iPhone 17 Pro series hands-on: All the right moves

The iPhone 17 Pro series follows in the trail laid out by the last few iPhone models by improving everything about the iPhone while having a tight focus on camera improvemnts.

The main camera sensor and the ultrawide appear on the spec sheets to be the same or similar to last year’s 16 Pro, but the new telephoto has gotten a major overhaul to change both its sensor size and focal length. This now appears to be the same sensor that’s in the ultrawide lens, which is much larger and allows for 48-megapixel photos.

There isn’t a black or grey iPhone 17 Pro this year. Only a dark blue option.

Since it’s a 48-megapixel lens, Apple has also enabled its sensor cropping mechanism, allowing you to shoot 4x (100mm) and 8x (200mm) without a drastic loss in quality. In my brief tests, it looked great, and the extra reach this year allowed for some really nice background/foreground blur. In video, the Apple camera team has even tuned the software so it has a really nice focus pull emulation when you switch between tap to focus points when using the longer lenses.

Like last year, the ultrawide and main cameras seemed excellent, and everything from portraits to macro shots all seemed to resolve nicely. Like the iPhone 16 series you can also use Photographic Styles to really dial in your photos to look exactly how you’d like them.

The new Techwoven cases feel more robust, but less soft than FineWoven from a couple of years ago.

When it comes to the front-facing camera, all the new iPhone models have gotten an upgraded 18-megapixel camera that’s placed within a square sensor, allowing the photographer to choose to shoot in portrait or landscape without needing to turn the phone horizontally. This sounds like a small thing, but it really does help keep the phone more stable when filming selfies, and from my short test, I seemed to maintain a better eyeline with the actual lens. You can also expand it out to basically take an ultrawide shot with the front camera to fit in a bunch of your friends.

Beyond the cameras, the new phone has an all-aluminum design that feels really nice to hold. It’s a little more rounded than the 15-16 series, and the new unibody enclosure feels quite solid in your hand. I really expected the Air to be the clear star of the day, but the new Pro design also feels quite nice.

Apple has done this redesign to help fit in a larger battery and improve the phone’s heat dissipation. Underneath the back panel is a vapour chamber to help move more heat away from the A19 Pro chip as efficiently as possible. This is an exciting upgrade we’ve seen on Android for a few years now, so it’s nice to finally have it on iOS.

Speaking of the A19 chip, Apple says it’s the most powerful and most efficient iPhone chip ever, so it will be really interesting to see if this phone ends up being a huge upgrade over the already stellar battery life in the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Apple says the new Pro Max can hit 39 hours of video playback in its tests, which is around six more hours than the 16 Pro Max. Apple’s battery video streaming numbers are based on streaming video only; in real life, your battery life will likely be closer to 7-9 hours of screen-on time, if I had to guess what it will be based on Apple’s estimate.

At the end of the day, the iPhone 17 Pro series is still the best iPhone on the market, and this new camera system is bound to be a draw for many mobile photographers and content creators. Hell, even if you just like orange, this is probably the phone for you. That said, if you don’t think you care about the extra camera lenses, the new iPhone Air is also a great option. You can check out my prior coverage of it to learn more.

The iPhone 17 Pro series will begin pre-orders on September 9 and be fully available on September 19. The phone now starts at $1,599 and comes with 256GB of storage. Last year, the 16 Pro started at $1,449 and had 128 GB.