The Apple iPhone 17 (predictably) isn’t cheap, and its battery life should be better than it is — but it’s still easily your best value iPhone option in 2025.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 120Hz display screen – finally! | Still a pricey phone |
| A19 is nicely powerful | Cameras are limited compared to iPhone 17 Pro/Max |
| Nice range of colour choices | Battery life is down compared to last year’s iPhones |
Score: 3.5/5
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In this review
Apple iPhone 17 Specifications
Apple iPhone 17 Design
Apple iPhone 17 Camera
Apple iPhone 17 Performance
Apple iPhone 17 Battery
Apple iPhone 17 Verdict
Ethical disclaimer: The Apple iPhone 17 used in this review was loaned to me by Apple. Apple’s loan terms do run longer than most tech companies, but this phone will be going back to Apple.
Does that change up how my review is written or produced? In no way at all. Anything that ART reviews is treated the same way, whether it’s going back or not. I’m not in this for the “freebies”, and whether or not saying something accurate-but-perhaps-not-flattering might affect my relationship with a given brand has never been a concern of mine; I’d rather deliver a genuinely good review than simply parrot marketing lines.
For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
Design
I can think back to a time when the iPhone wasn’t the lynchpin of Apple’s computing strategy, but that was a LONG time ago. These days, Apple has a glitzy launch for its new lineup of iPhones, but a whole lot of the focus goes on the flashier Pro models that typically get all the new goodies in abundance, in line with their even higher price points.
Like, for example, the iPhone 17 Pro, which I’ve been reviewing simultaneously with the Apple iPhone 17. Want a review of that? Be my guest:
Also read:
This year, however, Apple has somewhat blurred the line between its pro and lower cost regular iPhone lineup. Note I say lower cost there; with pricing starting at $1,399 AUD, nobody sane could call the iPhone 17 “cheap”.
The most obvious way that this blurring happens is with regards to the display screen on the iPhone 17. For years now I’ve complained at Apple in my reviews that offering up just a plain 60Hz display on a phone that costs over $1,000 was a ludicrous state of affairs, and while I doubt Tim Cook particularly sweats my viewpoints, it appears that he’s relented anyway, because Apple’s gone 120Hz (or “ProMotion” in Apple marketing-speak) across the board.
Whether you buy an iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone Pro or iPhone Pro Max, they’ve all got displays capable of 1Hz-120hz variable refresh rates, which is great to see.
Put the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro side by side and you’d be hard-pressed to spot the differences. Both feature 6.3 inch 2622×1206 pixel displays with minimal bezels and “Dynamic Island” display to house the FaceID selfie camera.
Dynamic Island isn’t new, but it is a very smart way to make the most of what would otherwise be rather dead screen real estate. Like the iPhone 17 Pro’s display, the iPhone 17’s screen also gets a brightness burst up to a peak 3,000 nits, ensuring that it’s viewable in all but the most extreme sunlight conditions.
There is a technical difference in durability between the Pro and regular model iPhones; the iPhone 17 gets Apple’s regular Ceramic Shield Glass at the front, while the iPhone 17 Pro/Max models get slightly nicer Ceramic Shield 2 glass, which is meant to be more scratch resistant and less prone to glare.
You’d honestly need to have them side by side to spot the glare difference if at all, and being as they’re Apple’s property I’ve resisted the urge to go both displays with a protractor to see just how well they handle scratches. I’ve never particularly liked that often-dodgy approach to phone testing anyway.
Controls all take in what used to be Pro features – though this isn’t new this year to speak of – with with assistant/power button and the camera control on the right hand side and volume and action buttons on the left hand side.
Australian models also feature the physical SIM card tray on the side, though be wary if you’re buying online, as some international models (for example, those sold in the USA) are eSIM only. Here in Australia, that’s only true for the iPhone Air; I’m in the camp that prefers the flexibility of being able to use a mix of SIM styles in my phones, but your usage tastes may vary.
Where the Pro phones do differ is in camera offerings, and that’s most evident when you turn the iPhone 17 around. There’s no rectangular “Camera Plateau” here, just a pair of vertically oriented lenses at the top of a stark expanse of colour.
Apple has long given its most fun (and, I suppose the argument goes) “consumer centric” colours to its regular phone lines. I don’t like that way of thinking, because Pro users deserve fun too, but this year that equates to a choice of Black, White, Mist Blue, Sage or Lavender finishes.
