iPhone 17 Series
The new iPhones were announced this week, and included the iPhone 17, the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro (in order of price, lowest to highest).
iPhone 17
iPhone 17. The first in the lineup is the iPhone Air, and this has received a number of quality of life improvements.
The new 6.3” display finally receives 120Hz ProMotion, allowing the phone to dynamically adjust its refresh rate to match what is displayed; from sily smooth 120fps games, down to 24fps cinematic masterpieces, or 1Hz for the ultimate in battery saving. The brightness is now 3000 nits, the brightest iPhone screen ever, under a Ceramic Shield that is 3x more scratch resistant than before.
The internals have been upgraded as well, with the new A19 processor. But it’s what’s happened to the front that might be the biggest change this year. The front facing camera has been increased in both size and resolution (18 MP, up from 12 MP), with an image sensor twice as large as before. This sensor is also square, so it doesn’t matter which way you hold it, the phone smarts will frame it perfectly for you, or a group selfie with all your mates. Minimum storage is now 256GB to hold all those new selfies you’ll be taking.
iPhone Air
iPhone Air. The iPhone Air is the biggest change to the line up. More expensive than the iPhone 17, less capable than the 17 Pro, it sits right between the two in the price line up. So who’s it for? I think this is Apple getting half a fold phone ready for next year, maybe. Proving they can do super thin and getting the technology out there for users to play with.
It is impressive what they’ve achieved, turning the body into a 5.6mm thick chassis for the battery, and cramming the camera mesa with all the electronics need to run a phone. The screen gets the same 6.5” ProMotion screen as the iPhone 17, and the main camera is identical (but there’s only one camera). It does get the newly upgraded front camera as well. This is also the only iPhone this year with all others going to aluminium (spoiler alert). I believe that is for strength, Apple doesn’t want another iPhone 6 bendgate situation.
The processor is the same A19 Pro that I’ll talk about shortly in the iPhone 17 Pro, but it has one graphics core binned. A change most users are unlikely to notice. Apple is going all in on their new chips with an upgrade to the C1 introduced in the iPhone 16E. They now have the C1X, which uses 30% less power and delivers twice the networking speed of before. They have also a new N1 (“N” for network?) processor that covers Bluetooth 6.0 and WiFi 7, kicking Qualcomm to the kerb as their networking provider in this phone.
Battery life is the only real mystery here, which Apple quoting “all day battery life”, whatever that means. Without taking a breath they then also announced a new MagSafe battery pack that only works on the iPhone Air (none of the rest of the lineup), which gives me pause as to how “all day” that battery life truly is.
iPhone 17 Pro
iPhone 17 Pro. After two years of Apple touting how good titanium is, we’re now back to aluminium, but this time it is a unibody design. The biggest part of the announcement though, is colours. No more muted variations of grey, but true actually honest to goodness colours! Cosmic Orange is definitely my favourite.
The iPhone Pro gets the new A19 Pro, but with all cores enabled, cooled by a new vapour chamber cooling system using de-ionised water. It’s a big thing, trust me. Durability has also been improved, with the new chassis and glare-reduction Ceramic Shield on the front, and tougher glass on the back. Top this all off with an increase in battery capacity (around 25% from the numbers given) and you have a good start to the flagship phone.
Apple then leaned hard into the cameras, as this is what really sets the Pro apart from the base model. New 18 MP centre stage camera? Check. Finally upgrading all three cameras to 48 MP? Check They’ve changed the telephoto as well, bringing the optical zoom from 5x down to 4x, making it more usable. But then they leverage off that larger sensor to double the 4x to 8x at 12 MP. This was my prediction I was hoping for this year. In reality, this upgrades last year’s 5x 12 MP to 8x 12 MP. Bosch!
For the true professional, I’m talking the Alex Lindays and Danny Boyles of the world, they’ve taken video recording to 11. ProRes video now has ProRES RAW, which will fill your phone faster than you can say “cut!”. ACES and Genlock are also now supported, click on their links if you want to know more (you know who you are). Apple has definitely put the “pro” into iPhone Pro. Me? I just want a damn good still camera as I play around with my new 360º camera for video.
And there we have it. Three new iPhone models, the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air. Steady upgrades mixed with technological innovation, and finally colours to the Pro line.
Personally, I’ve ordered the iPhone Pro 512GB in Cosmic Orange, and will be seeing how it goes at the Australian MotoGP next month.
