Should You Buy the iPhone 17 Pro?
Introduced in September 2025, the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are Apple’s newest flagship iPhones and now is a good time to buy.
The iPhone 17 Pro models feature Apple’s most significant Pro model update in years, with a unibody aluminum chassis and a vapor chamber cooling system to maximize the performance of the A19 Pro chip.
There’s a 48-megapixel triple-lens camera system featuring a new Telephoto lens with up to 8× zoom, and the Pro models feature the longest battery life of any iPhone to date. These are Apple’s highest-end iPhones with the best possible feature set and camera technology.
Starting at $1,099 for the Pro and $1,199 for the Pro Max, the iPhone 17 Pro models are more expensive than the $999 iPhone Air and the $799 iPhone 17, but they have the most advanced feature set available in the iPhone line.
Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro Models
Contents
Should You Buy the iPhone 17 Pro?
Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro Models
How to Buy
Reviews
Design
Water and Dust Resistance
Action Button
Camera Control
Display
Dynamic Island
TrueDepth Camera and Face ID
Front Camera
A19 Pro Chip
Thermal Management
RAM
Storage
Triple-Lens Rear Camera
Dual Capture
Video Capabilities
Other Camera Features
Battery Life
Charging
5G Connectivity
5G Bands
LTE Bands
Satellite Connectivity
Crash Detection
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and More
What’s Next for the iPhone Lineup
iPhone 17 Pro Timeline
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are Apple’s latest high-end flagship smartphones that Apple is selling alongside the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17. The iPhone 17 Pro models are Apple’s most advanced smartphones, with a bigger display option, more cameras, and higher performance than other models.
Apple updated the design of the iPhone 17 Pro models, but display sizes haven’t changed. The iPhone 17 Pro has a 6.3-inch display, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch display. Both of the iPhone 17 Pro models are just a little bit thicker, taller, and wider than the iPhone 16 Pro models, and that’s because Apple changed the internal structure.
The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max feature a unibody aluminum frame for the first time, with Apple ditching titanium to go back to aluminum. Aluminum is lighter than titanium, and it is also better at heat dispersion. The aluminum frame covers almost all of the sides of the iPhone, the camera area, and the back, with the exception of a cutout for MagSafe charging.
The camera bump is now called the camera plateau, and it is a horizontal, rectangular raised area that spans nearly the entire rear of the iPhone. It houses the three-lens camera setup on the left, and the LiDAR Scanner and flash on the right. Apple changed the antenna band location to wrap around the plateau, so there are no more antenna lines on the edges of the phone and the antennas perform better than before. Apple says the plateau provides more space for internal components, allowing for a larger battery.
The MagSafe cutout at the back of the iPhone is crafted from its Ceramic Shield material that’s more durable than glass, and Apple says it is 4× more resistant to cracks. The Ceramic Shield cutout is a slightly different color than the aluminum of the iPhone, giving the iPhone 17 Pro models a two-tone look. Prior to now, recent iPhones had a full glass back rather than an aluminum and Ceramic Shield back.
On the front, the size of the Dynamic Island hasn’t changed, and there are still Camera Control and Action buttons. The Action button can be set to multiple functions such as launching the camera, turning on Flashlight, recording a Voice Memo, or activating a Shortcut. The Camera Control activates the Camera app. It is touch and pressure sensitive and can capture photos and videos, as well as adjust camera settings.
There’s a USB-C port at the bottom for charging, and it supports USB3 transfer speeds. You can get the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max in Cosmic Orange, Silver, or Deep Blue colors.
Apple used an upgraded Ceramic Shield 2 to protect the display, and it offers 3× better scratch resistance than the original Ceramic Shield. 120Hz ProMotion refresh rates are supported, but that’s no longer a Pro-only feature. The iPhone 17 Pro models support 3,000 nits peak brightness when outdoors, up from 2,000, and there is a new anti-reflective display coating to cut down on glare. Outdoor contrast is 2× better than before. 1-nit minimum brightness is available for the Always-On display.
The iPhone 17 Pro models have an A19 Pro chip that’s built on an upgraded 3-nanometer process. The A19 Pro includes a 6-core CPU with two performance cores and four efficiency cores, and a 6-core GPU. Each core has a Neural Accelerator that Apple says improves tasks like on-device AI. There’s an updated 16-core Neural Engine, second-generation dynamic caching, a larger cache, and 12GB RAM.
The aluminum frame improves thermal performance, but Apple also added a vapor chamber cooling system that uses a small amount of deionized water to move heat away from the A19 Pro and distribute it along the aluminum chassis. As a result, the A19 Pro offers up to 40 percent faster sustained performance than the A18 Pro.
For the first time, the iPhone 17 Pro cameras are all 48 megapixels. There’s a Main lens, an Ultra Wide angle lens, and the new Telephoto lens that supports both 4× optical zoom and 8× optical zoom, along with 40× digital zoom. All three cameras support 4K video recording, and Apple also added support for ProRes RAW video, Log 2 video recording, and Genlock support for professionals. An updated Photonic Engine uses machine learning to reduce noise, improve color accuracy, and increase detail.
Apple added a new Dual Capture feature that lets you record with the front and back cameras at the same time, and there is an 18-megapixel Center Stage front camera with improved stabilization and new features.
The front-facing camera lets you take a selfie photo in portrait or landscape mode without rotating your phone, and it supports Center Stage for video calls and images with multiple people.
The iPhone 17 Pro models have major improvements to battery life. The iPhone 17 Pro battery lasts for up to 33 hours when watching videos, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max battery lasts for up to 39 hours. Apple says the iPhone 17 Pro Max has the longest battery life ever in an iPhone.
Charging is faster than before, and the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max can reach 50 percent battery in a 20-minute period with the appropriate charger. MagSafe and Qi2.2 charging at up to 25W are supported. Versions of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max with an eSIM instead of a physical SIM have larger batteries, and Apple is expanding the availability of eSIM-only models to more countries.
Both models start with 256GB of storage, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max now supports up to 2TB of storage but it costs $2,000.
iphone 17 pro orange
Apple is still using Qualcomm 5G modems for the iPhone 17 Pro models, but they are now equipped with an Apple-designed N1 networking chip. The N1 chip supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread, plus it improves efficiency for better battery life. The N1 chip also improves the performance and reliability of Personal Hotspot and AirDrop.
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How to Buy
The iPhone 17 Pro models can be purchased from Apple retail stores, the online Apple Store, and other major retailers and carriers Pricing on the iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099, so it is $100 more expensive than the iPhone 16 Pro, but it comes with a minimum of 256GB of storage rather than 128GB. Pricing on the iPhone 17 Pro Max still starts at $1,199.
Reviews
Reviewers were impressed with the iPhone 17 Pro’s updated thermal design, which features vapor chamber cooling and an aluminum unibody. Gaming was smoother with more frames per second, and while the device still got hot, it was more uniformly spread than the iPhone 16 Pro.