Apple iPhone 17 Pro first impressions

Apple’s new iPhone 17 Pro swaps that sleek familiarity for a radical redesign that we got to check out recently. We got the Deep Blue model, and the immediate takeaway is that this phone feels less like the fragile, premium glass slabs of old and more like a purpose-built piece of kit. Read on for our iPhone 17 Pro first impressions.

iPhone 17 Pro design

The first thing you notice is, of course, the look. Apple has ditched the titanium of the last two generations for a unibody aluminium frame, and the result is a device that feels incredibly solid. The unibody design also creates some wonderfully smooth curves that just melt into your hands.

The back is where all the interesting bits lie. The top third is that really dark blue aluminium, which flows seamlessly into a lighter-hued rectangular insert made of Ceramic Shield 2. This two-tone design is certainly a choice, and while it might be divisive, we found it grew on us quickly.

iPhone 17 Pro cameras

You can’t talk about the new design without addressing the elephant in the room, or rather, the plateau on the back of the phone. The once-modest camera bump has evolved into a massive, raised module that spans almost the entire width.

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Housed within this plateau is a beastly new camera system. For the first time, all three rear cameras are 48MP Fusion sensors. The telephoto is the star here, enabling a new 8x zoom that uses the centre portion of its high-res sensor to produce a 12MP shot. While this is still a crop, we found minimal quality loss between 8x and 4x (at least under well-lit conditions), which is impressive. The app had options for ultrawide, 1x, 2x, 4x, and 8x zoom.

Even the selfie camera got a wild upgrade. The new Center Stage camera has a square 18MP sensor that can magically switch from a tall portrait selfie to a wide landscape one without you ever turning the phone. It does so automatically, too, when it detects more people. You also get an overall incredibly wide field of view.

So much more under the hood

Of course, a brief hands-on can’t tell the whole story. The 6.3-inch OLED display looks as gorgeous as ever, now hitting a blazing 3,000 nits of peak brightness. This, paired with the simply delightful Liquid Glass effects, makes for an unmatched software experience. But we’re most curious about the stuff we couldn’t test.

Inside is the new A19 Pro chip. More importantly, Apple completely rearranged the phone’s internals. The logic board is now dead centre, sandwiched with graphite and a new vapour chamber to dissipate heat more effectively. Our unit stayed quite cool for a phone that was freshly set up.

All in all, we can’t wait to put it through its paces for a full review, so stay tuned to Unboxed by Croma.