The iPhone 17 has launched and once again, it’s an incremental upgrade that borrows a lot from the previous year’s Pro features.
Coming in at $799 for the 256GB base model (yes, the base-level storage is finally doubled) you can pre-order from Friday September 12, with the phone going on sale a week later, on September 19.
The main changes are to the design, display, camera, chipset and charging – none of them are earth-shattering, but together they do add up to a tidy redesign.
Improved design and display
The new design is called, in AppleSpeak, Magichromatic. This means new color options, starting with the Lavender (light purple), Mist Blue (light blue), Sage (sort of green), white and black (those two are pretty self-explanatory).
What is pleasing to see is that the new iPhone 17 is taking on the new Ceramic Shield 2 glass on the front, making it more durable than ever… although not as strong as the iPhone 17 Pro or the iPhone Air, both of which have this strong glass on the front and back.
AppleThat display is now up to 6.3 inches in size, with an enhanced 3000 nits – that’s 50% brighter than on the iPhone 16, which will make a difference, especially when out and about.
One of the key things that upgraders will notice is the ProMotion technology contained in the new, larger display. At 120Hz, it refreshes twice as fast as the older model, and that feels so much more fluid under the finger.
Performance
Look inside your new iPhone to check out the new A19 chipset… and you’ll have instantly invalidated your warranty. Don’t do that.
Just take our word for it (although, in fairness, we’re trusting Apple on this one): there’s a new chip inside to power the all-day battery life
There doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of change with the new chipset, with both having a 6-core CPU, but this is likely to be a big boost in power and battery efficiency over the previous model.
For most, this won’t seem like a huge deal, but the improvements to battery will obviously be welcomed.
Battery life – it looks better…
It’s nice not to be writing about an iPhone and having to find ways to explain that the battery just isn’t as good as its competitors.
For a good few years, iPhone battery life has been comparable to some of the best phones around, although the Pro models do fare better.
AppleThe iPhone 17 battery life is set to be around 30% better than the iPhone 16 when it comes to video playback, and while we doubt it will be that efficient in day-to-day use (it doesn’t seem to be using the new C1 modem that Apple’s developed, which would have helped efficiency too) it looks likely to line up alongside the likes of the Galaxy S25.
Camera
AppleThe camera on the new iPhone 17 is packing the ‘new’ Dual Fusion sensor on the bottom, with the enhanced Ultra-wide snapper on the top.
The Fusion Main camera (listed as ‘Dual Fusion’ on Apple’s website) seems very similar to last year, with the same focal length, aperture and zoom range.
AppleThe Ultra-wide is enhanced up to 48MP, with the 1x Macro allowing for better zooming in and higher-res 24MP images by default.
That does mean, to enjoy the improved storage on offer, you might need to drop the quality of your snaps to balance it off, but it’s good to have the option.
The front-facing camera comes with a new square sensor, meaning the phone can use Apple Intelligence to understand whether the people in the group need to be captured in portrait or landscape. You won’t need to turn the phone, either, as it’ll be done on-device.
The selfie cam is also an 18MP ‘Center Stage’ affair, meaning you’ll always stay in view when walking around on a video call, and you can capture yourself when shooting a video of a pal.
Whether you want to do that or not, is another matter – but it’s always nice to be included.
Other bits you probably want to know about
- As we mentioned the storage of the iPhone starts at 256GB, which is welcome now that the cameras are higher resolution and the phone can do 4K Dolby Vision recording at 60fps. You can also get it in 512GB storage options too, which start from $999.
- Connectivity has been enhanced by including Wi-Fi 7 in the mix for faster streaming from newer wireless routers (and it does make a difference if you’re on gigabit speeds).
- eSIM slot- in the US, the iPhone 17 doesn’t support physical SIM cards, and can ‘carry’ up to eight eSIM cards.
- USB-C is faster – the USB-C slot is the same as last year, except it uses the USB-C 2 standard and can fling data across at 480Mbps.
