Apple mono store partner and authorised reseller Gadget & Gear has officially launched the iPhone 18 series in Bangladesh at an event in Dhaka on Sunday. The devices are now available at all Gadget & Gear outlets and online.
The launch comes with Shield+ included free on every iPhone 18 series device. Shield+ adds a second year of warranty on top of Apple's standard cover, taking the total to two years, and includes one front screen replacement and one back glass replacement within the period. The iPhone 18 Pro carries a new 48-megapixel variable-aperture camera and AI features.
This is the answer to a specific number
Eight days ago this site reported that the iPhone 18 Pro Max was selling unofficially in Dhaka at Tk2,12,000 — Tk30,999 less than the officially imported iPhone 17 Pro Max. That gap was the whole argument for buying outside the official channel.
The official launch changes the comparison in a way worth being precise about. The relevant question is no longer "a new grey phone against last year's official phone". It is the same model on both sides, and the gap now buys a defined list of things rather than an absence.
What the official price includes, on these terms: two years of warranty instead of none, a screen replacement, a back glass replacement, and a service centre with an obligation. A cracked screen on a flagship is not a small repair, and one covered replacement is a meaningful fraction of the gap on its own.
How to read a bundled warranty
A free extended warranty is a real benefit and it is also a priced one. The seller has calculated what the cover costs them across all buyers, and it is inside the sticker price whether or not anyone claims.
That does not make it bad value. It makes it insurance, and insurance is worth buying when the loss would hurt and the odds are not negligible. A cracked screen on a flagship is exactly that: common enough to expect over two years, expensive enough to matter.
What to establish before relying on it: whether the replacement is genuine Apple parts or third-party, whether using it voids anything else, how long a repair takes in practice, and what happens to the remaining cover after the one replacement is used. Those four answers decide whether the second year is protection or a line on a poster.
What still has not changed
Two things from the earlier piece survive this launch, and a buyer should weigh them.
The first is registration. Buying through an authorised importer means the handset arrives already in the national device register, which is the one advantage of official stock that does not expire with a warranty. Grey-market buyers have to establish it themselves, and the two-minute check is unchanged: dial *#06#, SMS KYD <IMEI> to 16002, and read the reply literally rather than optimistically.
The second is resale. An unregistered handset is harder to sell on and sells for less, and that discount is part of the real cost of the cheaper phone — paid later, by you.
And the part the launch does not address
Promotional warranty terms are a reason to buy officially; they are not a reason to buy now. And the launch leaves the larger fact where it was. Everything above concerns a handset costing roughly nine times the median new-phone purchase in this market. For most buyers the official-versus-grey question is not a close call but an irrelevant one, and a launch event does not change which shelf they are standing at.
For anyone who is buying at this end, the useful discipline is to read Shield+ as what it is — insurance with specific terms — and to check the two that matter: what counts as accidental damage, and whether the replacement must be done at a particular outlet.
What the device does after you own it is in the piece on ads inside Settings.