Apple loaned me a White iPhone 17, and it sure is… white. Creamy almost, like the colour of the ceiling at your grandmother’s house. Not a colour choice I’d make, but then if the iPhone 17 were to be my daily driver, I’d be throwing a case onto it quick smart anyway, and then you can make it just about any colour you like.
Apple sells the iPhone 17 at a lower price point than its Pro counterparts, but it’s still comfortably within the premium price bracket, and so it’s good to see that it’s retained its IP68 water and dust resistance rating. This still isn’t a licence to go scuba diving with it, however, which I explain here if you’re not au fait with how IP ratings work. Or watch the video below if you prefer that presentation style:
Camera
The iPhone 17 doesn’t get the very best camera goodies Apple has to offer this year, because that’s a huge part of the way it differentiates its Pro line of phones.
That doesn’t mean that the iPhone 17 gets junk cameras — at this price you’d be well within your rights to be cranky if Apple pulled that kind of trick — but instead that it gets a cut-down selection of what the Pro phones offer.
At the rear there’s just two lenses, a 48MP primary wide and 48MP ultra-wide, while the Dynamic Island houses the same 18MP square “Center Stage” camera as the iPhone 17 Pro/Max models.
Conspicuous by its absence in the iPhone 17 is any form of actual optical telephoto lens. Given that Apple’s shifted on the whole 120Hz screen issue, I guess this is the next thing that I’ll complain about being missing from a phone that starts at $1,399 — and not without reason, that’s still a high price for a phone that lacks one.
What you do get is up to 10x digital cropped zoom, which does work reasonably well, though not to the same extent as the zoom on the iPhone 17 Pro does.
Neko is unaware that I’m taking his photo, because I’m using the iPhone 17’s 10x digital zoom to do so.
While it’s not as flexible as the iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 17 is a good performer in most situations.
This is a low-light photo, but you wouldn’t know that from the way that the iPhone 17 has captured detail.
Lots of phones post-process nature scenes with way too much contrast, making them look unnatural.
Not so with the iPhone 17.
This isn’t a natural colour, but the iPhone 17 does a good job of capturing its actual hue in a darkened room.
The iPhone 17 shifts into macro mode immediately, and does a good job of capturing close up detail.
Apple’s contention is that the Pro phones are for the photo professionals who need details like RAW shooting or log files for video, leaving the regular iPhone 17 (and presumably the even more camera-limited iPhone Air) for the regular consumer crowd. While you can get a more flexible camera system at this price if you’re happy to step outside the Apple ecosystem, the iPhone 17 delivers pleasing results that will likely please those upgrading from older iPhones.
Performance
Like the iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 17 runs on an Apple A19 platform, though it’s not the A19 Pro platform in this case. You just get the regular A19 with a 6 core CPU, 5 core GPU and 16 core Neural Engine. Comparatively, the iPhone 16 Pro’s A19 Pro runs on a 6 core CPU, 6 core GPU and 16 core Neural Engine. That’s more cores than a Sid James movie, but I digress…
The iPhone 17 gets fewer storage variants than the Pro versions, but with options for either 256GB or 512GB of storage, there’s plenty there to keep most consumers happy. As always, storage expansion isn’t supported, but Apple will happily sell you iCloud storage to expand out that way if that’s your style.
Apple used to rule the roost when it came to processor performance, boosted on by the fact that it could control not only the hardware but also the software running on it to the nth degree, but that changed this year with Samsung’s run of Snapdragon 8 Elite phones taking the performance crown.
Of course, for a lot of Apple users, what Samsung or the rest of the Android crew does is irrelevant, because they’re very much in the iPhone camp with no intent of changing up. What matters to them is the relative performance of a new iPhone, and whether it makes it a worthwhile upgrade.
Quick spoiler: It’s not worth upgrading from last year’s iPhone. It never is. I don’t need to benchmark anything to tell you that.
So at what point would it make sense to shift up to an iPhone 17? To give that some CPU comparison, I ran Geekbench 6’s CPU Test against the iPhone 17 and compared it to predecessors:
There would be something considerably wrong if Apple’s newest phones weren’t at the top of that chart, but what’s interesting here to me is how close the gap is between the iPhone 17 and the iPhone 17 Pro in benchmarked performance terms. There’s not a whole lot in it, outside the dent that the pricier iPhone 17 Pro/Max will make on your wallet.
