iPhone 17 Pro Has A Problem.

So I've spent over a week with the iPhone 17 Pro now and I think this phone is pretty great, except for one thing. The battery life is extremely good. I'm ending most days above 30% for the first time ever. The new zoom lens on the telephoto is sick and the A19 Pro chip does actually make the phone feel a bit faster, but that's not what this video is about. This video is about the one thing that I'm not sold on and it's kind of a really big part of this new See, the iPhone 17 Pro is Apple's first unibody iPhone, meaning that the entire thing is made from a single piece of aluminum. Previous iPhones were the sandwich design with glass on the top and bottom and metal holding it together in the middle. But this all-in-one aluminum chassis, well, that's new for the iPhone and pretty much the second I put this in my hand this year, I could tell that something just fell off. Since then, I've been using this design a lot more and I am convinced that it was a mistake. I don't think aluminum is going to hold up well and I want to explain why. First though, I think it's important to understand how we got here because the iPhone wasn't always aluminum. Back in 2017, nearly a decade ago, Apple introduced the iPhone 10 and that was the first iPhone made of a stainless steel frame. This material made the phone more durable and also pretty heavy, but it had this really shiny appearance that made the feel like something that would be worth $1,000, you know, the same year that they raised the price to $999, but it worked. So Apple stuck with stainless steel for quite a few years after, all the way up until 2023 when they dropped the iPhone 15 Pro. And this is the phone that I really want to focus on because it was only two years ago that the iPhone 15 Pro debuted with titanium and Apple touted this as their most expensive material yet, bringing the durability of steel, but in something a bit lighter weight too. And notably when you scraped titanium, it held up really well. Just keep that in the back of your mind for a little bit. Now, Apple switching to titanium also turned out to be really popular and I don't know if you remember, but Apple made a huge deal out of this shift. In fact, the first ad that they ever ran for the 15 Pro didn't highlight any of the new features like USB-C or the better cameras. It was all about titanium. An entire ad celebrating their phones being the most premium they have ever been and exactly two years later, we are back to aluminum. I mean, I'm just going to say the quiet part out loud. This seems like a huge step backward. So what was Apple's justification for doing this? Alongside the unibody allowing for better antennas and a larger battery, Apple cited that aluminum is 20 times more thermally conductive than titanium, meaning your device could run more intensive things like games for an extended duration of time without getting as hot and operating at peak performance. Which is true, but was heat on the iPhone really like a huge problem in general? I mean, the same year Apple got rid of titanium, they also introduced the vapor chamber, which seems like it would fix any of the heat management in the first place. Because here's the thing, for me and a lot of other people, going back to aluminum hasn't really had a practical benefit. And in fact, for me, it's had two distinct ways it's been way worse and more on that in just a second after the break. Now, a huge part of the reason I feel this way is because the iPhone Air exists. And this also happens to be Apple's first ever eSIM only iPhone globally. And it's also why I partnered up with AeroLow who sponsored today's video. See, recently I've been traveling a ton and AeroLow is the fastest and easiest way to get an eSIM for wherever you're headed. With AeroLow, it's so simple. You download their free app and use code AppleTrack to get $3 off your first eSIM. And with support for more than 200 countries and regions, you just tap where you want to go, select which package you want for the amount of data and how long you'll be using it for, and then you check out. From there, it just takes a few more seconds to install your eSIM and then you are ready to go and you have service on your phone. When I was in Australia recently, I was using AeroLow to stay connected on my iPhone Air in order to save money by not racking up the insane carrier fees that you get while roaming. So, install AeroLow free today so you can stay connected wherever you travel and use my code AppleTrack to get $3 USD off of your first eSIM. A huge thank you to AeroLow for sponsoring this video and sponsoring my data every time I travel. Now, let's get back to it. First, straight up, the iPhone 17 Pro feels cheaper in your hand and that's just because aluminum is a cheaper material. It's something you're going to notice from the second you pick it up and it is still something that I notice well over a weekend. There's just this weird cognitive dissonance using a new phone that Apple raised the price on it that feels cheaper than last year's phone that costs