iPhone 17 Review: Apple’s Baseline iPhone Finally Earns a Pro-Motion

For years, Apple’s baseline iPhones have lived in the shadows of their Pro siblings. They’re dependable, polished, but not as exciting as several Android flagships have become over time. However, with the iPhone 17, the dynamic finally shifts. This year’s baseline iPhone features more “Pro” DNA than ever before, which includes a massive display upgrade (something that should have been here years ago), thinner bezels, and a refined camera setup with one of the most innovative selfie solutions that has ever existed on a smartphone. Now, all these additions may not rewrite the playbook, but finally, the base iPhone no longer feels like a compromise.

iPhone 17 Review: Unboxing

This is perhaps the most disappointing section of this review, as it received no upgrades (neither incremental nor generational). Like every year, the iPhone 17 comes in a rather slim box that only has the phone, a braided USB-C to USB-C cable, and a SIM ejector tray (and some paperwork). Apple claims that the packaging is eco-friendly, as it uses less paper and includes no charger.

You know how iPhone boxes are famous for smoothly coming out of the lid the moment you remove the protective stickers on either side? Mine didn’t do that.

iPhone 17 Review: Design & Build

With regards to design and ergonomics, the iPhone 17 is not all that different from the iPhone 16 (review), and that’s okay (I guess), except for a few things. The basic blueprint of the handset remains the same. You get a vertical camera array on the back, with a color-infused matte glass back that repels fingerprints and a flat aluminium frame with textured edges (and rounded corners), which makes it easier to grip the iPhone securely.

You also get plenty of buttons, including the power and Camera Control buttons on the right frame, and the Action button and volume rockers on the left frame. All of them offer a tactile, reassuring click. And yes, the frame features six antennas (so that you know). On the front, you get a screen that’s centered between thinner bezels than last year (which is quite noticeable) and the Dynamic Island at the top.

Apart from the slimmer bezels, the iPhone 17’s screen features Ceramic Shield 2, which, per Apple, provides 3x better scratch resistance than the previous generation, but there’s no way (and no chance) that I’m putting that to the test on my iPhone. There’s a subtle change in the phone’s dimensions, only apparent when you hold the phone next to the iPhone 16; it is two millimeters longer than the predecessor, which also makes room for a slightly bigger screen.

At a time when other manufacturers are investing their resources in making thinner flagships, Apple has withdrawn from the contest. Its latest baseline iPhone is actually thicker than last year’s; the difference is barely 0.2 mm, but isn’t it supposed to be going in the other direction? The increase in thickness is accompanied by a corresponding increase in weight (177 grams vs. 170 grams). But do these things have an impact on the in-hand feel? Not that much.

Dropping the iPhone 17 in a bucket of water, or sink, or a shallow swimming pool shouldn’t make you claim your AppleCare insurance (or give you a hefty bill), as the handset features an IP68 rating, good enough to survive in up to six meters of depth for 30 minutes.

In essence, the iPhone 17 doesn’t rewrite Apple’s design language, but rather fine-tunes it with slimmer bezels, sturdier glass, and a solid build that makes it feel, well, premium. The added heft and thickness indicate that the company is choosing substance over slimness, and that’s alright.

iPhone 17 Review: Display & Sound

One of the most noticeable upgrades to the iPhone 17 is the screen. For all intents and purposes, the baseline iPhone has a Pro-grade display, quite literally.

We’re looking at a 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR OLED screen with a resolution of 2622 x 1206 pixels (460 ppi, but the number hasn’t increased in years). For reference, the screen is bigger in size than the iPhone 16 and similar in size to the iPhone 17 Pro, making it more suitable for consuming content.

The screen can blast up to a searing 3,000 nits under bright outdoor conditions or direct sunlight (up from 2,000 nits on the iPhone 16). The peak HDR brightness, however, remains at 1,600 nits.

As an iPhone 16 user, I defended my honor by saying that having a 120Hz screen doesn’t make a difference, but I stand corrected.

The iPhone 17, with Apple’s ProMotion display technology (a fancy term for variable refresh rate between 1 and 120Hz), feels so much smoother than the iPhone 16 — whether you’re scrolling through social media or gliding through the home screen, the difference is undeniable (and I can’t imagine picking up a 60Hz smartphone again).

