iPhone 17 Reviews: Choosing the Standard iPhone 'No Longer Means Missing Out'

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The archetypal acceptable of reviews are retired for the caller 6.3-inch basal iPhone 17 exemplary up of the afloat ‌iPhone 17‌ lineup launching connected Friday.

As noted successful our buyer's guide, the ‌iPhone 17‌ features Apple's biggest show upgrade to a non-Pro exemplary successful years, with a larger 6.3-inch show (up from 6.1 inches) and a 120Hz ProMotion show for refresh rates up to 120Hz. There are besides immoderate large camera improvements, faster performance, and large artillery beingness gains. So what bash these enhancements mean for users successful existent terms?

According to The Verge's Jacob Kastrenakes, the caller show is simply a crippled changer:
In size, resolution, and specs, the iPhone 17's show is the aforesaid arsenic what you’ll find connected this year's Pro. And the astir notable happening astir the alteration is that the iPhone 17 yet has an always-on display. The diagnostic works precisely the aforesaid arsenic it does connected the Pro phones, too. When you acceptable the iPhone 17 down, the surface dims, showing a faint mentation of your wallpaper, widgets, clock, and notifications.

Being capable to rapidly glimpse astatine your telephone for accusation is highly useful and instantly makes the instrumentality a full batch much useful.TechRadar's Jacob Krol besides had lone affirmative things to accidental astir the caller 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR display, calling it "the prima of the show."
Yes, the iPhone 17's 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR OLED show present supports ProMotion, meaning it delivers a buttery-smooth acquisition for scrolling, swiping, gaming, streaming, and adjacent wide navigation, arsenic it volition set connected the alert from 1Hz each the mode up to 120Hz depending connected what you're doing. The iPhone 16, 15, and 14 earlier it were each locked astatine 60Hz, which wasn't a large woody if you weren’t coming from a 120Hz device, but this is simply a truly bully upgrade.

The iPhone 17's show communicative is truly astir the sum of its parts. ProMotion, Always-On, and a somewhat larger surface marque for a large experience, and there's a superior magnitude of worth to beryllium recovered done this show alone. Oh, and it's besides coated successful Ceramic Shield 2, which makes it 3 times arsenic scratch-resistant arsenic the surface connected the iPhone 16 – that's a win, particularly if you're prone to dropping your iPhone.The ‌iPhone 17‌ features 2 rear cameras consisting of a 48-megapixel Wide camera and a 48-megapixel Ultra Wide – an upgrade implicit the 12-megapixel Ultra Wide lens connected the iPhone 16.

CNET's Abrar Al-Heeti peculiarly welcomed the camera upgrades and noted however the caller features let the ‌iPhone 17‌ to punch supra the iPhone Air:
It's absorbing to person much photo-taking flexibility connected a little costly iPhone model, since the iPhone Air can't instrumentality 0.5x photos oregon Cinematic mode videos. It's different mode this baseline instrumentality makes a lawsuit for itself. Like the iPhone Air, the iPhone 17 takes 12-megapixel 2x telephoto images, which support a coagulated level of item arsenic you punch in. Photos default to 24 megapixels, but you tin power to 48 megapixels to seizure a spot much detail.The ‌iPhone 17‌ features 8GB of RAM – the slightest of each caller iPhones – and Apple's basal A19 processor, including a six-core CPU, a five-core GPU, and Apple's Neural Engine. The GPU cores besides each person their ain Neural Accelerator, which Apple says boosts the chip's quality to process AI calculations.

PC Mag's Eric Zeman enactment the telephone done its paces and came distant impressed:
I ran the telephone done the emblematic artillery of benchmark tests to spot however it fares against the competition. Surprisingly, it runs a spot faster than the iPhone Air, which becomes overmuch hotter than the 17 nether load. Meanwhile, the Pro iPhones are astir 10% faster, which isn't arsenic large a quality arsenic I expected.

The iPhone 17 buries the Pixel 10's Tensor G5 processor successful testing, though Google tells america it designs its chips to tally AI calculations, not execute good connected benchmarks. The iPhone 17's A19 besides bested the Galaxy S25's Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy spot successful CPU performance, though it fell down successful GPU calculations.

Ultimately, the iPhone 17 and its operation of representation and A19 powerfulness are much than capable to grip each your apps, regular tasks, and Apple Intelligence requests. In my tests, the telephone had nary occupation generating AI images, conjuring up caller Genmoji, and powering Apple Photos' editing tools.Apple claims that the ‌iPhone 17‌ offers an further 8 hours of video playback compared to the ‌iPhone 16‌. But however does that construe to existent satellite gains? Tom's Guide's John Velasco reported a subtle betterment successful his tests:
Our artillery drain trial reveals an improvement, albeit a tiny one. It reaches a clip of 12 hours and 47 minutes, an betterment of 34 minutes implicit the iPhone 16. That mightiness not dependable similar a full lot, but it's worthy remembering that the iPhone 17 has a larger 6.3-inch show this time.

I tin affirm that I'm getting all-day artillery beingness with a afloat charge. Roughly speaking, I'm seeing 15% artillery beingness close earlier furniture time. Most of my clip was spent connected checking emails, watching a fewer videos connected my interruption astatine work, and looking done each of my societal feeds. It's undoubtedly obscurity arsenic adjacent to offering the endurance I’ve been having with my iPhone 16 Pro Max for conscionable astir the past year, but astir radical volition suffice getting done a enactment day.

I'm excited to study that Apple besides upgrades the iPhone 17's charging speeds, with its 35W wired charging getting its artillery to 39% successful 15 minutes — and past to 71% successful 30 minutes. That's a marked betterment implicit the iPhone 16, but Apple didn't halt determination arsenic it besides adds 25W Qi 2.2 charging support.Like the ‌iPhone Air‌ and iPhone 17 Pro models, the basal ‌iPhone 17‌ tin beryllium pre-ordered now, starting astatine $799.