A fork down the road
Every year around September, some of us go out to our nearest Apple Stores and make a very simple choice - buy the best new phone that Apple makes. For the last few years now, that’s been the iPhone Pro Max.
But this year is a bit different, kinda creating a fork down this road that the lot of us used to go. And the path you take really depends on what “best” means to you. On one hand, if “best” to you means absolute best performance with the best cameras that money can buy, then the Pro Max, like all years past, remains your choice. But if “best” to you means bold new innovation, striking new design & absolutely premium feel then there’s a new hero in town - the iPhone Air.
If you haven’t seen the iPhone Air in person, you should. On paper, it sounds very silly - “isn’t it just a thin phone?”. But in person, it’s truly a marvel. It feels absolutely premium in hand and makes the whole experience magical. The Air also has some crazy engineering underneath. All the components of the phone have been fitted into the camera bar at the top of the phone leaving the rest to be consumed by a battery. If not for anything, the Air feels like something one should buy just to appreciate the engineering that has gone into it. Even the aesthetic choices on the outside, like the polished titanium band, the rounded corners and the colours have been carefully chosen to evoke lightness and luxury.
In the time between the Tuesday the phone was announced and the Friday the preorders went live, I had a tough time deciding between the Air and the Pro Max. With the Air, I would lose out on stereo speakers, additional cameras and the additional battery life of the Pro Max. A lot of people who know me now would be surprised to know that I used to be a small phone person, enjoying the 4 inch screen of the iPhone SE and swearing by it as the best iPhone experience. My decision to go to Pro Max was purely driven by the desire for a larger battery and then eventually I got accustomed to the biggest screens. So, battery was a huge dealbreaker for me. But as I pondered over what else would stop me from getting the Air, I decided to analyse my camera usage.
With the help of this Reddit post, I classified my last 2 years of photos data on my Mac into smart albums. This helped me curate photos by the camera I used. Turned out, that ever since I got a 5x lens with the 15 Pro Max, a whopping 22% of photos were shot with the telephoto lens. The 0.5x ultrawide was my least used lens, with just 9% of photos shot with that.
This meant that choosing the Air would result in me being able to capture only around 69% of the photos I normally would. That made my choice clear - one more year with the Pro Max.
A cosmic miracle in the form of orange
This year is very reminiscent to me of the Apple of 2013. In the WWDC of 2013, Apple launched a brand new design for their operating system - iOS 7. This year, as we already know, Apple launched a brand new redesign across their entire operating system line up with Liquid Glass.
Similarly, Apple also sparked a new iPhone lineup with the 5c and 5s, introducing a differentiation in the iPhone lineup for the first time. This year, Apple has once again broken the pattern of their usual iPhone line up with the Air and the Pros.
But most importantly, the 5c was such a desirable phone for me because it came in some delightful looking colours. And now, after years of complaints that the Pro models always looked like shades of gray, Apple has finally performed the ultimate miracle - added colours!
This has resulted in some interesting reactions. I hear some people say that muted colours were far more premium, some others say that they absolutely love the new shades and some others simply don’t care because they use a case.
What I really like though is that, the new iPhone has evoked a lot of reactions and that’s good to see. At least nobody is considering this “boring” like they did last year.
My iPhone colour of choice without doubt, was the Cosmic Orange. It’s been very opinionated - people who have seen it over the last week have either told me that it looks absolutely fantastic or looked at me like I was a lunatic for choosing this colour. It’s also the first time in a while that random people have wanted to take a closer look at my phone, hold it in hand and take photos. Anecdotally, I was at a restaurant a couple of days back and the waiter requested to borrow my phone and posed with it for some photos, presumably for his Instagram? Regardless of what people think, clearly this colour is a hit, considering how sold out it is everywhere.
As for me, every time I turn my phone around, I smile with glee. I can’t remember the last time I owned a phone this fun looking. All the past Pros I have owned either in a shade of Gold or Natural Titanium have always looked a little silver-y in some lighting conditions. This phone is unapologetically colourful and I love it.