And yes, the iPhone 17 gets an always-on display, similar to how it looks on the Pro models (a dimmed-down version of the lock screen wallpaper). Another addition is the anti-reflective coating, which claims to reduce glare and reflections on the screen. However, I didn’t see a discernible difference between my iPhone 16 and the new iPhone 17 (although that could be due to using tempered glass on both). Additional screen-related features include support for HDR content, True Tone, and Wide color (P3) coverage, as well as a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

What’s still missing, however, is high-frequency pulse width modulation (PWM). The iPhone 16 models are stuck with 480Hz PWM dimming (when phones like the OnePlus 13 support 2,160 Hz), and the iPhone 17 models likely stick with the number as well.

Although this means the screen flickers 480 times per second, which is relatively high, a subset of users may be sensitive to this frequency, which is exactly why Apple has added a feature to disable PWM dimming entirely on the iPhone 17. Complementing the display is a dual-speaker setup that provides a fuller sound with noticeable low-end.

iPhone 17 Review: Performance

Beating inside the iPhone 17’s shiny exterior is a new silicon heart — Apple’s A19 chip — which features a six-core CPU, a five-core GPU (with neural accelerators and hardware-accelerated raytracing), and a 16-core Neural Engine.

The chipset is paired with 8GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. What’s good is that the baseline iPhone 17 now starts with 256GB of storage; that’s a welcome (and much-needed) addition.

In day-to-day performance, the iPhone 17 does exceptionally well. The UI animations feel fluid, and so do the opening/closing of apps, as well as switching between them. Even demanding tasks, such as editing and rendering 4K 60fps videos (thanks to a powerful media engine), and gaming (with support for AAA titles), felt effortless for the A19 chip.

In fact, the chip is even faster than the A18 Pro on the iPhone 16 Pro (review). For most users, the chipset might be overkill, but those who can put it to good use can get some good mileage from the handset. I didn’t encounter any random stutters or jitters in the user interface during my time with the device. The exceptional performance also leads to better futureproofing.

Synthetic Benchmarks

• Geekbench 6 CPU: Single-Core: 3,617 / Multi-Core: 9,263 
• Geekbench 6 GPU: 37,478 GPU Metal Score

An interesting tidbit about the GeekBench 6 multi-core and GPU scores of the iPhone 17 is that they are higher than the respective scores of the iPad Pro (11-inch, 3rd Generation with Apple M1) and iPad Pro (11-inch, 4th Generation with Apple M2) in the same benchmarks.

Even otherwise, A19’s single-core score is higher than that of the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Dimensity 9400 Plus. Still, these companies are yet to reveal their latest flagship chipsets, and those could seriously affect the leaderboard. Anyway, until that happens, the A19 is the second-most powerful chip on any smartphone, of course, after the A19 Pro chip.

Gaming

Despite all that GPU power, the iPhone 17 can’t surpass Ultra HDR + Ultra and HDR + Extreme graphics settings on BGMI, whereas several Android flagships excel with 90 fps. Anyway, the phone consistently provided around 59 fps (on the HDR + Extreme setting), without a significant rise in temperature during a 15-minute gameplay session. Prolonged gaming, however, could raise the iPhone’s temperature a bit.

I’m almost certain that the iPhone doesn’t provide higher frame rate gameplay to maintain thermal stability, since the CPU and GPU already have ample processing power at their disposal. So, while the iPhone 17’s gaming performance isn’t on par with what gaming smartphones (such as Android flagships) might provide, it’s second-best, in my opinion.

iPhone 17 Review: Operating System

Out of the box, the iPhone 17 runs on iOS 26, which is Apple’s latest operating system for iPhones. Its major highlight is the Liquid Glass design, which has been integrated into the entire user interface, including the Control Center, on-screen floating menus, the playback tray in the Apple Music app, and several other areas. As beautiful as the refractive glass-like interface looks, I’m fairly certain it takes a significant toll on the handset’s GPU, which is probably why users of older iPhones, such as the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12, might not be able to run it as smoothly as recent models.

Apple’s iPhones haven’t been the best when it comes to customization options, but the company has been catching up with iOS 18, and even more with iOS 26. The latest operating system features a dynamic clock that adjusts its position and font according to the wallpaper’s subject, Spatial Wallpapers (which introduce a three-dimensional look), and the ability to place widgets at the bottom of the lock screen.

We also have two new apps: Preview for viewing/editing PDFs (nothing entirely new), and Games for a collaborative gaming experience between users connected via the app. The Phone app now features Call Screening (which has already been available on Pixel phones for a long time) and Hold Assist, which tells you when an agent is available on the other side of the call.

Then there are minor additions like custom snooze durations for the native alarm clock (from one to 15 minutes), spam filtering for Messages (though the feature often categorizes messages from banks in the spam folder), Arabic transliteration keyboard, better Braille Access integration, and Vehicle Motion Cues.

