Apple iPhone 17 Pro review

Design, build quality, handling

Out with titanium, in with aluminum - for the first time, or again, depending on semantics. This year's iPhone Pros adopt aluminum as the main structural material of choice, abandoning the titanium that was so obviously the best for the previous several generations. It's probably a step in the right direction in many ways, it's just that aluminum doesn't sound nearly as posh as titanium.

They're calling it an aluminum unibody, but since aluminum would have interfered with the wireless charging on the back, there's a cutout in that unibody made of glass - it's a bit too jarring and somewhat at odds with Apple's usual 'seamless' approach to everything. The older design was more finished, this one looks almost like a last-minute decision.

iPhone 17 Pro (left) next to iPhone 16 Pro

Aluminum is softer than titanium so it's likely that the 17 Pro will get scuffed more easily than the previous generations. The anodization layer is very hard, yes, so it should be good against lighter scratches, but the sharp edge of the camera island has proven prone to chipping when faced with otherwise supposedly softer items.

Perhaps you deserve to have your iPhone scratched if you put it in the same pocket as keys and coins, but even when observing best practices you might still scratch it more easily than previous designs.

There are three color options this year - Silver, Cosmic Orange, and Deep Blue. The orange and blue options have more or less the same color across the entire body - including the aluminum and the rear glass. The silver model's white-ish glass makes for a bit too much contrast for our liking. Overall, the orange colorway draws too much attention, perhaps, so it's the blue one that we'd probably pick - it's the most quietly stylish of the bunch. You can always spice things up with a contrasting case, of course.

Silver 17 Pro Max and Deep Blue 17 Pro • Cosmic Orange 17 Pro Max

Regardless of your color preferences, the 17 Pro looks like no iPhone before it, which is probably inherently a good thing since the iterative styling of the previous generations had gotten a bit long in the tooth. It's just not quite up to the Apple standard for attention to detail that we've come to expect.

Over on the front, it's mostly good news. You've got the latest Ceramic Shield 2 protecting the display and it now comes with an antireflective coating for improved legibility under bright ambient light. It's a subtle difference that probably takes side-by-side comparisons to appreciate fully, but's ultimately a positive development.

Face ID prevails and even though teardowns revealed some internal rearrangement, the pill is as large and prominent as before. Not that it bothers anyone all that much by now, particularly iPhone loyalists that had to live with the notch for so long. But maybe a much less intrusive fingerprint reader somewhere lower down the display could join it? Replace it entirely, even?

There's no shortage of buttons on the iPhone 17 Pro. The large Siri/power key on the right and the volume keys on the left cover basic needs, the Action button is the customizeable successor to the silent switch of old, and the clicky (but also touch-sensitive) Camera Control can be used to enhance your camera experience (but it's really more of a shortcut to launch the app).

Action button • Camera Control

As usual, the iPhone 17 Pro is IP68-rated, with Apple's overachieving take on water resistance - the standard requires up to 30 minutes as deep as 1.5m, while Apple has you covered as deep as 6m.

eSIM-only versions have one fewer opening to seal against the elements

The iPhone 17 Pro is the compact one of the two Pros, and in a way it can still pass for being called that. It does weigh a lot for its size, but the gently rounded smooth aluminum edges on the back tend to make it disappear in your hand. It may have lost a bit of the exclusivity that the titanium frame gave the older models, and the glass panel on the back may not necessarily look too cohesive, but it's a recognizable design and the handset feels pleasant to touch.