iPhone 17 Lineup Hands On: Air’s Thinness vs Pro’s Power

Happy iPhone 17 day! The iPhone Air and the other new ‌iPhone 17‌ models are now available in stores and in the hands of customers. We picked up the ‌iPhone Air‌, iPhone 17 Pro, and ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ Max for a first impressions video.

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Unsurprisingly, the ‌iPhone Air‌ is incredibly thin, and holding one after holding the much larger Pro models makes for a real “wow” moment. If the weight of the bigger iPhones bothers you, the Air will be a relief.

There’s not too much to say about the Air other than fawning over its 5.6mm thin design. It does have the A19 Pro for performance on par with the Pro models, but it’s limited to a single-lens rear camera. If you use the Ultra Wide or Telephoto lenses, you’ll miss them. Apple did make some under-the-hood changes that allow the Air to support editable portrait mode photos with a single lens, and you do get the same 18-megapixel front-facing camera that the other models have.

Moving on to the Pro models, the 17 Pro and Pro Max feel hefty this year compared to the Air. The 17 Pro is probably the size that most people will prefer because it’s a good blend of pro features, display size, and weight.

Apple made interesting color choices this year, and the bright orange Pro color stands out. We got the Pro Max in the orange shade and the Pro in the silver, and the silver is surprisingly nice. It’s one of the better light silver shades that Apple has come out with. There is no titanium this year, because Apple discovered that it wasn’t great for dissipating heat. We’re back to aluminum, and there’s a whole new vapor chamber cooling system to maximize the thermal performance of the A19 Pro chip.

You won’t see it, but the ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ models have a little bit of water inside to direct heat away from the chip and through the aluminum casing. It’s still early, but the ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ models don’t seem to have the immediate heat issues of the 16 Pro models when doing GPU-heavy tasks.

Apple updated the ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ design, and instead of a camera bump, we have a whole camera plateau. It’s big, but some people might appreciate the symmetry of the new design. There’s also a two-tone sort of look because most of the frame is aluminum with just a rectangle at the back made from Ceramic Shield material for wireless charging. This is the first time that Apple has used Ceramic Shield for the back of the iPhone, and it’s supposed to be more durable. Apple says the front cover is Ceramic Shield 2, which is more scratch resistant than before. There’s an updated anti-reflective coating as well, but it’s subtle.

Battery life on the ‌iPhone Air‌ is impressive for its size, but the Pro and Pro Max have bigger gains. Battery life is six hours longer per Apple’s testing, though we’ll need more time to see what that means in day-to-day usage.

The new front-facing camera has a feature that lets you take landscape or portrait selfie shots without rotating the phone, which is unique. You can also record with the front and rear-facing cameras at the same time if you want to do reaction-style videos.

The Pro models have a 48-megapixel Telephoto lens with 4x or 8x zoom, so you can zoom in further than before. It’s useful to have another focal length, and it produces nice bokeh for portrait shots.

Make sure to stay tuned to MacRumors because we’ll have more in-depth videos coming, including Camera comparisons and videos where we pit Apple’s new iPhones against popular smartphones from Samsung and Google.

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