The feel in hand is also more rounded this year, it’s very comfortable to hold compared to the previous year’s phones. Looking up Apple’s web page tells me that the weight of the phone has actually increased by a few grams but just holding it in hand side by side, I would swear that this phone is lighter, purely because of the way it feels.
Some also opine that the Aluminium looks less luxurious compared to titanium. Well, I completely agree. But it seems like Apple’s direction this year is to deliberately make the Air the luxury device and letting the Pro go the way of the Apple Watch Ultra. The obvious down side with the choice of aluminium is that it’s going to dent far more easily if dropped. It’s sad but well, gotta live with it.
All the things that aren’t Pro anymore
With the change to aluminium, we suddenly realise that the base model and the Pro models use the same metal, which clearly means Apple doesn’t think premium materials are a “Pro” feature. Sure, the anodised aluminium is a lot better on hand than the normal aluminium band but it’s not a big deal.
What then makes a Pro?
Apparently, not the display. This year, Apple has added ProMotion across all models and the amazing always on display as well. The new change is a brighter 3000 nits display which is very noticeable in daily use.
I have really enjoyed the new display. The colours also feel slightly better for some reason. I can’t point out why. It’s probably because of the anti reflective coating but I cannot be entirely sure.
Interestingly this brighter display with anti reflective coating is also on all models, so clearly not a Pro feature.
Apple also added an excellent new selfie camera this year. It’s a “square” sensor which absolutely means nothing to all of us so let’s focus on what matters. We can take a landscape selfie with a lot of people on frame and in much higher resolution without turning the phone sideways. This means all the people in the selfie are actually looking at the camera and not sideways. This has led to some really aesthetic photos in the last few days which I have enjoyed. I have not been much of a selfie person but of late I find myself reaching out for the selfie camera purely because of how fun it is to use.
But this apparently is also not a Pro feature, as this once again is present across all 4 models.
Also not so Pro is the battery life which is pretty much the same across the smaller 17 Pro and the base 17 (basically the two similar sized phones). My 17 Pro Max of course enjoys the better battery life thanks to its size and that’s a benefit I continue to enjoy.
I must say though that so far in my experience, despite Apple’s marketing claims, the 17 Pro Max battery performs very identically to the 16 Pro Max with respect to battery. Don’t get me wrong - this is not a compliant, the 16 Pro Max is one of the best phones I used in terms of the battery. On the day of exchange, the 16 Pro Max battery health was still at 100% and at less than 300 cycles for my usage, which is a testament to how long the battery has lasted. I would be more than happy to see the same result next year with my 17 Pro Max.
Newer chips - some Pro, some not
This phone has two new chips - one is a brand new chip for WiFi, Bluetooth and Thread. It’s called the Apple N1 chip (not to be confused with M1). This chip replaces the stuff Broadcom previously handled.
It’s working the exact same as before which is a good thing and it means the chip is doing well, so kudos to Apple. But again, not a Pro feature as this is across all models.
The cellular chip is still from Qualcomm. Only the iPhone Air enjoys the new C1X chip so nothing too different on the Pros.
What’s different is the new processor, the A19 Pro. Beyond just benchmarks, actual AI features are faster on the new chip. For example, my latest app, Dear Diary, produces results much faster on the 17 Pro Max using Apple’s local AI models than it did on 16 Pro Max. This is a noticeable improvement and one that any user using an AI app can actually notice. As we see more and more apps leverage on-device AI, we will start seeing people appreciate the performance on these new devices.
This chip actually is an actual Pro feature. The base iPhone 17 uses the base A19 chip which isn’t as performant as the A19 Pro.
Pro Cooling (?)
Also new and exclusive to the Pro lineup this year is a new “vapor chamber” which is a fancy new module inside the phone that uses water to diffuse the heat that gets generated when performing intensive processing tasks.
