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On the face of it, the iPhone 17 Pros are really strange. Like, these phones have 12 GB of RAM, 50% more than the previous Pro iPhones, which is a big deal, but there was almost zero mention of it at all. Why?
The biggest improvement to the new A19 Pro chip is neural accelerators. But Apple didn't demo a single tangible use case. Apple suddenly, randomly, for like the first time ever, couldn't stop talking about thermal performance. even going as far as to ditch their favorite material ever, titanium, completely change the look of the phone to get as much heat conductive metal into the design as possible and to create and fit this whole new vapor chamber on the inside. But with no features to accompany these hardware changes, everyone assumed, oh, they're improving cooling, they're increasing the battery size, they're offering more storage. That's obviously because, you know, these new phones are going to record video in 8K. Nope.
So, what the hell is going on? Here's what I think. I think that the main benefit of the Pro iPhones this year doesn't actually exist yet. It looks on the face of it like a bit of a collection of somewhat random upgrades right now, but there is a bigger reason why these are the way they are. We should talk about it.
So, the cameras are actually amazing. It's the buildup of many smaller image processing changes that make this phone feel unbelievably reliable. No individual component here is special, but it's just a combination of three 48 megapixel sensors that are just smarter. So, even compared to the 16 Pro phones, these give you even more of that feeling of I can take any shot in almost any lighting condition, day or night. I know that the portrait mode shots are going to look extra crisp, even if I use some digital zoom. And this new front camera is the biggest example of this. I really like how wide it goes. I think it's so cool that they've done that without losing any detail if you still want to shoot close. This camera is the difference between actually being able to fit two people on your side of a FaceTime call as opposed to having to flick backwards and forwards between you like I've been doing for the last 10 years. And also, if you are an uber nerd like me, then the fact that you can record video in ProRes RAW is insane cuz like this is video coming out of the normal default camera app, but this is what you can get if you shoot in ProRes RAW. And it's not even higher resolution. It's just the purest form of video file that gives you unlimited ability to tinker with it with practically zero quality loss. And also, if you then decide that a scene you shot looks horrible and warm, then you can just flip the white balance completely. It's really impressive.
But pretty much every upgrade for these new iPhones has some sort of asterisk. And the one for cameras is that the actual headline camera feature, you know, this new 48 map 4x telephoto lens, it makes very little difference. It can't focus on objects that are up close. So, it keeps switching you over to the main onetimes camera even when you're zoomed in. And when you're trying to go all the way to max zoom, well, I'd say sometimes you really can notice the improvement, but in many situations, you also can't. Makes me think this is more of a software improvement than it is a hardware one. Plus, it does just feel like such an obvious gap that the phones can't shoot 8K video, and that they still haven't fixed those annoying flares you get when you're looking at light sources.
Same thing for battery. Like I was sitting down yesterday at 3 p.m. with almost 80% left on my Pro Max, thinking, "What do I do with all of this, which is a great position to be in when you're spending way north of $1,000 and you want your phone to be future proof?" Plus, it feels kind of strange to have a set of iPhones with decently fast charging. Like just throwing them into my MacBook Power Brick, these are both very close to full after 1 hour of charging. Far from the fastest on the market, but faster than last gen, even though they are bigger sized batteries, too. But asterisk, as we've seen from our battery test, how big of an upgrade the 17 Pros actually are compared to the 16 Pros depends largely on whether you'll get the eSIM only version, which you'll get in countries like the US. And if you do, that one's looking like a very healthy 12 to 15% improvement, or you're going to get the physical SIM version in Europe and India, which is looking like a much smaller 6% or so improvement. you'll be fine either way, but that extra 7 to 8% difference between the two will probably be the difference over time of your battery feeling a full year newer than it is.
Thankfully, iOS 26 has not been the battery nuke that I was expecting it to be with all these lighting effects, but and I don't want to talk about this too much cuz you can get this software on any iPhone, I have been a little surprised that even on these smartphones designed around iOS 26, it still feels really unpolished. It's beautiful from a distance. I think the animations and the icons and the lock screen and the ability to turn any wallpaper into this spatial scene, they're all improvements, but it's just up close. There are so many repeatable glitches and animation breakers and things that suddenly aren't very readable that it clearly needs more time in the oven.
Thankfully, the physical design of the phone does feel a lot more refined. I've seen so many people saying these things look atrocious and I feel like special mention to this orange color for becoming probably the most controversial pro iPhone finish ever. I get it, but they really work for me. They feel really smooth in your hands with how the metal wraps around the sides. And yeah, they're not as minimalist as before, but honestly, having a phone that looks unique and you know that the reason it looks unique is because that allows it to perform better and have better signal cuz of the extra antenna bands around the camera plateau, which I have noticed in all kinds of places. I don't really have any beef with that. It's like choosing an SUV over a sports car, knowing that you're going to get more trunk space and head height because of it. It's also a little bit more balanced on a table than the last iPhones thanks to this plateau somewhat evening out the elevation of the phone.
