TECH NEWS – The Cupertino-based tech giant may raise the price of its more powerful 2026 smartphones for reasons other than the increase in DRAM costs alone.
Apple is slowly running out of its current DRAM inventory and will soon be forced to pay a significant premium for future shipments. This drastically reduces the chances of avoiding a price hike when the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are released. The company is facing similar cost pressures in other areas as well due to its plans to introduce a unique camera upgrade later this year. TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo mentioned that the iPhone 21 could receive a significant ultra-wide-angle camera upgrade and stated that the variable aperture camera on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be a costly addition. It will be 50% more expensive than the 7P plastic lens used by Apple in the iPhone 17 Pro.
▌The latest supply chain checks indicate that Sunny Optical is seeing several new positive trends:
1. Leveraging its existing optical technology strengths, the company is preparing to enter AI server CPO / silicon photonics coupling components.
2. Securing orders for optical…— 郭明錤｜Ming-Chi Kuo (@mingchikuo) May 29, 2026
Sunny Optical is expected to supply 40-50% of the total order, suggesting that it will benefit financially from the partnership as well. The rising cost of variable aperture cameras may explain why other manufacturers haven’t widely adopted this technology. Only Samsung introduced it in its older Galaxy S flagships and then abandoned the hardware. It’s possible that the technology Samsung introduced in the Galaxy S9 was merely a preliminary version because users could only choose between two modes. Since Apple is introducing this update nearly eight years later, we should expect to see significant improvements, such as multiple aperture modes for manual photography and video recording, which is the bare minimum.
The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be the first Apple models to feature the A20 Pro system-on-a-chip (SoC). This 2nm chipset, mass-produced by TSMC, could cost Apple as much as $280 per unit. The Cupertino-based company is under pressure from all sides in terms of the bill of materials (BOM), making it extremely difficult to avoid a price hike. At the very least, buyers may end up paying $100 more for both flagship models, but they’ll still get their money’s worth.
First look at iPhone 18 dummies in the new colors: Black, Silver, Dark Cherry and Light Blue. Cherry will probably be the next hit, orange did very well. pic.twitter.com/2qpZDA7oEK
— Sonny Dickson (@SonnyDickson) May 29, 2026
In April, a rumor surfaced that the iPhone 18 Pro duo will be available in dark gray (Pantone 426C), dark cherry (Pantone 6076) – a subdued shade similar to wine red that will replace cosmic orange as the main color option – light blue (Pantone 2121), similar to Mist Blue in the iPhone 17 series, and silver (Pantone 427C). Thanks to Sonny Dickson, we’ve gotten our first glimpse of what the colors might look like. The dark gray color mentioned in an earlier leak appears to be more of a metallic black. Meanwhile, it’s clear that Apple will position the dark cherry color as the successor to the extremely popular cosmic orange.
These mockups also show that Apple is removing the two-tone design from the back of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.
