In this week’s edition of Everything Is More Expensive All the Time: iPhones. As of today, you may have noticed that there are a few new iPhones out there in the world. At its “Surprise and Shine” annual hardware event, Apple took the wraps off its first-ever foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, as well as the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
There’s a lot to unpack with all of those models, but one thing you may have clocked immediately is the price. This year, Apple is raising the price of its Pro and Pro Max iPhones by $100, meaning the new starting prices for both are $1,199 and $1,299, respectively.
That’s the way things are trending pretty much everywhere across consumer tech, phones, and beyond. It sucks. But you know what sucks worse? Older iPhones are getting their prices jacked up, too.
Turns out the iPhone 16, iPhone 17e, iPhone 17, and the iPhone Air will all be more expensive. Here are the new starting prices for each:
- iPhone 16: $799
- iPhone 17e: $699
- iPhone 17: $899
- iPhone Air: $1,099
As unwelcome as price hike news is, it’s also fairly expected. Former Apple CEO Tim Cook foreshadowed price increases in June, calling them “unavoidable” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The culprit? Memory shortages, of course, which are being fueled by data centers and artificial intelligence.
Whatever the reason is, the price hikes to older phones feel especially aggravating given the fact that Apple actually didn’t release a new generation of its base model this year, making the iPhone 17 the newest base model you can buy right now.
It could be worse, I guess. You could be paying $3,200 for an iPhone Duo with 2TB of storage.
