The iPhone Air may have stolen the show at Apple’s big event today with its thinness, the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max may have the best features, but the iPhone 17 also exists. It made its official debut as well, and it’s actually a pretty impressive upgrade.
It comes with a bigger and brighter 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR screen that, for the first time in a non-Pro iPhone, features ProMotion – adaptive refresh rate up to 120Hz. Thanks to this, you also get the Always-On display, showing the time, widgets, and Live Activities at a glance, since the refresh rate can go down to 1Hz when the display isn’t used.
On top of the screen is Apple’s Ceramic Shield 2, with a new Apple-designed coating for three times better scratch resistance and improved anti-reflection to reduce glare. Peak brightness is 3,000 nits, the highest ever on an iPhone, and you also get two times better outdoor contrast than with the iPhone 16.
Powering the iPhone 17 is Apple’s new A19 chip, built on a 3nm process. Its six-core CPU is 1.5x faster than the A15 Bionic in the iPhone 13, according to Apple, and the five-core GPU is more than twice as fast as the A15 Bionic’s. If you’re wondering why Apple is comparing performance to a four-year old iPhone, it’s most likely because it aims to get iPhone 13 owners to switch to the iPhone 17.
Of course, the iPhone 17 has an improved Neural Engine and supports Apple Intelligence, and there’s also an updated display engine and ISP. Apple says you can get up to 30 hours of video playback on one charge, and the iPhone 17 can charge up to 50% in 20 minutes with an optional “high-wattage USB-C power adapter like Apple’s new 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max”.
The iPhone 17 has the Apple N1 chip too, which features Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread support. N1 is also said to improve “the overall performance and reliability of features like Personal Hotspot and AirDrop”. In Bahrain, Canada, Guam, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the U.S., and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the iPhone 17 will be available with eSIM only.
The device has two 48 MP rear cameras for the first time in a non-Pro iPhone. You get a 48 MP main camera and a 48 MP ultrawide with macro capabilities, while the main snapper captures lossless 2x optical zoom shots. With Photographic Styles, you can customize your photos by adjusting color, highlights, and shadows in real time “with a better understanding of skin tones”, and in iOS 26 there’s a new Bright style that will brighten skin tones and “apply a pop of vibrance across the image”.
The iPhone 17 now starts at 256GB storage, for $799 in the US. It’s offered in lavender, mist blue, sage, white, and black. It will be up for pre-order on September 12 in 63 countries and territories, and will be released on September 19. It will then become available in 22 other countries and regions on September 26.