iPhone 17 Review: Genuinely Excellent Value

What makes a "Pro" iPhone pro? When the iPhone 16 series came out last year, I called the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus "almost pro," thanks to their new Action Button, the Camera Control feature, and more. Now, there's one more feature that blurs the line between the non-pro and pro devices – a ProMotion screen. That's right, the iPhone 17 has a fast refresh rate display.

But, of course, there are also ways in which the iPhone 17 lineup confuses things a little. Gone is the "Plus" model -– there's no iPhone 17 Plus, though the 2026 iPhone lineup has gained another model in the form of the iPhone Air. That iPhone, however, starts at $999, putting some distance between the base iPhone 17 and any more expensive model. The result of that distance, combined with the increasingly "pro" features? The iPhone 17 is kind of a no-brainer.

There's only one iPhone model that mostly keeps its design the same as last year, and that's the iPhone 17. The iPhone Air is an all-new super-thin form-factor, while the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max have a "plateau" that keeps things fresh. Poor iPhone 17.

Well, not really. The design of the device is tried and true, and while it's been some time since Apple switched the iPhone back to a flat-edged look (starting with the iPhone 12), the iPhone 17 feels far from dated. Boring, maybe -– but still premium-looking, comfortable to hold, and decently compact. You'll still get two vertically-aligned cameras on the back, an Action Button on the left edge, a Camera Control on the right edge, and a USB-C port on the bottom. The device does come in new colors, though, all of which look great. I have the Sage model.

Indeed, while the iPhone 17 may not look different from last year, it is actually built differently. The phone swaps out the first-generation Ceramic Shield glass for a new Ceramic Shield 2 on the front, which Apple says is three times more scratch resistant. Unlike the iPhone 17 Pro, the standard iPhone 17 does not use Ceramic Shield 2 on the back -– so you'll still want to be careful with it, and you may even want to use a case. The device still has an aluminum frame, which is also the case for the back of the iPhone 17 Pro.

The display is perhaps the biggest upgrade for the base-model iPhone this year. The iPhone 17 has a 6.3-inch display, which is larger than the 6.1-inch screen from last year's iPhone 16. In other words, while there's no iPhone 17 Plus, the iPhone 17 has a display size that's in between the two sizes -– even if it is closer in size to the iPhone 16 from last year.

Much more important than the size, however, is the fact that the base iPhone finally has a 120Hz screen. The ProMotion display on the iPhone 17 has an 1179 x 2556 resolution, and it's Apple's LTPO Super Retina XDR OLED display, which means it can range in refresh rate from 1Hz (when content on the screen is static, to save energy), all the way up to 120Hz, for a smoother feel when scrolling and when there are animations on the display.

It's overdue. Even cheap Android phones have offered fast refresh rates for a few years now, and devices in the $800 price range have offered the more advanced LTPO tech. I'm glad Apple finally made the switch.

Refresh rate aside, the screen is bright, vibrant, and crisp. It looks excellent. It also has a new anti-reflective coating on the front, which is designed to reduce glare a little. It makes a difference, helping cut down on the reflections you might get from lights, the sun, and so on. It's not quite as effective as the matte glass you can get on the MacBook Pro, but you might not want it to be — and again, with a screen that already gets very bright, the coating is more to take the edge off of reflections than to radically change the viewing experience. The coating does seem to help with off-axis viewing a little, though, which is nice.

The iPhone 17 is the only phone to get Apple's A19 chip — the others in the lineup all get variants of the A19 Pro. Apple says the A19 offers a 6-core CPU and a 5-core GPU, with all of the chips in the lineup offering so-called neural accelerators for each GPU core, helping boost AI performance when run locally. In the iPhone 17, the chip is paired with 8GB of RAM. There are other performance-related differences between the standard iPhone 17 and the Pro models. Notably, the iPhone 17 Pro has vapor chamber cooling, which helps the phone sustain higher levels of performance for longer.

None of this means the A19 is a low-performing chip, though — in fact, it performs excellently. You would expect the A19 to do better than the A18 from last year, but what you might not expect is how much better the chip performs than the A18 Pro, which it beat quite handily in benchmarks. Against Qualcomm's best, the chip is a little less class-leading in CPU performance, though keep in mind that the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the company's best chip, while Apple's best is the A19 Pro. The A19 still beats Qualcomm when it comes to single-core performance, but in multi-core processing, Qualcomm just barely comes out on top. GPU performance is a little more complicated — the A19 beats Qualcomm in some ray-tracing benchmarks, but doesn't quite match Qualcomm in raw GPU performance overall.

Benchmarks really only tell a very small part of the story, though. Real-life performance can't fully be measured by benchmarks, and the A19-equipped iPhone 17 performed excellently in all real-life scenarios, whether it be heavy multitasking, mobile gaming, or anything else demanding. Additionally, while it's impossible to tell the future, Apple's track record suggests the iPhone 17 might continue to perform better for longer than anything else out there due to its hardware-software integration.

