Apple iPhone 17 Pro review

Competition

It won't be the first time that making sure a particular iPhone is the right smartphone for you starts with establishing if it's the right iPhone for you. With this year's lineup, it just might be a little bit more difficult, too.

For starters, if you're on the iPhone 16 Pro, perhaps there's not much reason to upgrade, but if you're shopping now, maybe it makes more sense to get the new model over whatever savings you may be able to score (if you can find the old Pro at a third-party retailer near you - Apple has discontinued selling them anymore, as usual).

Then there's the most obvious dilemma - Pro or Pro Max. This one's sort of straightforward - extra screen estate and battery life for a price premium - that's the Max. More compact body and some savings - the small Pro.

This year, for a change, the non-Pro makes a lot of sense. It's not as good a cameraphone as the 17 Pro, but if that's not as important to you, you could save some cash and carry a tangibly lighter phone all day every day.

Then there's the Air. Even less of a picture-taking device, it's more of a fashion statement and a conversation starter. It takes the same selfies as all the others, has some camera on the back, an actually larger display than the 17 Pro's and while not as long-lasting, it still has much better endurance than we expected.

Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max • Apple iPhone 17 • Apple iPhone Air • Apple iPhone 16 Pro

If you're all set on the iPhone 17 Pro out of all the iPhones, perhaps then you could entertain a few Androids. The Pixel 10 Pro is essentially the same phone, only made by Google - tight ecosystem integration, very good cameras with similar limitations, premium hardware. Well, the Pixel's battery life is nowhere as good, so there's that.

Samsung doesn't have a direct competitor for the iPhone 17 Pro. The vanilla Galaxy S25 is a lot lighter, so it's got that going for it, but it's really more of a midranger in terms of camera. The S25 Ultra, on the other hand, is probably a touch better than the iPhone for taking pictures and is packed with features, but it's huge and heavy.

Google Pixel 10 Pro • Samsung Galaxy S25 • Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

And then you can maybe consider some of the proper cameraphones out of China - like the globally available vivo X200 Pro with its transformative telephoto camera or the dual-telephoto Oppo Find X8 Pro. And maybe the respective Ultras, if you're feeling adventurous and want to deal with Chinese software. Though for iPhone 17 Pro money or thereabout you could also snatch a properly global Xiaomi 15 Ultra.

vivo X200 Pro • Oppo Find X8 Pro • Xiaomi 15 Ultra

Verdict

The iPhone 17 Pro is in many ways different from last year's model, yet it's also kind of the same - underneath and in principle. On the surface, you're getting a fresh redesign that was really needed after several years of minor tweaks. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's recognizable and comes with some practicality benefits.

It's a vehicle for getting heat out, and it appears to be helping, at least a little, in tandem with the new vapor chamber - but neither is a miracle worker and there's still a fair bit of throttling, particularly on the GPU side of things. Well, performance is also improved, of course.

In the same-but-different-but-same category, we'll have to file the new iOS 26 - it's looking fancier, but it's not gotten any more intuitive or user-friendly. There's a new charging standard being thrown around and indeed top ups are now speedier, but we can't help but wonder if that could have happened earlier, without the new abbreviation. The display is not as bright as before, but it also is as bright as before, only not so cooperative when it comes to our testing. It's less reflective, which is a welcome development.

Then there's the new telephoto camera which sounded exciting at first, but it's not a dramatic improvement over the old one. The every-which-way selfie camera is cool too, don't get us wrong, but it's also solving the most first-world problem - spending the extra effort to rotate your phone. It is higher-res and wider-angle - those are objective improvements, we'll give it that.

There's a lot of back and forth with the iPhone 17 Pro - you're getting this, but... that thing's improved, however... that other thing's changed, and it's not exactly better, but different instead. Ultimately, it's an excellent premium package with huge sales numbers in its future - it's just that we're not exactly feeling it.

Pros

• Nice OLED display with Dolby Vision and HDR10.
• Great battery life for the class, fast charging too.
• Excellent performance.
• Class-leading video quality.
• Reliably great photo quality, though not truly exciting.
• Superb water resistance.

Cons

• Controversial design.
• Still somewhat significant thermal throttling in gaming.
• New telephoto camera isn't the massive upgrade we hoped for.
• Apple iOS 26 is chaotic.
• The new charger is not available outside North America yet; could have come bundled instead.