iPhone 17 Pro review by user

Have my opinions changed after using iPhone 17 Pro for 3 months? This year, the iPhone lineup is pretty interesting. The base iPhone 17 was a killer upgrade over the 16, and the Air was a massive curveball. My daily driver has been the iPhone 17 Pro, but I’ve also continued to use iPhone Air. In this honest, long-term review, I’m going to get into the design, performance, and cameras before talking about how it still compares to the Air. This is going to be straightforward: what I like, what I don’t like. No BS.

Design 🏆

Honestly, I’m loving it. This is the best feeling and the best looking Pro iPhone ever. I love the matte finish. I love how the metal actually wraps around the sides of the phone without any lip or seam. I also like that it makes it more durable since there is less glass. Unless this drops straight on that back, it’s going to hit metal along the sides, just improving that durability. I’m still happy I got the silver. The light silver just looks and feels clean.

One thing I don’t have a long-term opinion on yet is the display in the sun. Here in Ohio, it’s been pretty gloomy the last couple of months. So, I don’t think it’s been good enough to test the improved anti-glare finish of the Ceramic Shield 2. If anyone still has concerns on the thickness or weight of this either, I don’t mind it. It feels a little heavy, but not anything crazy. It honestly just feels super comfortable to me.

Performance 🚀

Powered by the A19 Pro chip. Going directly from the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro to this, the difference feels negligible day-to-day. Just generally no difference at all in using the phone or my main apps. The only significant difference I’ve noted is that liquid glass UI of iOS 26 seems to move smoother. But even then, iOS 26 still stutters and delays on this phone a little bit like when I’m opening Control Center. Hopefully, further optimizations still continue to come.

I am not the norm, though. So, if you’re coming from an older device, of course, the performance gains will have an even larger delta. I think what probably pays off most with this processor is the gains. There’s been a number of high-profile launches as of late, and they’ve been getting increasingly more console quality. We previously had Assassin’s Creed Mirage that launched nearly in tandem with consoles. Then, we got Hitman: World of Assassination, and recently we got Red Dead Redemption. The lighting effects, load times, shading, graphics, all super impressive for a phone.

The USBC port has been one of the biggest changes ever for iPhone. You can connect displays, charge super fast, and even use external drives.

Cameras 📸

The iPhone 17 Pro has three cameras: 48 megapixel ultra wide, wide, and telephoto lenses. The ultra wide and telephoto lenses probably aren’t crucial. Most people use them far less than they think that they do. That doesn’t mean I don’t like having them as options, but they aren’t nearly as important as I used to think that they were. I was pretty shocked at how little I used them in comparison to that main camera, which I use the most by a massive margin. That said, I probably use the ultrawide second most frequently, so I was happy to see it moved to a 48 megapixel sensor. Photos on it all look good. Though the best performance, especially in low light, comes from the primary sensor.

Of all the camera upgrades, I think I’ve been most excited by the selfie cam. The new center stage front-facing camera is 18 megapixels and uses a square sensor. It can automatically adjust the aspect ratio and zoom level depending on how many people hop in frame. I love it. The photos all look better and it’s super helpful to not have to rotate the phone. What’s kind of funny is that the center stage camera is the same as on the iPhone Air.

Compared to the Air ⚖️

Frankly between the two, Air is more fun. The iPhone Air is absolutely the phone I want to use all day, every day. It is lighter, more comfortable, fun to use. I’m happy with the single rear-facing camera, and the selfie camera is the same. After more time though, I did notice a few differences with the Air and the photo quality and some things that I missed. First, cinematic mode. There is no cinematic mode on iPhone Air for some reason. I use cinematic mode all the time for filming short form videos or videos of my kids. Sometimes the background is distracting or messy. So, I want cinematic mode to make the video look better and keep the focus on the littles. Using iPhone Air, I kept missing this.

I also noticed a quality difference with portrait shots. iPhone 17 Pro is able to use the multiple cameras to better determine depth and find the edges of irregular objects better. iPhone Air has to do it all via software cuz it just has one camera. It works really well, but if you get close on the photos, you can notice the difference in the edge detection. As a photographer, these things bother me and ruin the illusion of a portrait shot. I also know that when I’m at an Apple event or CES, iPhone Air is not going to cut it. My iPhone gets taxed hard. Shooting photos and videos, uploading content on questionable network conditions, and sending out updates to social medias and the team. For reasons like that, I’m glad I got the iPhone 17 Pro this year. I think liquid cooling has a really big impact on that.

Honestly, this is a really impressive phone that looks great, is blazing fast, and it still looks new and fun after months. If I had one criticism of this, I’d love to see a nano texture finish for the screen, just like we have on iPads and Mac.