In the last few years, the base iPhone has been pushed to the sidelines as Apple reserved the flashiest upgrades for the Pro models. This time, against the redesigned Pro and new Air, the gap appeared even wider. Except, while the new iPhone 17 looks the same as before, it not only catches up on last year’s Pro additions, but also goes toe-to-toe with the 17 Pro in more ways than one.
The iPhone 17 brings several long-overdue features that were missing on its predecessor and have been available on budget Android phones for generations. Most notably, the screen now has a variable refresh rate, which means it’s smoother and can always remain on. Paired with other quality-of-life upgrades, like faster charging and a smarter and sharper selfie camera, this year’s entry-level iPhone feels far more premium than ever, and at the same $799 starting price, an excellent value among the best smartphones you can buy.
Apple iPhone 17 – Design and Build
Design is the one aspect that’s a constant reminder that the iPhone 17 is the base variant of Apple’s 2025 lineup. Unlike the Air and the Pro, the iPhone 17’s exterior is nearly indistinguishable from the 16. The two cameras on the back are still laid out vertically on the top left corner, and the body is composed of the same brushed metal sides sandwiched between a glossy front glass and a matte rear one.
Look closer, however, and there are a handful of giveaways. The iPhone 17 is a hair taller, courtesy of the larger screen, and a touch heavier. Because of the thinner bezels up front, though, this bump up in size doesn’t affect its ergonomics, and it continues to be a comfortable form factor for most people. I do wish, though, that Apple had figured out a way to make it less wobbly when lying on a flat surface. I’m not a fan of the new color options, either, which are not as punchy as before.
One other difference is that the glass over the display is now stronger, and as per Apple, three times more resistant to scratches. That seems to match my experience – when I dropped the 17 on a hard surface, it came out unscathed.
While unchanged, the iPhone 17 looks clean and charming, but I do hope Apple updates the design next year.
Apple iPhone 17 – Display
As an iPhone 16 user, the iPhone 17’s screen felt like a significant step-up. While it has the same sharp resolution as before, it’s now bigger at 6.3 inches, and since the bezels have been slimmed down further, watching content feels more immersive. It also gains a higher 120Hz refresh rate, making everyday operations, like scrolling and playing compatible games, far smoother.
Even though it seems like a cosmetic upgrade, the 120Hz screen makes a huge difference in day-to-day experience. Previously, when I returned to the iPhone 16 after spending days with a 120Hz-capable phone, its display felt like a relic and just not as fun to use.
More importantly, the screen can lower the refresh rate down to 1Hz to preserve battery life, and enable, at long last, an always-on lockscreen – an ability that’s remained exclusive to the Pro for the last four years. In this mode, once you lock the phone, it dims the screen and continues to show you the time, notifications, widgets, and wallpaper. This cut down how often I unlocked my phone, as I could just glance at the time and other information without picking it up while it’s on my desk.
The one feature that I didn’t expect to appreciate as much as I did was the screen’s new anti-reflective coating. Coupled with the improved max brightness of 3000 nits, the iPhone 17’s screen now matches its Pro peers and is much better for reading outdoors under direct sunlight.
Apple iPhone 17 – Software
The iPhone 17 ships with iOS 26, which overhauls the software’s interface with a fresh design language called Liquid Glass. It replicates the “optical qualities of glass,” bringing translucent elements that refract light and colors beneath them and react playfully to your input. I wasn’t sold on iOS 26’s look when it first arrived, but over time, I’ve come to appreciate how entertaining it is to operate. I also like that in certain ways, it makes the UI more practical, such as relocating the Settings app’s search bar to the screen’s bottom.
What’s surprising, though, is that iOS 26 doesn’t dramatically upgrade the iPhone’s AI tools. Siri, in particular, still feels like it’s stuck in a pre-AI era and redirects the more complex queries to ChatGPT, which can take multiple steps. AI editing in the Photos app, too, isn’t as powerful as Google’s or Samsung’s counterparts, and struggles to erase objects from complicated scenes.
