This year, that question is harder than ever to answer – so let’s get into it, shall we…
iPhone Pro or base iPhone 17? You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been asked that question this week.
On the one hand, Apple has gifted us an awesome phone with the value of the iPhone 17, but is it the phone for you? What are you losing out on if you don’t buy the iPhone 17 Pro, and will you end up regretting it in the long run?
iPhone 17 – the star of the show
Over the past few years, Apple has been accused of turning a blind eye to its base, entry-level iPhone. But this is the new Apple – the Apple that means business, and that shows with the iPhone 17.
This year, the Plus range of phones has been done away with and replaced by the new iPhone Air. I have one of those coming my way, so you’ll be able to read about what I make of it next week.
But as I wait for that, and my 17 Pro Max to arrive, the first improvement that you’ll notice is that the basic iPhone 17 gets a bigger screen than the outgoing 16 Plus. This year’s phone has a 6.3-inch screen compared to the 6.1-inch screen of the phone it replaces. To all intents and purposes, this phone is now the same dimensions as a 17 Pro – just not quite as heavy.
The iPhone 17 has a regular aluminium body, whereas the Pros have a unibody aluminium design, which it has mainly because of the extra heat dissipation that it offers. The 17 has Apple’s new Ceramic Shield 2 glass on the front, which they are confidently saying is 3 times more scratch-resistant.
Possibly the most significant improvement to the 17s display, though, is that now it’s an adaptive refresh rate panel. Apple had taken a lot of heat that they dare sell a phone costing around £800 that didn’t have a 120Hz display.
So Apple listened!
I’m not the most ardent ‘it has to be 120Hz and nothing else will do’ kind of guy, but I’ll admit it’s another meaningful update. I think out of the current lineup, it’s now only the 16e that still has a 60Hz panel.
Still talking display updates it’s now an Always-On Display and it’s brighter too, up by 1000 nits to a max outdoor brightness of 3000 nits – in fact, it’s the exact match of the 17 Pros display.
The more I go through the specs of the iPhone 17, the more impressed I am by it. But that’s not to say that there aren’t differences that may be worth considering as you ponder which phone should get your cash this year.
A chip off the old block
We’ll get to the cameras soon, but before that, a couple of other notable differences that are worth considering are the chip and the USB-C port.
The iPhone 17 only has the A19 Chip and not the A19 Pro. That means you’ll be getting the same 6-core CPU with 2 performance cores as the Pro chip, but only a 5-core GPU. That said, though, each GPU core has a Neural Accelerator that Apple claims improves on-device generative AI and other system-intensive tasks. The A19 chip is also built on the latest third-nanometer node.
The 17 also gets Apple’s new N1 network chip for faster and better Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, but they’ve decided to stick with a Qualcomm modem in the iPhone 17, for the time being at least.
Battery life has improved year-on-year with a claimed 8-hour improvement over the iPhone 16, with Apple saying you’ll get 30 hours of video playback out of it and in iOS 26, you’ll also get the benefit of its Adaptive Power battery