iPhone 17 Pro After Actually Using It!.

The iPhone 17 Pro. Is there anything new? Loads. Well, does it really matter? Not really. But somehow, it's also one of the biggest upgrades that Apple has made in years. Look, it's weird because I agree with both sides of the internet right now. This year, Apple's made the Pro more pro than ever but that means this thing isn't for most people. It feels more industrial, thicker and heavier but also somehow feels more premium. They've gone with an all aluminium unibody and it looks cheaper and, to be fair, in a month I've already taken some damage but it doesn't feel cheaper even though it is cheaper than titanium. But in the bigger chassis, they're able to fit a bigger battery and the all new and improved vapour chamber for cooling down the device. For years, we've all been saying just make it thicker and add more battery and now they've done it, I'm kind of glad but also don't really know how to feel about it. In short, the battery life is up, it stays cooler under load and sustained performance is well and truly dialled in. Now there's no massive leaps in performance here but it does feel quicker. But that's what we've come to expect with every new Apple release but, to me, it feels like it's more to do with software tuning than just pure power. Don't tell me that the iPhone 15 Pro Max from only two years ago is hitting it's GPU and or CPU ceiling every time you unlock the device resulting in animations that just feel slightly more stuttery compared to that of the 17 Pro. Even though both the 15 and 17 here have the 120Hz ProMotion, why aren't these the same? All that's to say that the 17 does feel slightly more fluid when using it day to day, things like opening apps and navigating the home screen, scrolling around etc. But I don't know why that is because the older phones are more than capable of feeling this smooth. Realistically, I think that if you've got an iPhone 15 or even an iPhone 14 that's in fairly good nick, you can give this year's upgrade a miss. The display is one major selling point this year hitting 3,000 nits of peak brightness. This peak brightness then coupled with that new vapour chamber for cooling means that the phone can stay on it's full brightness outside in direct sunlight for way longer which has been a massive problem for iPhones up until now. You may have noticed that when you use your iPhone outside, the display will dim to almost a brightness where you can't even see it and it's really annoying. This is actually a heating issue. So the vapour chamber and the brighter display work together to make this entire thing now actually work and you will receive those 3,000 nits sustained outside whilst you're in the baking sun. Nice. Obviously, it's the same ProMotion 120Hz panel but it's just been better tuned in my opinion. They've even added PWN flicker reduction in the accessibility settings. This is to do with how the display actually refreshes and flickers and some people can find this annoying or disturbing so you can toggle this on and off in settings to get a better viewing experience. This is the fun bit. All three lenses on this thing now shoot in 48 megapixels. Now, what's the benefit of that? Switching between the cameras feels smoother and it's just more consistent with colour and the actual tone of the image. The telephoto is the biggest step up here though. It's now a 4x zoom at 48 megapixels and that's about 100mm. Now, Apple are being really clever with the marketing here saying that this phone has an 8x optical zoom and that's not really technically true because to get to that 8x, all they're doing is cropping in on that 48 megapixel sensor to get from the 4x to the 8x. So, my previous iPhone 15 that actually had a 5x optical sensor, well, that camera is just better at zooming because the lens is physically longer whereas the 8x telephoto on the new 17 is using some software trickery to actually do its thing. So, that's something to just bear in mind. The biggest takeaway here though is you've basically got a RAW camera in your pocket. People always ask how come my photos that I take with my phone don't look like these crazy photos that I see on Instagram taken with the same phone. RAW is the answer. Being able to shoot in RAW basically gives you the ability to tweak things like exposure, white balance and ISO after you've shot the photo. It basically enables a whole other level of editing control that you can do once you've taken the photo and you're back home. Apple have also tweaked the sensors on both the front and back side of the device using now what's called Open Gate. This allows you to film almost a square video. Why would you want to do that? Well, basically, if you film a square, you can then crop into it and repurpose this content for both vertical shorts, reels, Instagram, TikTok, etc. and long form for YouTube videos like this one. They've also done the same on the front camera which allows you to squeeze more people into a selfie whilst you're holding your phone in portrait but also, you can just take a square selfie if you would like to and then choose what you want to do with it after effect. Cameras across the board here are the biggest pro upgrade and the reason to mainly get this device over the others. Now, if you're loving how much AI has been creeping into everything, I'm happy to say that it's not just phones. Huge thanks to Opera Neon for sponsoring this video, the world's first agentic browser. Built with AI that doesn't just chat but actually takes action. Say you're doing some research or scripting a video like I often do, well, time saving starts now. Neon's AI can summarise web pages for you and this even works on YouTube videos as well. No need to jump between tabs or use separate AI tools. It's all built into the browser. It doesn't need to be used for the internet though. You could, for example, upload a PDF and have that translated from German into English so you can actually read it. And if you'd usually go to AI to do a lot of your planning, well, this can now be done right in your browser like creating a full dining itinerary. You can even ask it to build stuff like a virtual language trainer app where it will spin up a virtual machine and create anything you want. So whether you're researching, creating or just trying to get things done, this browser does the work for you and you can join the waitlist for Opera Neon at the link in the description. Thanks to Opera for sponsoring this portion of the video. Now because of the thicker build and the vapour chamber, this device rarely heats up. The time I usually notice a device heating up is during setup and this thing didn't even break a sweat when it was downloading all of my iCloud selfies. Now I'm certainly not a massive phone gamer but through my time using this device, you're not going to have any problems playing the latest AAA titles on this device. It will kill it compared to the competition. Now here's where it gets interesting. I don't think the main spotlight this year is on the Pro device which is strange because this is the spotlight device, right. I think Apple this year have diversified their line up more than ever and they've made the original iPhone 17 a really strong contender for the price. You're getting a lot of great features here. Two cameras, great audio, 120 hertz screen. Those are the three things everybody really notices and needs on a day to day basis. So most people can just get an iPhone 17 and call it a day. If you want something a little bit thinner then the Air is definitely the way to go. And I also wouldn't be too concerned about battery life because they've basically stuffed the entirety of the phone into that plateau and the rest of the phone is there for the battery. And I've heard good reports and after holding that thing, it does feel magical. So then that just leaves the Pro. Like, who is this for? Now I stand with what I said at the start of the video. They've made this thing a little bit too Pro, especially with the camera system, introducing things like Gen Lock and Open Game. Gen Lock is so you could sync this camera system to other cameras and do things like a multi-cam live broadcast. These features really are Pro but not for the average day to day person that used to call themselves a Pro like, probably, you and I. This phone really is just for the people that want the best iPhone that there is. But for everyday users, the 17 or even the Air, I think, is the smarter move if you're wanting to shake things up a little bit. But also, we're in 2025, approaching 26 and there's a lot of other different phones on the market nowadays. I've just been looking at some foldables and they've honestly blown my mind. The Pro's just a flex. It's a camera rig for professionals and it nails it at that.