I find it very odd and misleading that reviewers mention the 15 Pro Max and 16 Pro Max as devices that were overheating and praise the new 17 Pro Max. It’s odd because the same reviewers did not mention any of these issues when the phone was launched in the previous year.
I am not going to criticise the past phones just to hype up this new phone. I absolutely loved the 15 Pro Max and 16 Pro Max. In my usage, the 15 Pro Max overheated ever so slightly when I used the camera in bright sun for a while. I did not face this much with the 16 Pro Max. So anecdotally, I have observed no visible benefits for my workflows with the 17 Pro Max but perhaps someone with more intensive workloads is enjoying the benefits.
Apple also justified the switch to aluminium by mentioning thermal conductivity as one of the reasons. I’m sure this is perfectly valid.
This brings us back to the title of this essay - what makes a Pro? A large, large chunk of iPhone Pro owners probably don’t need this improved thermal conductivity. Your Instagram reels aren’t going to be any faster. But there’s a section of Pro users using these phones to record real video footage for their work. These people are the ones who are going to benefit the most. With the new Pros, Apple is catering to the niche users, recognising their complex workflows and designing use cases that work best for them. This is reminiscent of the Apple of 2019, when they introduced the modular Mac Pro, designed for the niche users.
A new Pro Camera
Apple also claimed improvements to the image generation pipeline which I also fully believe, thanks to the photos I took in the past week. The images look better in quality even with the main camera where there’s no sensor change from the outgoing Pro Max.
But what I’m really, really having fun with is that 22% of my photography that I previously spoke about - the telephoto cameras. Cameras, plural, this year, because the switch to a 48 MP lens means Apple can now do the same tricks they previously started with the 14 Pro.
Similar to how the main lens does a 1x and a 2x where the 2x is a 12 MP crop of the 48 MP, we now have a 4x and a 8x zoom from the telephoto lens. This also means a new 40x digital zoom, up from the 25x digital we had for the past two years.
The new lens is a really beautiful sensor that’s amplified my telephoto experience. Both the 4x and 8x lens offer beautiful shots of far away objects and of people portraits. I only feel that with the new lens, my telephoto usage is going to increase in the coming year.
Here are a few photos showing the 8x lens in action -
But the actual Pro camera features come in the form of filming improvements. Just how Apple launched ProRes Log and ACES support in the past year, with the 17 Pros, Apple is adding support for a new pro video feature - Genlock.
With Genlock, a videographer can set up multiple iPhones and record them at once, time synced in the right way. Apple even recently shot the latest Friday Night Baseball match that’s telecasted on Apple TV+ with the 17 Pros.
iPhones are interesting again
Last year, I made a case for why I still like unboxing a new iPhone every year and how that makes me happy. This year, it seems people are lining up on their own to buy the new iPhones. The new two tone design of the iPhone 17 Pro has made people excited (and of course the cosmic orange too). People are also excited by the iPhone Air for the marvel that it is. And a few others are simply happy with the value for money the base 17 gives this year. Each iPhone Apple sells this year has its own unique USP making it worthy for the user. Sure, some people are asking for foldables and a lot others are wondering when the full featured Apple Intelligence powered Siri will launch but with a beautiful new OS redesign and some awesome hardware, Apple is showing how much fun using gadgets can be.
But by making the base model iPhone lucrative and full featured, Apple is also setting out a statement. Pundits often criticised Apple saying that the base models didn’t have ProMotion so that they could sell more Pro models etc. Apple has shut all of these critics by showing they’re not afraid of cannibalising Pro sales. The iPhone Pro is for someone who really wants it for what it does - the best performance, the best cameras and the best battery life. For everyone else, there’s the base 17 and the Air.
So if you’re a photographer or a videographer using the iPhone for work, you’re a Pro, go get the iPhone 17 Pro. But if you aren’t a photographer or videographer, don’t let that deter you. If you’re someone who wants the best performance and the best cameras or even just the best colour (cosmic orange ftw!!!), you deserve the Pro too.
It’s all in the mindset, you’re who you think you are, and that’s what makes a Pro ;)