The two highlights from my iOS 26 experience were the new call screening tools. With Hold Assist, for example, the iPhone waits in line for you on a customer support call and notifies you when the live agent is ready. Similarly, the “Call Screening” bot answers unknown callers on your behalf, and once it collects details, like their name and reason for calling, it lets you know, and you can decide whether you want to pick it up. While these additions are not revolutionary and have been available on competitors for years, they are handy to have, and I relied on them at least a couple of times a day.
Apple iPhone 17 – Performance and Battery Life
Even after a year, my iPhone 16 has hardly shown signs of slowing down, but that hasn’t stopped Apple from equipping the iPhone 17 with an upgraded A19 chip.
The new processor isn’t all too different from the 16’s A18, barring a couple of exceptions. Its GPU is outfitted with Neural Accelerators to boost AI tasks, and it shows in real-life testing: the iPhone 17 takes less time to process AI queries, like cleaning up photos and analyzing scenes via Visual Intelligence. Though it has the same 8GB of RAM, the base storage has been doubled to 256GB.
In addition, the iPhone 17 runs on a new Apple-designed wireless chip, the N1, which enables better Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, as well as improves the performance of features like Personal Hotspot and AirDrop. These upgrades were sorely needed, as both AirDrop and hotspot, at times, refused to work on the iPhone 16. The 17 also gains the Pro model’s dual‑frequency GPS for ensuring location services work better inside buildings.
Apart from that, you’d be hard-pressed to find a task that fazes the iPhone 17. In day-to-day use, from multitasking to scrolling resource-heavy websites, the A19 ran without breaking a sweat. Gaming performance isn’t as strong as the Pro’s, and though it can smoothly run the majority of games on the App Store, some of the heavier ones, like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, can stutter at the highest graphic settings. The lack of a Pro’s vapor chamber cooling system was apparent, too, as the iPhone 17 routinely got overheated and uncomfortable to hold during longer gaming sessions and wireless charging.
Speaking of which, faster 40W wired charging has trickled down from the Pro to the iPhone 17 as well this year. The iPhone 17 now takes just 20 minutes to go from empty to 50%, compared to the iPhone 16’s 30 minutes. Wireless charging, on the other hand, has largely remained identical. You can top it up from zero to 50% in 30 minutes on a MagSafe/Qi2 wireless charger.
Thanks to the A19’s improved efficiency and a slightly larger battery, the iPhone 17 also has longer endurance. On a single charge, it can comfortably last a day and a little more, with around five hours of screen time.
Apple iPhone 17 – Cameras
The iPhone 17 inherits its predecessor’s 48-megapixel main camera, but swaps out the 12-megapixel ultrawide sensor for a higher-res 48-megapixel one. In most scenarios, the iPhone 17 captures sharp and natural-looking photos. While its HDR isn’t as aggressive as the Google Pixel’s, it produces a balanced dynamic range that handles bright backgrounds well, without unnecessarily overexposing the frame. I didn’t notice a whole lot of difference in the ultrawide camera’s quality, but it shows up in low-light scenes, where the higher-res lens comes in handy to better capture details around the edges.
At night, the iPhone 17’s camera still, unfortunately, struggles with moving subjects and indoor lighting, where images lack sharpness and color accuracy. More importantly, against bright light, it still annoyingly produces flares in shots. No dedicated telephoto lens either, yet, unlike Google, which added one to the Pixel 10 this year. Apple’s “optical-quality” 2x crop, though acceptable for quick zoomed-in snaps, is no match for the depth or detail you get from a physical lens.
The upgraded 18-megapixel selfie camera, however, is another story. It now sports a square sensor, which allows it to shoot a wider field of view — ideal for group selfies. Its AI also automatically detects when more people join the frame and expands the field of view, like rotating from portrait to landscape, without forcing you to play finger gymnastics. The addition of Center Stage is a welcome change, too, and on video calls, the iPhone 17’s camera will track your movement to keep you in frame.
On the iPhone 17, you can also record videos on the front and rear cameras simultaneously, albeit it limits you to 30fps. It’s a nice party trick, and my friends and I had fun with it at a sports event, but since then, I mostly forgot about it. It will likely appeal more to professional content creators.
The Camera Control button is still here, too. Apple hasn’t made any modifications to its flimsy mechanism, so I continue to just use it to open the camera app and never to actually control it.
