Another September, another “Awe dropping” iPhone event. As an Apple user, I was a bit extra enthusiastic this year.
But honestly, when I finished watching the launch, I was a little perplexed.
After a relatively uninspired event last year, 2025 delivered a fascinating paradox.
So, we have got a better-than-expected iPhone 17, an experimental iPhone Air and the orange boys, the 17 Pro and Pro Max.
Shockingly little mention of Apple intelligence this time around.
The spotlight this year is not just the fact that every phone now starts with 256 GB of storage, but it's that Apple has completely changed the game. So, let's dive into everything.
The everyday champion
The entire iPhone lineup starts with the basic iPhone 17. On the surface, it looks almost identical to the iPhone 16, other than the new colours.
The body size remains the same, but the display is now a larger 6.3 inches with a tougher Ceramic Shield 2 and an anti-reflective coating.
Also, this is going to be the easiest to read that an iPhone display has ever been, partly because the 17 now has the Pros 3,000 nits of brightness, which we have never had on a regular iPhone.
And the cherry on top is the inclusion of “Pro Motion” (now every iPhone has Pro Motion), a 120 Hz display.
But this is the first time we are seeing a Pro-branded feature on a non-Pro iPhone, so unAppleatic.
The camera system is a massive leap forward.
The ultrawide lens has been upgraded from 12 MP to a pro-level 48 MP, which also enhances close-up macro photography.
The shots are now wider and detailed than before. Basically, the iPhone 17 camera just unlocked something called the “Open Gate” recording.
It records with the entire sensor, the whole thing. It’s the same open gate format Hollywood uses with ARRI Alexa cameras for Netflix.
Well, it means that with iPhone 17 you can shoot once and reframe later for TikTok, YouTube and even for Cinema without sacrificing too much quality. The implementation is super slick.
But the most significant change is with the front camera. It's been upgraded to a 24 MP square sensor that can capture both vertical and horizontal selfies without you having to rotate the phone.
Also, across the board, Apple implemented “Centre Stage”, which automatically keeps you centred during FaceTime calls and can dynamically adjust to fit everyone in the frame.
After years of purposefully limiting the base iPhones to keep the pros as attractive as possible, Apple has just decided that this year is the year that they rip the band-aid off entirely.
Other than the telephoto camera, it’s pretty much all here. I think this is by far the best value phone in the lineup.
It now also charges faster than the last generation. It has an extra 8 hours of battery life if you're watching videos. At least according to Apple.
It has got the new A19 chip as expected, which doesn't feel like a mind-blowing upgrade, but still, that is an extra 20% performance.
And then, the most unappetizing move ever, Apple upgraded the storage across the board to 256GB from 128 GB.
And the moment they said that I was so sure they were going to bump the price up to $899, but again, surprisingly, this is the same $799 starting price as last year.
Honestly, I was about to buy an iPhone 16 at full price just this April; I would be crying right now.
The Super Model
Finally, after two years of rumours, we have the new $999 iPhone Air, which fills the awkward middle slot in Apple’s iPhone lineup, replacing the iPhone 16 Plus.
This is where things get really interesting. In 2020, they tried the iPhone mini, then, in 2022, they changed that for the Plus, which apparently failed too.
So, instead of going sideways, Apple decided that now it's time to try flattening, just like the iPads. And this phone absolutely creates the impression of Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”. And this is the phone I was most excited about.
At only 5.6 mm, this is the thinnest iPhone ever, even slimmer than Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge.
With its glossy titanium rail and Ceramic Shield 2 on the front and back, it appears as pure luxury.
I think the 17 Air is aimed at people who care enough to skip the entry-level 17, but not so much that they will lose sleep over every spec they are missing from the Pro models.
But I see this iPhone kind of like the supermodel that you probably should not try to date. You know, it is not going to last.
Because with this iPhone, you will be making two fundamental compromises for this thinness.
The battery, which Apple tells us is still an all-day battery, but the question is, whose day? This is a smaller battery (3149mAh) compared to what you get on every other iPhone released this year.
Now, Apple is banking on efficiency gains to make up for it. Because of all the efficiency improvements of Apple’s new A19 Pro chip, the new N1 networking chip and a new C1X cellular modem that handles Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread support, this phone has the same battery life as the 16 Pro. I mean, if that's true, that will be the absolute miracle.
It is not just the battery. You are also getting slower charging, no stereo speaker at all, and then the big one, no ultrawide camera that you would have had on the normal iPhone 17.
Basically, you will get a 48-megapixel sensor, the same as on the 17, although Apple calls that a dual camera system because it can zoom in 1x and 2x.
I don’t know what to say about a $1,000 phone like this in the year, almost 2026.
However, I don't believe the weight and thickness of a standard phone are a big enough problem to warrant this slim solution.
