The iPhone 17 Pro is here, and it looks completely different to last year’s iPhone 16 Pro – but what’s really new with this year’s flagship iPhone?
While the distinctive new design is hard to miss, there are plenty of other upgrades that could make it a tempting buy compared to 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro. That said, the iPhone 16 Pro does share some similarities with its newer sibling, and it’s now available at a much cheaper price, so it’s not a clear-cut decision.
Here’s how the iPhone 17 Pro stacks up to the iPhone 16 Pro on paper to help you figure out if it’s worthy of the upgrade.
If you’re curious, we’ve compared the iPhone 17 Pro to the iPhone Air separately, as well as compared the iPhone 17 to the iPhone 17 Pro to understand what you’re getting from Apple’s entry-level and Pro flagships.
Pricing and availability
The iPhone 17 Pro comes in at the same £1099/$1099 as last year’s iPhone 16 Pro. It’s set to go up for pre-order on Friday 12 September ahead of general release a week later on 19 September.
The iPhone 16 Pro has been on sale for a year at this point, and as such, it’s available for much cheaper than its £1099/$1099 RRP. We’ve seen it for as little as £749 at the time of writing, and that price will likely continue to drop as the new models are released.
The iPhone 17 Pro sports a new design
The most apparent difference between the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro is the overall design. The iPhone 16 Pro sports the same design that Apple’s Pro-level iPhones have offered for a few years, with a titanium frame, a glass rear and a square camera housing in the upper-left corner. It was minimalist yet distinctive.
The iPhone 17 Pro tears that up with its new aluminium unibody design, sporting a combination of a metal and Apple Ceramic Glass-backed rear for a more unique look. The camera housing has also undergone a change, ditching the square housing for a ‘plateau’ that extends across the top of the rear of the device.
It’s also available in less muted shades than last year’s Pro iPhone, available in shades of Orange, Blue and Silver.
That said, the iPhone 16 Pro is slightly thinner and lighter than the iPhone 17 Pro at 8.25mm and 199g compared to 8.75mm and 206g, but that’s largely due to the inclusion of a larger battery – more on that a little later.
Elsewhere, you’ll find the same combination of Power, Volume, Action and Camera Control buttons dotted around the edges of both phones, as well as USB-C connectivity.
The iPhone 17 Pro packs a better screen
With both sporting the same 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR displays, you might think that the screen experience is identical – but you’d be wrong. Look a little closer, and the iPhone 17 Pro offers notable upgrades in key areas.
Firstly, the iPhone 17 Pro’s screen is brighter with a peak brightness of 3000nits compared to 2000nits, and it’s protected by more durable Ceramic Shield 2 protection that offers 3x better scratch resistance than the first-gen Ceramic Shield tech found on the 16 Pro.
More importantly though, the iPhone 17 Pro features Apple’s new seven-layer anti-reflective coating that should negate reflections and glare, even in outdoor environments. We’ve already seen the success of such coatings on phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and we’re expecting much the same from Apple’s implementation.
Elsewhere, the display experiences are similar; both offer 120Hz ProMotion refresh rates, always-on display tech, super-slim bezels and Apple’s Dynamic Island camera cutout with embedded Face ID smarts.
Except, however, the new Face ID notch is hiding one key upgrade: a much better selfie camera.
The iPhone 17 Pro offers upgraded cameras
Selfie cameras often get neglected. Case in point: Apple used the same 12MP selfie camera in the iPhone 16 Pro as it did on the iPhone 11. But that has finally changed with the iPhone 17 Pro.
Like the rest of the 2025 iPhone collection, the iPhone 17 Pro features an upgraded 18MP selfie camera – but it’s not just about a bigger megapixel count. It’s dubbed a Centre Stage Selfie Camera by Apple, as the new wider camera can now track your face in real-time, making sure you’re always in the shot.
It doesn’t stop there either; unlike other selfie sensors that sport a 4:3 aspect ratio, the new iPhone selfie sensor offers a square 1:1 aspect ratio, allowing it to do something pretty cool: shoot landscape photos without rotating the phone. It also utilises AI to expand the field of view if others are present in the shot, and it’ll even switch from vertical to horizontal if necessary.
Flip the phone over and you’ll find a new 48MP 4x telephoto lens sitting next to the existing 48MP main and 48MP ultrawide lenses. It features a 58% larger sensor than the 12MP 5x telephoto of last year’s 16 Pro for more light intake, making it ideal for low-light shooting, and also offers optical-quality 8x zoom capabilities to top things off.
On the video front, this year’s iPhone 17 Pro can also shoot in Apple’s industry-standard ProRes RAW video format – though this one’s mainly for creators, not us normies.
The iPhone 17 Pro boasts better battery life
Throughout the announcement, Apple repeatedly mentioned that design changes were made specifically to accommodate a larger battery – so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to learn that this year’s iPhone boasts much better battery life than the iPhone 16 Pro.
According to Apple, the iPhone 17 Pro is good for up to 33 hours of video playback, jumping to 35 hours if you have the eSIM-only variant of the phone. The iPhone 16 Pro, on the other hand, offered a respectable 27 hours of video playback.
Of course, real-world use isn’t reflected in these video tests, so it’ll be interesting to see just how much of a difference there is in actual use.
The A19 Pro is more capable than the A18 Pro
Apple’s new A19 Pro chipset powers this year’s Pro-level iPhone, also found in the iPhone Air as well as the top-end iPhone 17 Pro Max.
While both the A19 Pro and A19 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro comprise six CPU and GPU cores, Apple claims that the iPhone 17 Pro offers a 40% boost to sustained performance when combined with a new vapour cooling system. There’s also a Neural Accelerator in each GPU core, as well as a larger cache and more memory to bolster performance.
That means that games should play even smoother without heating your phone quite as quickly, and just as importantly, Apple Intelligence features should be speedier too.
Early thoughts
The iPhone 17 Pro sports a new design that immediately separates itself from last year’s iPhone 16 Pro, but there’s more to it than that. The new Pro-level iPhone offers a superior screen experience, more capable cameras on both the front and rear, enhanced performance, significantly longer battery life, and much more.
The iPhone 16 Pro remains a strong contender, however, with a well-rounded package – and crucially, it’s now available at a significantly lower price.
That said, we’ll reserve our final verdict for once we’ve spent more time with the new iPhone 17 Pro – so check back soon.