The company didn’t talk about Apple Intelligence features at the launch event, and that’s because the iPhone 17 doesn’t really shine in that aspect. There are a couple of additions, such as Live Translation in the Phone, Messages, and FaceTime apps, as well as improvements to Genmoji, Image Playground, and Visual Intelligence. However, I’d still say that Apple is still playing catch-up with Samsung, and the features available on Pixel phones (especially Camera Coach and Edit with Ask Photos) are slightly more helpful.

The haptic performance on the iPhone 17 feels almost identical to that of the iPhone 16, with perhaps a slight improvement. There are a couple of bugs here and there, as you can see below, but Apple can fix them via a minor update.

iPhone 17 Review: Cameras

Camera Specifications

• Primary Camera: 48 MP, f/1.6, 26mm (wide), 1/1.56″, 1.0µm, dual pixel PDAF, sensor-shift OIS
• Ultrawide Camera: 48 MP, f/2.2, 13mm, 120˚ (ultrawide), 1/2.55″, 0.7µm, PDAF
• Selfie Camera: 18 MP multi-aspect, f/1.9, 20mm (ultrawide), PDAF, OIS

Primary Camera

There aren’t any significant changes to the primary 48MP camera this year. It feels similar to the iPhone 16’s primary camera. Either way, we’re looking at crisp, detailed pictures with high dynamic range and a relatively neutral color profile. By default, the handset captures images in 24MP (HEIC, which can be exported in JPEG), but there’s an option to bump up the resolution to 48MP (the difference is only apparent when you zoom in).

Irrespective of whether you capture outdoors or indoors, there’s virtually no noise in well-lit scenarios. However, in poorly-lit situations, the camera does smooth out the pictures a bit.

2x Optical-Quality Zoom

The 2x optical-quality zoom works well in bright environments, with no noticeable degradation in quality. While the color difference remains negligible between 1x and the 2x modes, the latter zooms in on the subject and adjusts the exposure accordingly. As a result, you might see a slight difference in the contrast and tones (if you look at the pictures closely).

Whether you set the camera to 48MP or 24MP, the 2x mode captures only in 12MP.

Ultrawide Photography

I am not really an ultrawide camera person, but the one on the iPhone 17 packs in much more details, thanks to the increased resolution of 48MP. The photos aren’t pixelating upon zooming anymore (at least not as much as they did on the iPhone 16), and that’s a good thing. What’s not good, however, is that there’s a noticeable difference in the ultrawide and the primary camera’s color production in random shots.

Furthermore, the ultrawide camera struggles to focus in extremely low-light conditions (near pitch darkness), to the extent that three out of four pictures I tried to capture came out blurry. If it’s a software thing, Apple should probably be able to fix it through an OTA update. It’s worth mentioning that this issue doesn’t exist on the primary sensor.

Night Photography

The first two samples attached below were captured under limited lighting conditions with Night Mode disabled. They contain enough detail, even when zoomed in, especially the primary and the 2x shots. The ultrawide shot isn’t exactly impressive, but it’s not disappointing either.

The Night Mode on the iPhone works well. The images attached below were captured in almost pitch darkness, with hardly visible light streaks from the naked eye. There’s plenty of noise in the dark areas, but that’s pretty much the case with nighttime photography on all phones, as it relies on heavy processing.

Selfie Camera

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room (well, in this article): the 18MP Center Stage selfie camera. It is one of the most innovative front camera solutions I’ve seen on a smartphone in a while (including the dual-camera systems found on Android phones).

The camera system comprises a square-shaped sensor with an ultra-wide field of view and clever software implementation. To see its effect in action, compare the images by dragging the slider below. The one on the left is the picture that your regular iPhone selfie camera would capture. However, the one on the right leverages the ultrawide sensor to provide a dramatically different shot. Notice how much more of the Rumi Darwaza you can see in the background without changing the camera’s position.

The same thing is applicable in landscape orientation. While I’ve managed to capture three people in the picture on the right, there’s space to accommodate three to four more people comfortably. From the same orientation, the camera can capture images in multiple aspect ratios, such as 16:9, 3:4, and 1:1, in both portrait and landscape orientations. And yes, this camera also powers the dynamic subject tracking feature in video calls on FaceTime.

Portrait Mode

Portrait photography on the iPhone 17 relies on Apple’s tried-and-true computational magic, with a noticeable increase in detail and subject separation, and even though it’s artificial, it does an excellent job in broad daylight (though you might notice some noise in low-light conditions).

The skin tones are accurate, while the background blur looks more natural than before.

