A new iPhone 18 Pro leak has pushed a wine-dark finish called Dark Cherry to the center of next year’s color conversation. Tipster Sonny Dickson posted physical dummy units this week showing the Pro lineup in four shades: Black, Silver, Light Blue, and the deep cherry tone that appears to replace the Cosmic Orange buyers chased in 2025.
What makes a leaked color worth a second look is what tends to happen after Apple ships it. The company’s Pro-line finishes have a habit of reappearing on rival phones a few months later, and cherry red may be the next one to make that trip across the market.
Sonny Dickson’s Dummy Units Put a Wine-Red Finish on Show
The images landed on X on Thursday from Sonny Dickson, a leaker with a long record of surfacing accurate Apple hardware mock-ups ahead of launch. Dummy units like these are non-working models built from the same molds suppliers use to make cases, so they capture shape and color but tell you nothing about the chips inside.
The cherry shade is the one drawing eyes. Macworld pegged the finish as Pantone 6076, describing it as closer to wine than a bright red and noticeably more restrained than last year’s orange. The same leak also points to a true black returning to the Pro models for the first time in several generations, alongside a softer Silver and a pale Light Blue.
This color has been circulating for months. Mark Gurman, the Bloomberg reporter who covers Apple’s supply chain, wrote in February that Apple was testing a deep red Pro finish. Supply-chain tipster Digital Chat Station later shared a reference image of a darker red that does not quite match the unit in Dickson’s photos, a small gap that suggests Apple is still moving shades around behind the scenes.
Dickson’s own read was blunt, and it is the reason the leak traveled so far.
Cherry will probably be the next hit, orange did very well.
For readers tracking every shade, the four leaked finishes break down like this:
- Dark Cherry – a muted wine-red, the standout and the most likely talking point of the cycle
- Black – a genuine black returning to the Pro line after years of grays and graphites
- Silver – the safe, high-resale staple Apple rarely drops
- Light Blue – a pale, pastel-leaning option in place of a bolder blue
You can see the full iPhone 18 Pro colour breakdown for how the palette has shifted across earlier rumors.
How Cosmic Orange Became a Copycat Magnet
To understand why a leaked color matters at all, look at what orange did. Apple launched the iPhone 17 Pro in September 2025 in three finishes, deep blue, Cosmic Orange and silver, per Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro launch announcement. The orange was the breakout, loud enough that owners noticed and reviewers could not stop mentioning it.
Within months, the shade stopped belonging to Apple. Honor, the Chinese smartphone maker, shipped near-identical orange backs on the Magic 8 Pro Air and the Power 2. Budget brands moved faster and with less shame; the Hotwav A17 Pro Max borrowed the orange, the camera layout and even the naming structure in one go.
So the playbook is familiar by the time a new color leaks. Apple validates a finish, the broader market reads the early sales signal, and a wave of similar phones follows before the next holiday quarter. Dickson is betting cherry runs the same route, and the pattern gives that bet some weight.
Apple’s Color Leadership Goes Back to the Gold iPhone
The orange wave was not a one-off. Apple has been setting smartphone color direction for more than a decade, and rival finishes tend to converge on its Pro palette within a single product cycle. The table below traces how often that has played out.
| Apple Pro finish | Debut model and year | What followed across the market |
|---|---|---|
| Gold | iPhone 5s, 2013 | Gold handsets spread fast across Asian markets and lower-cost brands |
| Pacific Blue | iPhone 12 Pro, 2020 | Muted blues became a flagship default |
| Deep Purple | iPhone 14 Pro, 2022 | Purple variants appeared across Android lineups |
| Cosmic Orange | iPhone 17 Pro, 2025 | Honor, Hotwav and others shipped look-alike orange backs |
| Cherry red (rumored) | iPhone 18 Pro, expected 2026 | Unwritten |
From Gold to Pacific Blue
Gold arrived on the iPhone 5s in 2013 and got mocked as bling before it became a status shade across Asia and a default option on cheaper handsets. Pacific Blue, which debuted on the iPhone 12 Pro in 2020, did something quieter; it made a restrained, sophisticated blue feel premium, and a run of flagships leaned into similar tones soon after.
Deep Purple and the Loud Era
By the iPhone 14 Pro in 2022, Apple was reaching for finishes meant to be noticed. Deep Purple gave the Pro a signature look that season, and purple options started turning up across competing lineups. Each of these colors traveled the same way: a debut on the Pro, strong early demand, then imitation.
