Apple upped the price of its phones this year, and while the new iPhone 18 Pro doesn’t cost quite as much as its Max sibling (let alone the $1,999+ iPhone Duo) it’s in the premium bracket where everything needs to be perfect. And sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The 18 Pro went on sale on Friday (triggering a heartening amount of customer hype) and two bugs have already been reported.
Frozen screen bug
Alleged bug number one: in some cases and at some times, the iPhone 18 Pro’s screen is believed to stop responding to touch. One owner posted a video of this behavior to Twitter/X; their thumb appears to swipe up and down on the display (while using a social media app, possibly Twitter), yet nothing happens in response.
When a commenter on the post claimed that this is a bug in iOS 27 rather than the iPhone 18 Pro, and that the poster “swiped down both Notification Center and Control Center at the same time which causes the phone to freeze,” the poster responded that they didn’t “exploit any bug” and that the problem has happened twice already. Then they link to a second user reporting the same issue.
We’ve also seen a similar complaint about touch sensitivity on Reddit, although this might have a different cause; the owner mentions use of a screen protector.
Face ID bug
Alleged bug number two: a Face ID bug has caused some iPhone 18 Pro handsets to freeze and then reboot. What appears to happen is that when a Face ID verification fails, the behavior triggers.
A thread on Reddit contains the following complaint: “Not even 24 hours and I have my 18 Pro Max panic restarting. Three times due to Face ID and one by some timeout (whilst loading Apple Wallet). Called Apple support, done a Face ID reset after three restarts.”
Of the 24 direct responses from other users, 22 confirm that they’ve experienced the same or a similar issue. Some speculate (as we saw with the touch sensitivity bug) that it could be an issue with iOS 27 or other software rather than the new hardware. As evidenced by the testimony of one commenter and the original poster, the bug affects the 18 Pro Max as well as the 18 Pro.
As 9to5Mac notes in its coverage of this second bug, the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max feature a redesigned, smaller Face ID sensor array, which may be at the root of the issue. The site speculates that there may be a glitch in the section of iOS 27 which relates to this specific piece of hardware.
The original poster of the Reddit thread, however, reports that after they got in touch with Apple support, the company ran diagnostics and decided that it was a faulty unit.
Macworld can’t confirm the existence of these bugs. But these aren’t one-off complaints; multiple customers report each of the problems, which makes it unlikely that they’re imaginary. In the case of the Face ID bug, Macworld readers may be able to reproduce the behavior for themselves by attempting to unlock a protected app or document (such as a locked note in Notes) and then obscuring their face so it fails.
If these do turn out to be legitimate bugs they will join a long list of post-launch iPhone complaints, including Antennagate in 2010 and Bendgate in 2014. Last year we had Scratchgate, which didn’t go viral in the same way but caused a fuss for a while, and an issue with photos having small blacked-out portions. That second one was officially acknowledged by Apple; it remains to be seen how the company will respond to these latest reports.