Macro Mode

While I couldn’t capture many macro shots in the limited time I’ve spent with my iPhone, the ones I’ve shot are a solid 7 out of 10 for me. Since my frame of reference also includes handsets that use their telephoto camera to provide a much more tasteful macro perspective, the iPhone 17 does well with its ultrawide camera (with autofocus). What’s good is that you get 48MP to capture macro photos, which means that there’s more detail in the shots, especially at 2x zoom levels.

Please note: So if you enable 48MP on the ultrawide and then zoom in on a subject (at the 0.5x perspective), the camera appears to be capturing in 48MP. However, if you zoom in further, the camera resorts to 12MP at 1x and 2x.

Photographic Styles

My favorite Photographic Style this year is the Natural (third picture), as it tends to accentuate the contrast and the colors a bit, capturing upload-ready pictures.

Zoom Range

Although I got these pictures captured with the intention of giving you an idea about the iPhone 17’s zoom range, they are also an example of the shift in the ultrawide camera’s colors I mentioned earlier. Anyway, the pictures from 0.5x to 2x are clean and crisp, while the ones in 4x and 10x zoom are okay, but definitely not on par with what some other phones, particularly the vivo X200 and the Find X8 can manage.

Video Quality

The iPhone 17 can capture 4K Dolby Vision video in up to 60 fps, with one of the best optical image stabilization (that uses sensor-shift technology) in the segment. It also lets you record Cinematic and Action Mode videos, but the standout feature is the Dual Capture mode, which allows you to document an event and your reaction to it simultaneously (although you cannot adjust the front camera’s settings in this mode).

iPhone 17 Review: Battery Life

Apple claims that the iPhone 17 can provide up to 30 hours of video playback, which is eight hours more (or 36% better) than the baseline iPhone 16, and three hours better than the iPhone 16 Pro. That’s a huge claim on paper. But does the real-world usage reflect a similar difference? While the real-world difference isn’t as apparent, the effective increase in the battery capacity and the higher efficiency of the chipset will surely give you a 10 to 15% headroom over the iPhone 16.

At around 12 PM today, I charged the iPhone 17 up to 94%. For the next four to five hours, I embarked on an expedition through the streets of Lucknow, specifically near the Imambara, a popular heritage and cultural site in the City of Nawabs. During this time, I took over 300 photos from different perspectives using all the sensors, attended a couple of calls, used a bit of social media, and was constantly active on WhatsApp. After I returned to my place, I transferred all the pictures to my laptop to upload them for this review (the selection and everything took around two hours, during which I was constantly using the phone).

It is 08:03 PM as I write this section about the battery, and the iPhone 17 still has 46% battery life remaining. Although the screen-on time has been between two and a half and three hours, keep in mind that this includes heavy usage of the camera. With regular usage, the phone should easily provide seven to eight hours of screen time, which isn’t the best in the segment, but is surely among the best (and quite good for a non-Pro iPhone).

Regarding charging, the iPhone 17 charges a tad faster than the iPhone 16, provided you have a 40W or higher adapter. I charged the phone using a 33W MacBook adapter, and it took about 58 minutes for a complete charge. What’s good is that the phone also supports 25W MagSafe charging (based on Qi2.2 protocol).

Review Verdict: Should You Buy the iPhone 17?

The iPhone 17 isn’t a radical reinvention, but it is the most complete and meaningful baseline upgrade in years. A brighter, smoother Pro-grade display, more capable and efficient chipset, higher resolution ultrawide sensor, a smarter front camera, and the improved battery life make it almost perfect for day-to-day use by regular as well as power users (on a budget).

The 256GB base storage is absolutely vital for a smartphone that’ll be on sale for the remainder of 2025 and a major part of 2026. All these upgrades were reserved for the Pro models in the past.

There are a few downsides to the phone, such as its bulkier build, the absence of a dedicated telephoto sensor (available on smartphones like the Pixel 10, the Find X8, or the vivo X200), and the premium pricing, which makes the phone out of reach for a substantial user base. The competition has addressed this by pricing their baseline flagships more competitively.

While I wouldn’t recommend iPhone 16 users upgrade to the iPhone 17, it is a straightforward recommendation for someone using an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 and willing to stay within the Apple ecosystem.

Smartprix ⭐ Rating: 8.7/10

• Design and Build: 9/10
• Display: 9/10
• Speakers: 8.5/10
• Software: 8.5/10
• Haptics: 8.75/10
• Biometrics: 8/10
• Performance: 9.25/10
• Cameras: 9/10
• Battery Life & Charging: 8.5/10

First reviewed in September 2025.

---