The Orange Tipping Point
Orange was the loudest version of the cycle yet, which is why it copied so cleanly. You can still see the original on Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro finishes page, and you can find its echoes on a dozen rivals that launched after it. Cherry is the question mark in the table, and the bet is that a richer, more grown-up red travels just as far.
Where Samsung Decided Not to Follow
The pattern has a real limit, and Samsung is the proof. Reports last autumn claimed the company would lift Apple’s orange for its next Ultra, yet the Galaxy S26 Ultra that shipped on March 11, 2026 did not chase orange at all.
Samsung instead led with Cobalt Violet as its hero finish, backed by Black, Sky Blue and White, with Pink Gold and Silver Shadow sold online only, as laid out in Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series unveiling and on the Galaxy S26 Ultra color options page. Google held its own line too, building the Pixel range around its own identity, including Google’s Pixel 10 color additions rather than Apple’s.
That gap matters for anyone reading the cherry leak as a sure thing. The copycats cluster at the budget end and among Chinese makers fighting for attention, where matching a hot iPhone color is cheap marketing. The brands with their own design language and enough scale to set trends, Samsung and Google among them, are the ones most likely to walk away from the script.
So a cherry wave next year is plausible, but it will probably look like another orange episode: lots of affordable and mid-tier phones in a similar shade, while the top flagships do their own thing.
Why a Muted Wine Red Is a Commercial Gamble
Phone color is not decoration; it is a sales lever. A standout finish drives launch buzz, dominates unboxing coverage and nudges the product mix toward the pricier Pro tiers, which is exactly the lift orange delivered.
The Case for Cherry
A wine red could push back against a flagship aisle that has drifted into endless titanium gray, silver and muted black. The leaked tone reads rich and grown-up rather than gimmicky, the kind of color that can carry a premium phone without looking like a phase. If it lands, it gives Apple a fresh signature shade and hands the imitators their next target.
The Case Against It
The risk is that this red is muted rather than loud. Part of why orange spread so fast is that it screamed from across a room and photographed well on social feeds. A restrained Pantone 6076 wine may sell beautifully and still fail to spark the same copy frenzy, because subtlety does not go viral the way a bright finish does. A quieter color can be the better product and the weaker trend at the same time.
What Still Has to Land Before the September Reveal
None of this is confirmed. Dummy units come from supply-chain molds, not from Apple, and the company is famous for testing more finishes than it ever ships; the mismatch between Digital Chat Station’s earlier red and the unit in this leak is a live reminder that the palette is not locked.
Apple is expected to reveal the iPhone 18 Pro in September 2026, and the final colors will not be official until then. Readers weighing a purchase can track the rumored iPhone 18 Pro launch timing and pricing as more details firm up. If cherry survives to the keynote and sells the way orange did, expect a familiar parade of look-alike reds across cheaper Android phones by the holidays; if Apple swaps it out at the last minute, this whole trend forecast resets to gray.
Frequently Asked Questions
What colors are leaked for the iPhone 18 Pro?
The dummy units shared by Sonny Dickson show four finishes: Black, Silver, Light Blue and a deep wine-red called Dark Cherry. The black is reported to be a true black returning to the Pro line after several generations of grays.
Is the Dark Cherry color confirmed by Apple?
No. The shade only appears on unofficial dummy units built from supply-chain molds, not on any Apple-issued device. Apple typically tests several finishes before settling its final palette, so the color could still change before launch.
When is the iPhone 18 Pro expected to launch?
Industry leaks point to a September 2026 reveal, in line with Apple’s usual autumn iPhone cadence. Official colors, pricing and specifications will not be confirmed until that event.
What is Pantone 6076?
It is the reference shade Macworld used to describe the leaked cherry finish. The tone sits closer to wine than to bright red and is noticeably more muted than the Cosmic Orange used on the iPhone 17 Pro.
Did Android brands really copy Apple’s Cosmic Orange?
Yes. After the iPhone 17 Pro launched, Honor released similar orange finishes on the Magic 8 Pro Air and Power 2, and budget maker Hotwav mirrored the color on the A17 Pro Max. Samsung, by contrast, led its Galaxy S26 Ultra with Cobalt Violet instead.
