In one of the biggest Apple events of the year, the house that Steve Jobs built revealed the iPhone 17 series, with the standard model getting a solid refresh to appeal to most people and aim for a spot on our best phones list.
And while it’s not enormously different to its predecessor the iPhone 16, there are more upgrades here than meet the eyes; not least of all is the standard iPhone finally has a 120Hz display.
So let’s get into them.
Get to the point
- 120Hz ProMotion display
- A19 chip
- New 48MP ‘Fusion’ camera system
- New 18MP selfie camera with Center Stage
- Better battery life and improved charging
- Ceramic Shield 2 to the display
- Five color options: Lavender, Sage, Mist Blue, White, Black
- 256GB starting storage
- $799 / £799 / AU$1,299 starting price, pre-orders on September 12, release dae on September 19
Watch On
A19 chip
As is always the case with new iPhones, the iPhone 17 has got a chipset upgrade with the A19.
And as you might expect there’s a boost in CPU and GPU power; the previous iPhone was no slouch so I don’t feel it needed a big CPU boost, but the increase in graphics should help some of the more advanced games iOS offers, like Sniper Elite 4 and Hitman World of Assassination, run smoother.
The CPU has six cores with two performance cores and four efficiency cores. The 5-core GPU has support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, mesh shading and MetalFX Upscaling.
The chip is also more capable at handling AI workloads with its boosted 16-core Neural Engine, so we can expect snappier Apple Intelligence tools.
120Hz ProMotion display
It’s taken a long time but finally the standard iPhone has got a 120Hz adaptive refresh-rate ProMotion display. When that fast refresh rate isn’t needed the display will crank down to 1Hz.
That should now give the phone a screen that can compete with those on the best Android phones.
As an added bonus, Apple is using Ceramic Shield 2 glass which promises 3x improved scratch resistance to the display over its predecessor, and should also be better at dealing with reflections in bright environments as it now has a seven-layer anti-reflective coating.
…and a bigger, brighter display
The display is also a little larger thanks to some thinner bezels, with it now coming in at 6.3 inches. And it also supports live activity and widgets on the lockscreen.
It’s also better in outdoor use, according to Apple, as the peak brightness now tops out at 3,000 nits.
New 48-megapixel ‘Fusion’ camera system
Apple has overhauled the rear camera system to now sport two 48-megapixel sensors in a vertical, pill-like configuration.
The bottom camera is the main one with a 26mm focal length and a F.1.6 aperture, and sensor-shift optical image stabilisation. But it also serves as a telephoto camera with a 2x optical zoom and a 52mm focal length. Separate image pipelines means main and telephoto shot will be processes separately, essentially allowing Apple to claim it offers two cameras in one.
The second camera is a 48MP ultra-wide one that now offers four times the resolution to the iPhone 16’s ultra-wide camera. It has a 13mm focal length, F.2.2 aperture and a 12MP 1x macro photography function with a 26mm focal length.
Center Stage selfie camera
Apple has boosted the front-facing camera to 18 megapixels, with a wider field of view thrown in to. And this lets users take both landscape and portrait photos without needing to turn the phone horizontally.
But the real upgrade comes in the form of the AI-powered Center Stage feature, which can smarty and automatically expand the filed of view to and rotate from portrait to landscape to better capture groups of people posing for a selfie snap.
There’s support for ultra-stabilized video in 4K HDR. And users can now record on the front and rear cameras simultaneously with the Dual Capture feature.
Better battery life…
Apple noted that the improved efficiency of the A19 chip over its predecessor means the iPhone 17 delivers “all-day” battery life.
What that means in Apple terms isn’t clear, but with the ProMotion display the iPhone 17 can offer 30 hours of video playback; that’s eight more than the iPhone 16.
…and faster charging
Alongside the better battery life, the iPhone 17 offers faster wired charging, with it able to juice up to 50% charge in 20 minutes.
But you’ll need to use an optional high-wattage USB-C power adapter like Apple’s new 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max.