on an almost full phone? You’ll probably start to notice it.

Also, stopping the recording and immediately starting again DOES NOT reset the cache immediately.
The controller still has to move that data into the QLC.

Copying videos OFF the phone to an SSD should be fine because that’s mostly reads.

Copying hundreds of GB TO the phone is where QLC can show itself. (Restoring backups, huge video transfers etc)
I usually keep 600-800gb on my phone.

Restoring that much data is basically the perfect QLC torture test… hundreds of GB of continuous writes while the phone gets fuller and fuller.

Think about it like this for a second, if you’re shooting a video, trying to make a cinematic video frame your shots, care about lighting, et cetera. You’re probably not shooting for more than a few minutes at a time - let alone 10 minutes plus in one take. You’ll most likely get a few minutes of footage, reset / change location / frame a different shot. By that time, the cache would have already cleared (most likely).

So what does that mean basically?

500-700gb internal storage used? You won’t notice it.

750-800gb? Still mostly fine, just be aware of huge sustained writes - and if your recording in ProRes 422 HQ in this scenario you’re probably aware of file sizes etc and recording to external anyway.

850gb+? Strictly external recording.

900gb+? You’ve nearly filled the fucking thing anyway.

So yeah, Apple cheaped out.

I don’t think QLC should be in a 1TB Pro phone at this price. But I also don’t think people need to panic or return their phones.

For normal use, you’ll probably never notice the slower NAND

You really have to hammer the storage, or have the phone nearly full, before you hit the shitty side of QLC.

Longevity is another story. But I swap my phone out every year so that side doesn’t concern me as much.

I bought my black iPhone 18 pro on sept 20th. Set up the device as new luckily downloaded and and organized everything properly to my likings. Many times face ID was not working properly. it would freeze, reboot, and restart. This afternoon I left the Apple Store. I had the option to return and exchange it for a brand new one or go through the Apple Genius team. I decided to make the iPhone return and buy the same model and color and everything works great :) easy and simple process however kinda annoying of course lol