Confusing reports point to ‘deep red’ iPhone 18 Pro

Apple loves to mark the launch of a new iPhone with a new color finish. For one thing, in the absence of significant design changes, giving customers the option to rock a color that wasn’t available last year is a great way for them to show off that they’ve got the latest hardware. Cosmic Orange was a big hit for the iPhone 17 Pro in 2025, so we’re all keen to find out what Apple has planned for fall 2026.

As of the latest round of reports, the front runner for that honor looks to be red. Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has said as much for months; near the end of February he predicted a “deep red” iPhone 18 Pro, potentially sitting alongside the popular Cosmic Orange finish. As he noted at the time, red and orange are close on the color wheel and Apple might worry about the two options cannibalising each other’s sales. But that could be offset by the red being much darker than the very bright and bold orange.

At the time Gurman emphasised that the arrival of a red iPhone 18 Pro was a likely but not a guaranteed outcome, because color choices don’t need to be decided as far out from launch as more structural elements such as component choices and chassis design. But his prediction has now been bolstered by corroboration from another source, albeit one that raises as many questions as answers.

A leaker who goes by the handle Digital Chat Station published a Weibo post (via 9to5Mac) this past weekend claiming that the 18 Pro “will most likely come in a deep red color.” Straightforward enough, except for the rationale given in the second half of the sentence: the leaker bases the prediction on the fact they have “seen prototypes of this color for the next generation of flagship Android phones.”

It’s no secret that Android makers frequently follow Apple’s lead in matters of design–in January last year, we wrote about all the borrowings at Samsung’s Galaxy S25 launch, and Cosmic Orange itself sparked an industry-wide trend–so this makes a certain amount of sense. If such companies got hold of leaked plans indicating an imminent red iPhone, they might very well pivot to that color themselves in anticipation of customer demand.

But is that what’s happened? In fact, there are two other ways this could have gone down. It could be that the Android companies and Apple simply have access to the same design trends research; Apple, after all, doesn’t pull ideas like Cosmic Orange out of thin air, but makes use of specialists’ predictions of where color trends are headed. It’s also possible that the development work by the Android companies is not a response to a new set of leaked plans they’ve seen and we haven’t, but to the original Gurman report from February. In which case, rumormongers are in danger of going round in a circle and making something seem a lot more confirmed than it actually is.

So, for the time being, we’d recommend a degree of skepticism. Red still looks plausible, but we’ll need more solid evidence before we’re convinced it’s happening. Whatever the truth, we’ll know for sure when the iPhone 18 Pro is unveiled in September. For all the latest news and rumors as we head towards the launch, bookmark our regularly updated iPhone 18 superguide.