Review: Apple iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max

At first glance, the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max seem like a drastic upgrade over their predecessors. They have a fantastic new look—one that adds more character with a two-tone design highlighting the blend of the aluminum chassis and glass. The “Camera Plateau,” as Apple calls it, elongates the camera module and gives it a more balanced appearance and feel. (Although I have to say, Google did it first.)

The specs might not read as revolutionary on paper: a bigger battery, a brighter screen, better performance, and a new telephoto zoom camera. There's no singular feature that'll make you go, “Wow!” But when you actually experience these individual improvements, they combine to become more than the sum of their parts. There are no major AI features being shoved down your throat (for various reasons). It's a better iPhone in every way.

Level Up

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The Cosmic Orange color was calling my name, but alas, Apple provided me with the Silver iPhone 17 Pro Max and Deep Blue iPhone 17 Pro. I switched to these phones after using the iPhone Air for several days, and I yelled, “Holy crap,” after picking them up. They are heavier than the iPhone 16 Pro models, and they feel like bricks compared to the thin and light Air.

I like the Camera Plateau. The two-tone separation of glass and aluminum just makes it more visually interesting. You might say, “It's just a phone,” but when a gadget looks and feels great, it makes using it all the more enjoyable, and I think Apple has done a nice job here. The phone also no longer rocks on a table as much as before, so, yay!

Apple switched from titanium to aluminum to make these chunky phones lighter, but the material change also improves thermal conductivity. Talking about heat dissipation isn't sexy (it is hot), but it's a key improvement in the new iPhones. When you're playing a graphically intensive game, your iPhone will start to get very hot as the processor does its job. At a certain point, if things get too hot, the processor starts to throttle itself so it doesn't overheat, but it means your performance suffers, resulting in stuttering and skips in your gameplay. With the iPhone 17 Pro models, Apple is finally using a vapor chamber cooling system to help dissipate heat.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Several Android phones have long used vapor chamber cooling systems, so the technology isn't new. There's literally one droplet of water in the iPhone, turning to vapor as it absorbs heat and spreads it across the back of the phone, then phasing back into water as it cools down. This system should bring several benefits: better sustained performance over a period of time, and a phone that doesn't get too hot in one awkward spot.

This rang true in my tests. I played one of the most demanding games on the iPhone right now—Assassin's Creed Mirage—and performance was significantly smoother than when I played it on the iPhone 16 Pro last year. The iPhone 17 Pro still got hot, but the heat was spread out over the entire back of the phone, so it didn't feel as uncomfortable to hold while gaming (unlike the iPhone 17 and Air). I maxed out the graphical settings, and the frames per second were noticeably more stable, and I rarely saw stutters at all.

Apple's more powerful A19 Pro chipset has a lot to do with this as well. Keep in mind that performance is slightly better than the A19 Pro inside the iPhone Air, which lacks a graphics core. When I played Mirage on the Air, the phone got hotter in specific areas and wasn't fun to hold. I saw more stutters during prolonged gameplay, though the game was still playable. I also tried it out on the A19-powered iPhone 17, but it stuttered so often at max graphics that I had to stop. All this to say, the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are the most powerful smartphones around. The benchmark scores blew everything else out of the water.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The second major highlight is the beefier batteries. Scour phone forums over the last decade and you'll find hundreds of posts asking why phones aren't a little thicker to accommodate a bigger battery. Well, Apple did exactly that. The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are thicker and have the highest battery life claims from Apple to date: 33 hours of video playback on the Pro and 39 hours on the Pro Max.

In real-world testing, I haven't worried about battery life on either of these phones. I'm using the Pro Max right now, which has more than 5 hours of screen-on time (SoT) and 55 percent left in the tank. I hit nearly seven hours of SoT on the iPhone 17 Pro, and it still had 30 percent left. Much will depend on what you're doing—hours of gaming will deplete the cell much faster—but I think there's a good chance you might not have to charge your iPhone every single day anymore, especially with the Pro Max.

The rest of the hardware has been excellent. The displays get super bright for easy viewing in sunny conditions, they recharge fairly quickly with the right adapter, and these remain the only iPhone models with USB 3 data transfer speeds. The two Pro models are nearly indentical in features and specs, outside of size (and battery life): The iPhone 17 Pro has a 6.3-inch screen, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch panel. The latter is harder to wield, but it does have one extra perk: You can upgrade to 2 terabytes of internal storage.

Peak Camera

I feel comfortable saying that the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are the current smartphone camera kings, at least in the US. (I haven't compared them with many of the crazy 1-inch cameras from Chinese competitors like Xiaomi and Huawei.) I trotted around New York City with the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL and Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge in tow and compared photos and videos in various environments.

Unsurprisingly, the results across all of these phones aren't drastically different. There are moments when a competing phone outperforms the iPhone (usually, the Pixel 10 Pro). But by and large, I found the iPhone's photos a hair sharper than its peers, though it didn't always handle challenging situations the best or nail skin tones perfectly.

I very much enjoy the new 4X optical zoom camera, and the optical-like quality when you bump up to 8X zoom. It might not always best Google's telephoto camera, but it certainly can impress. The 18-MP selfies on the new iPhones are sharper than ever and competitive, though I still prefer my skin tone rendered on the Pixel. In some low-light scenes, the shadows feel like they've been lifted a bit too much, whereas the Pixel 10 Pro XL had nicer contrast. These iPhones also still have trouble with Portrait mode in low light, a feat the Pixel handles without much issue.

But a big part of what makes these iPhone cameras so excellent is video performance, which is unparalleled. They have superior stabilization over the competition, whether it's with the front or rear cameras. Switching between lenses during recording is smooth and seamless, and low-light video quality is far less grainy. Google is able to come close with its cloud-processing Video Boost technology (not always), but you have to enable this, and also wait for the cloud to deliver your processed footage, which could take hours.

Take Dual Capture, a new feature on these new models. You can shoot with the front and rear cameras simultaneously, something you've been able to do with third-party apps before. Samsung has offered this feature on its Galaxy phones for years. But when I tested it, the Galaxy S25 Edge's low-light video footage in Dual Recording mode looked awful next to Dual Capture on the iPhone 17 Pro. Sometimes, it pays to be second.

I do want to highlight the square-shaped camera sensor for the 24-MP selfie camera (binned to 18 MP). It's standard on all the new iPhone 17 models, and it lets you grip your iPhone sturdily in portrait orientation, but capture selfies or shoot videos in portrait or landscape orientation. It's genius, and something I hope every phone maker copies in the next year. No need to awkwardly shift your grip and risk dropping the phone.

That's the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. No one with an iPhone 15 and newer needs to upgrade (iPhone 14 and iPhone 13 owners might be fine if your device is performing OK, but the switch to USB-C might be warranted). Better heat management delivers better sustained performance. Better battery life means less charging, maximizing your battery health. And the improved cameras keep it at the top of the smartphone camera rankings. What's not to love? And I didn't even have to say “Apple Intelligence” once.