less. It's just weird. I don't know how else to put it. But if I'm being honest, I don't think most people will really notice. I think they're going to pick up the phone, not notice a difference and go on with their day. That's not why I'm making this video. I'm making this video because I'm not confident that the aluminum as a material is going to hold up long term. And the reason I say that is because for me, the aluminum has not held up short term. I kid you not, this iPhone 17 Pro is just 10 days old and on the left side of the screen, there is already a chip on the aluminum. And this is a phone that has never been dropped. I genuinely do not know how this chip got here. And as I'm looking around, no way, dude. I was going to say, per the script that I wrote, as I'm looking around the rest of the phone, there's no other issues yet. And as I'm sitting here recording, I've noticed another chip on the camera bump that was not here when I woke up this morning. I'll put some B-roll up on the screen so it's more clear to see. But at the top of the camera bump, almost in the middle, there's another chip. And my proof for that maybe there's something up with the aluminum this year is that this is my iPhone 16 Pro. This phone is over one year old. It has been used extensively day in and day out. And if I look around this device, I have yet to find a noticeable chip anywhere on the titanium. The part that I'm more concerned about though, is just not me because this could be isolated. Maybe I just have a bad unit, right? There are people all around the world that have been posting the same thing on their thousand plus dollar iPhone 17 Pros. And you don't even have to like believe these images online. Just go into an Apple store and look at some of these devices. I was completely shocked at how beat up these 17 Pros were. This whole thing was starting to look pretty bad until I saw that Apple issued a statement about it. They've actually replied to all the people that have been noticing these scuffs on their phone with an official statement. And basically what they say is this, that what you're seeing from these demo models in stores are actually scratches, but a material transfer from their own MagSafe chargers behind them. And they mentioned that all these marks will disappear if you clean off the phone with a cleaning solution combined with salt. So that's been the latest reporting that they've issued to retail employees. So me being me, I of course had to try this out. I looked up the exact cleaning solution that Apple officially uses on their phones at the Genius Bar. I bought that and then I combined it with some sea salt, which was a solution that I saw online work. About 24 hours later, I'm back at the same Apple store and what I find is really interesting. First, like Apple said, a lot of these perceived scuffs did come out. It was material transfer, but not all of them did. Like you can see in the video here, this is after two or three passes and the phone doesn't really look new again. It still looks pretty scraped up. And second, I noticed that underneath the camera bar on almost every phone I touched, it was super scraped up and I wiped that area off as well. And those marks did not remove because I don't think that's material transfer. I think that is the antenna being permanently scratched. And this has left me a bit confused because reading Apple's statement, the phones are supposed to look like new and I wasn't able to independently recreate that to the extent they suggested. And then on my own phone, I'm not seeing this material transfer. I'm seeing the aluminum is just chipping off from normal usage. That is not great on a year that the phones got more expensive. I don't know. The thought that just keeps coming back to me is that if you're going to switch away from titanium, something that you've told me is better for two years straight, when you go back to aluminum, it's gotta be better in every way, right? And it just isn't. Not to mention, just my last note here, that the titanium coating on the old phones wasn't full titanium. It was just a one millimeter layer bonded to the aluminum substructure, meaning they could have just done it on here and the thermals would have been okay still like the old models, but they got rid of it entirely. Was it to save money? Was it because they hate titanium now? I don't know. I don't know why they did it, but all I know is it seems worse. Am I going to stop using the iPhone 17 Pro because day-to-day doesn't hold up as good as previous ones? No, because the battery is that insane. The cameras, the zoom is so good this year. But what I am going to do is use a case when I was going to maybe try to go caseless for a while because this is 10 days caseless and it's already looking really bad. All right. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you learned something new. If you did, drop a like down below. Hit subscribe for more videos like this in the future. I've been Sam. I still do really like the iPhone 17 Pro and I'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.