The asterisk, the fairly substantial asterisk, and you might have realized this already if you've seen this photo that's been floating around from our unboxing video, is that these new phones are easier to scratch. I specifically tested this once I first noted a couple popping up on the back of my phone. And yeah, compared to the Titanium 16 Pro, which I actually couldn't get a permanent mark on using a key, the 17 Pro's aluminium body didn't put up a whole lot of resistance. But two things. One, you'll notice this quite a bit less on the more natural silver color, which is why that's the one I would actually recommend. Two, you can also just slip on the Taurus Q3 Air case, our sponsor. The thing is built like an absolute tank with real airbags. It's engineered around people who like to capture their lives with this rotating magnetic stand that lets you hold the thing basically anywhere to get your shots. And it's designed to resemble air sneakers, which just looks kind of sick.
But the third thing about this design is I would say screen durability is actually way more important than body durability cuz a lot less people use screen protectors compared to cases. And you have to look at the screen all the time. So when those scratches start to set in over time, there's no escaping. Which means it's great that Apple has finally improved scratch resistant by three times, right? H consider me very skeptical. I first took basically every type of metal object I had to the previous iPhone 16 Pro screen. And it's actually kind of amazing just how much I had to torture the thing with screws and keys and knives until eventually cracking open the professional hardness picks and just going at it for 10 minutes straight to get this little mark in the corner. So then I took the same hardness pick to the 17 Pro. And honestly, within about 10 seconds, I've made a mark that's actually more noticeable. So, we're never really going to know how Apple's come up with this three times scratch resistance number. Just bear in mind that it will be for very specific situations, and it will have trade-offs. This is not some magic formula that suddenly means your screen is going to stay pristine over time.
The only other weird thing is the speaker that used to be here and the microphone that used to be here have now swapped positions. So, the upside is that you're now less likely to block your mic when you're on a call and you're holding a phone like this. The downside is you're more likely to block your speaker when you're watching videos like this. Bit of a strange change.
On the bright side, it's really cool to have a phone that is this high performance. The asterisk is just bear in mind that you're only really going to notice it in fringe cases. I'm getting to how that might change, but right now nothing about the day-to-day experience feels any faster. And actually, if anything, the animations are a little slower in iOS 26. But to be fair, if you are going to properly play games, I'm talking big 3D games like Destiny, games that you want to run at a full 120 frames pers, then it is pretty mind-blowing what these phones can already do. Just slightly surreal how smoothly you can glide into games that look like this. And they do run cooler, too. And just as I think this is so interesting, here's what it looks like under a thermal camera. So, left is the new phone, right? And can you see how the old one gets really white hot in this one area? That's the logic board. That's where the main processing is being done. Whereas this 17 Pro just gets mildly warm all around. And you can kind of see how the heat is now able to spread all across the back, especially into this now metal camera plateau area. And this is such a good perk. It's good for short-term longevity. You know, keeping your game running smooth, keeping the phone comfy to hold, keeping the screen looking bright, but also the long-term longevity, keeping the battery on the chip healthy. These are such good mainstream phones for gaming. You get the highly optimized iOS apps and the screen is so good. You won't notice it all the time, but if you're like I am right now sitting outdoors and you've got some really brightly lit objects reflecting off of it, you will feel the fact that it's quite a bit brighter and it also has this anti-reflective coating that reduces the glare. But to be fair, Taurus can give you this on any iPhone with their Oriama screen protector. You just drop your phone into this insane looking contraption they give you. This is a 16 Pro Max and it applies the protector in the most idiot proof way I've ever seen. And now have a look at the difference in glare on the screen and it'll be even more on a 17 Pro which is such a cool side perk for a screen protector to have. Link below to grab one now.
So this random collection of upgrades that we've had to the 17 Pros this time around. What's it all about? Well, I think that everything about the way these phones are configured implies that they are primarily designed for heavy nextg Apple intelligence features on device. It's just that Apple hasn't announced them yet. Because of all the delays to Apple's AI, I think the company's in a situation where their hardware development is actually ahead of their software development. So, most likely next year when Apple does a big revamp of Siri and its AI in general, I think the 17 Pros will become the poster child for those features, the best way to experience it all.
But until that day, do these various upgrades make these phones significantly better than the last iPhones? Yeah, kind of. I'd say they're good enough. I do love it when battery life improves. I think the camera experience is more reassuring and you can't argue with the performance on these. I also wouldn't be in a rush to upgrade. The base iPhone 17, which also now has the same 256 gigs of storage and almost all the features really of the Pros, is a full $300 cheaper than them this year, which is Apple's way of protecting their sales volume to make sure that people aren't leaving the Apple ecosystem. It's just the downside of making that phone so good is that it makes these pros very much the optional upgrade just for power users. I mean, there's a reason Apple's now offering 2 TB of storage on the Pro Max and pricing it at $2,000. They know they're going to sell proportionally less of these top- end phones, but also that anyone who is considering them this time is someone who would be willing to pay a lot more for that extra 5%. So, high margin features like extreme storage are a bit of a no-brainer.
And so, the situations in which I see the iPhone 17 Pros being worth it are one, you really want a plus-sized iPhone for the screen and the battery. In which case, now that the Plus is gone, the only way to get that is to go all out for the Pro Max, especially if you're in an eSIM only country where you're going to get that battery in spades. Also, definitely not an accident that the Plus has been swapped for the Air because the Air is less likely to steal people from the Pros. or two. The company does reveal some actually amazing Apple intelligence features next year, but they're super demanding. In which case, the extra RAM, the thermals, the new chip here will become key to running them at their