But I find it similar to what they did with the MacBook Air, and that's now their bestselling laptop by a mile.
It is a very alluring phone, and you can see how they are going to market it to the average consumer to get pro performance since it does come with the new, more powerful A19 Pro chip (with one fewer GPU core than the Pros).
From experience, I am guessing that the iPhone Air’s titanium build, and lack of advanced thermal solutions will likely cause it to get much hotter and throttle performance much quicker than its Pro brothers.
This means there will be a very large difference in how the A19 Pro chip performs in the Air versus the actual Pro models.
Pinnacle of power
It feels like Apple has been freed up to just prioritise function over form on these Pro models.
These are the most clearly actually made for “Pro” iPhones I have ever seen, which is probably why they now feel comfortable charging the new higher prices of $1,099 for the Pro, which is pretty much the highest amount anyone is charging for a non-XL size device, and then $1,199 for the Pro Max.
There are a few ways you can see this function in the first approach in action. Both models are almost 8% thicker than their predecessors.
But the most striking part about this new design, and that applies to the Air as well, is that Apple is redesigning the logic board, which squeezes more of the phone's guts and brain into the larger camera plateau.
This allows for what I think makes a phone truly beautiful: a big fat battery.
Apple claims the iPhone 17 Pro delivers up to 33 hours of battery life—a solid improvement over the 27 hours offered by the 16 Pro, though still shy of the 39-hour endurance of the Pro Max.
But there is more. There is a functional reason which extends to the materials. For the first time in eight years, this is a unibody iPhone that is not all glass on the back.
While glass is great for wireless charging, it’s terrible at dissipating heat. Apple has opted for a new anodised aluminium forged enclosure, which is 200 times better at heat conduction.
This, along with a new vapour chamber (also, first time ever on an iPhone), means the phones will run much cooler. This return to aluminium, a standard and effective material, is an interesting shift given the massive deal Apple made about switching to titanium just two years ago.
It was the headline feature of the iPhone 15 Pros, and they did not stop talking about how much more beautiful the phones were because of this titanium.
However, it is easier to colour, which is the only reason Apple has been able to make the first interesting pro-iPhone colour in far too long.
This bronzy orange is definitely the one that I would suggest. But anyway, the trade-off in design and material choice was much needed. It will make the phones perform a lot better, especially with the new A19 Pro chip.
Both the iPhone Air and the iPhone Pro now use the A19 Pro chip. While the fundamentals are similar, the Pro line gets an extra GPU core. And frankly, I think this is a more interesting update than Apple led on.
For example, in the 6-core CPU, you are now getting improved front-end bandwidth and improved branch prediction.
The new GPU has second-generation dynamic caching, better math rates, and unified image compression, as well as crucially neural accelerators on each of those GPU cores. And Apple is claiming three times the peak compute power compared to the A18 Pro.
This translates to 40% better sustained performance, which will be particularly noticeable in AI and gaming.
This is pretty wild for a GPU with the same number of cores. But what is most interesting about the A19 Pro is that it is a preview of what we are probably going to get in the upcoming M5 generation of Apple Silicon.
As usual with the iPhone, extra performance is kind of like okay, but when it comes to the Mac, you can really take advantage of that increased GPU architecture. I'm very excited to see where that goes.
Finally, Apple is now going to 48-megapixel sensors all around.
The Pro models get the same square front camera sensor as the base models, capable of capturing both orientations.
The telephoto camera also sees a major change, moving from a 12 MP, 5x optical zoom to a 48 MP, 4x optical zoom.
This is a double-sided upgrade, because it means that when you are zooming in, you do not have to wait all the way till five times before your telephoto camera kicks in.
So, the quality in the early part of your zoom is going to be better. But also, because you have four times the number of pixels, even though the optical zoom number is slightly lower.
It means your photos look better even when you go far in.
Then, of course, you get that centre-stage front-facing camera and a new feature called GenLock, which basically allows time coding and synchronisation between multiple cameras.
So clearly, a lot of the features revolve around that third 48-megapixel sensor, showing a clear focus on pro-level filmmaking.
Verdict
This year, Apple has made fascinating and debatable choices, notably democratising many "Pro-branded features" across the entire range while introducing controversial design elements and a new form factor.
Ultimately, the iPhone 17 lineup is a story of paradox and evolution. The base model ascends to unprecedented levels of capability and value, the "Air" explores the extreme boundaries of thinness with huge trade-offs, and the "Pro" redefine themselves by prioritising robust performance and cooling.
This year, Apple has not just upgraded its devices; it has reimagined the distinct roles within its iPhone ecosystem, choosing between models more nuanced than ever before.
Compared to the iPhone 16 series, this one packs a bit more punch in the hardware department. But sorry ‘Pro’ no “Titanium”.
The writer is a contributor and a tech enthusiast.