Leaker makes unlikely claim about improved iPhone 18 telephoto lens

A leaker better known for posting about Android smartphones has made a claim potentially pointing to improved telephoto performance in the iPhone 18 lineup.

The combination of the vagueness of the report and the rather unlikely nature of it means there’s probably nothing to the claim, but we note it just in case there is some element of truth behind it …

Smart Pikachu posted the claim on a Chinese social media platform Weibo (machine

The series of variable aperture lenses has been prototyped. Teleconverters are also under evaluation.

Variable aperture lenses

This element of the post echoes what we are already expecting, either for the iPhone 18 Pro Max only or for both Pro models.

You can find a detailed explanation with examples in our earlier explainer, but the executive summary of the key benefit is greater ability to control the depth of field (DoF) in a photo. You can have a shallow DoF when you want to isolate the subject from the background, a medium DoF when you want isolation while ensuring the background is still recognizable, or a deep DOF when you want everything in shot to be in focus.

Portrait mode creates an artificial shallow DoF effect, and the telephoto lens offers some degree of optical effect, but a variable aperture lens would offer more control in more circumstances.

However, as we’ve previously cautioned, you shouldn’t get too excited about this as the impact is likely to be a very small one.

Teleconverter

A teleconverter is the term usually used to refer to an additional lens element you can add to a camera with interchangeable lenses in order to boost the telephoto range. It is fitted between the camera and the lens.

While you can get so-called teleconverters to attach to smartphone lenses, the term doesn’t really make a great deal of sense in the context of Apple adding a built-in one to an iPhone.

My guess is that this is an entirely spurious report, but there is a possibility that it’s a mistranslation or misunderstanding of some other move Apple is making to boost telephoto reach. Given that we’ve heard nothing about this previously, I’m tending toward the former view.