What about if you were thinking across the Android divide? How does the Apple A19 in the iPhone 17 compare against other flagship phones?
It’s much the same story if we look at GPU performance.
Here’s how the iPhone 17 compares against other iPhone models using 3DMark Wild Life Extreme:
And here’s that Android comparison for those considering their options in the premium space:
Apple still hasn’t regained the performance crown there, though the practical realities for app usage in 2025 (and beyond, likely for the realistic life of this phone) is that most premium phones have more power in them than most users actually need.
Unless you’re really pushing the limits of onboard AI apps or AAA gaming, the iPhone 17’s CPU is plenty powerful enough. If you were considering an upgrade, I’d say that this only really makes sense – broken and/or lost iPhones notwithstanding – for anything of the iPhone 14 or earlier generations
Apple has made some moves to shift the iPhone 17 into more modern spaces in terms of connectivity, with with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and NFC as well as 5G compatibility onboard.
I say 5G compatibility here, because once again Australian consumers aren’t quite getting iPhones that are as good as they could be.
The models sold in Australia (and in some other international markets) only support the slower Sub-6Ghz 5G frequencies and not 5G mmWave, even though Apple makes models with that support built in for similar prices in other international locations.
Will mmWave 5G revolutionise your online life? No, honestly the quantity of it that (to my understanding) is consumer facing isn’t huge, but it isn’t nothing either, and people do travel internationally to destinations where mmWave is more prevalent. Getting a lesser iPhone for the same price is never not going to feel like a poor deal to me.
Also, Apple AI is present on the iPhone 17. I think people know my broad views on AI by now, right?
Battery
Apple’s claims for the iPhone 17’s battery life don’t revolve around battery size, because Apple never comments on that particular metric in a public way.
It appears that it’s packing in a 3,692 mAh battery pack, but Apple prefers to talk in terms of video playback expectations. For the iPhone 17 it quotes battery life of up to 30 hours of local video playback, slightly lower than that of the similar sized iPhone 17 Pro. Reports suggest that Apple crammed a slightly larger battery into the Pro model, but again, it charges a lot more for that phone.
The use of “up to” in any figure gives any manufacturer plenty of wriggle room when it comes to how a battery performs in real life. “Up to” 30 hours can include, for example, just one hour of battery life. To test that out I first ran the iPhone 17 (and iPhone 17) through my standard 3 hour YouTube battery playback test. You can read about how I test phone batteries here.
This is a test that I’ve been using for a very long while now, so I’ve got a lot of data to compare against if you’re just looking at the iPhone world. Here’s how the iPhone 17 compares historically on battery life with that test:
For those who want Android comparisons, here you go:
With my optimist hat on, hitting above 90% in the first hour of that test typically denotes a phone that can last a day’s moderate usage, but every percentage point above 90% can count for a number of additional hours. Most users won’t (I think) have to reach for a charger before the end of a working day.
However, with my pessimist – or arguably realist – hat on, this isn’t a good result for the iPhone 17, because in every single way it’s performing worse than its predecessors and a number of phones that you can get now for less than its asking price.
Not all of them, but as I’m writing this we’re only a few months from when the Galaxy S26 lineup will break cover, at which point the S25 Ultra will easily dip beneath the iPhone 17’s asking price – and that’s a lot more phone for your money.
As with all recent model iPhones, the iPhone 17 does not ship with a charger in the box; you’ll have to provide one yourself for wired or wireless Qi2 charging.
Apple iPhone 17: Alex’s Verdict
Should you buy the Apple iPhone 17? It depends.
If you’re firmly and happily ensconced in the Apple ecosystem and looking for an upgrade from an older phone, then this absolutely is the model you should buy unless you have terribly specific need of the Pro-grade cameras in the more expensive iPhone 17 Pro/Max lineup.
App performance is very good and will be imperceptible in all but the most niche cases, and while the cameras aren’t as nice, they’re highly suitable for most everyday photography and very easy to use.
The killer for me in a broader context is the iPhone 17’s battery life, because while it’s not woeful – we’re not back in the days where every smartphone struggled to make it to even the end of a working day let alone a 24 hour cycle – it’s not good that it falls below the performance even of older iPhones.
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Apple iPhone 17: Pricing and availability
The Apple iPhone 17 retails in Australia for $1,399 (256GB) or $1,799 (512GB). The model loaned to me by Apple was the 512GB variant.
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