The iPhone 17 offers a battery that's a similar size to last year's, but Apple says that the combination of a more efficient chip and ProMotion display means it'll get a battery boost of up to eight hours compared to the iPhone 16. Indeed, the battery life on the iPhone 17 was solid overall and was easily able to get me through a full day of even heavier use.

On heavier days, I ended the day with around 20-30% of the battery remaining, though on lighter days, I ended with more. I think the vast majority of users will find the battery to be more than good enough. Power users, unfortunately, can't opt for an "iPhone 17 Plus" model with a larger battery this year — if you really want a big battery in a new iPhone, you'll need to upgrade all the way to the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

The iPhone 17 actually gets an upgrade in the world of charging too. With the right charger, you can get from 0% to 50% in only 20 minutes, which is pretty quick. Again, you'll need a high-wattage charger, and Apple obviously sells its own charger you can buy too. The device supports 25W MagSafe wireless charging as well, and it works with Qi2.

There are a series of camera updates on the iPhone 17. The device still has a dual camera system, with a 48-megapixel ultrawide camera (up from the 12-megapixel ultrawide on the iPhone 16) and a 48-megapixel main camera. There's still no telephoto camera, despite the fact that some of the competition in this price bracket has started getting full triple camera systems, like the Google Pixel 10 and Samsung Galaxy S25.

You can still take "telephoto" photos with the device, though. Apple uses a sensor crop technology on the main camera to deliver so-called "optical quality" 2x zoom photos. That definitely helps lessen the impact of not having an actual telephoto camera.

Christian de Looper for BGR

As a whole, unsurprisingly, the iPhone 17 captured vibrant and detailed images every time. Colors were bright and natural, and details were excellent until you started to zoom a little bit further than the image processing tech could handle. The lack of a telephoto camera meant that images at around 4x or 5x started to look a little grainy, but anything less than that produced generally solid photos. This is perhaps where devices like the Galaxy S25 and Pixel 10 excel, considering the fact that they do have a telephoto camera, even at this price point. Unless you zoom into your shots frequently, you may not miss the telephoto camera all that much. That said, I'd be lying if I said that images zoomed to 10x or so didn't look much better on the Pixel and Galaxy devices.

Christian de Looper for BGR

Still, I was very happy with how the camera on the iPhone 17 performed. Images were detailed and vibrant, with relatively natural-looking colors. The colors captured by the iPhone 17 looked a little more natural than those captured by the Galaxy S25, although you could easily change that using Photographic Styles on the iPhone. Low-light images looked very good on the iPhone 17 too. Again, the Pixel and Galaxy devices did capture better zoomed low light shots when it came to capturing detail, but the iPhone seemed to produce brighter images.

My favorite upgrade on the iPhone 17, however, comes on the front of the device. There's a new 18-megapixel front-facing camera with Center Stage — and the best thing about it is that it's a square sensor. That means that rotating your camera to landscape orientation doesn't do anything — the sensor is a square. Instead, there's now a little button in the camera UI that lets you switch between portrait and landscape orientations, which is super cool. You can also switch between using a tighter crop, or zooming out — and the device will automatically switch between those two depending on how many people are in the shot. That said, you can manually change the crop if you want to capture more of your background.

Christian de Looper for BGR

There are some other camera-related features on offer here too. There's a new Dual Camera mode that lets you capture through both the rear and front-facing cameras, for example. It's a neat feature, though I don't go to nearly enough concerts to actually make use of it.

The iPhone 17 represents an impressive upgrade over the iPhone 16 — it just so happens that it's still the least interesting release of the year. Interesting, however, doesn't always mean good. Sure, you might miss the Plus model, but the larger display and better battery on the base model help make up for that, and if you're simply looking for a reliable, do-it-all iPhone that doesn't cost iPhone 17 Pro money, the iPhone 17 is easy to recommend.

The competition

The iPhone 17 is kind of a no-brainer. The device is far improved compared to last year's iPhone 16, and while you still probably don't need to upgrade to it from anything less than a three-year-old phone, when you do upgrade from that three-year-old device, you'll be pleasantly surprised with how much better your phone is. It also serves a different audience than anything else in the 2026 iPhone lineup. Against the $999 iPhone Air, it offers better battery life and a more versatile camera, at the expense of a thicker build. And while the iPhone 17 Pro is better in most ways, it's also $300 more than the iPhone 17. Unless you care deeply about specifications and a telephoto camera, the Pro device may not be worth the extra cash.

What about the Android competition? These comparisons feel less and less useful over the years, but with the new display, I would argue that the iPhone 17 is the best phone for most people. The Galaxy S25's camera is a bit more versatile, but only barely, and most who simply want a great phone will find the iPhone's polish and Apple integration worth any other trade-offs.

Should I buy the iPhone 17?

Yes. It's an excellent device, and a meaningful upgrade over last year's model.