iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max Review: What Apple Isn’t Telling You!

Finally, an iPhone for the construction industry! Sporting a brand new orange color, this iPhone 17 Pro really seems to have resonated with its audience this year.

But how does this new model really stack up? Are there still overheating issues? Is the 8x zoom as impressive as Apple claims? What about fast charging? Performance? After a week of rigorous testing, it’s time for the verdict!

A Mechanical Orange (with Stripes)

You either love it or hate it, but this new design – closely inspired by Google Pixel – truly stands out.

The device, seemingly more robust due to its sensor plateau, as Apple calls it, seems to enhance the overall sturdiness. In reality, Apple uses this feature as an excuse to rework the internal architecture, relocate the chip, and optimize space, allowing for a slightly larger battery and reduced overheating.

Anodized aluminum provides a less premium feel than titanium or stainless steel, but it’s softer and easier to color. Moreover, aluminum conducts heat better than titanium, a welcome feature after two years of devices overheating in the summer – more on that later.

The two-tone aspect delivers a rather unique look with the latest generation Ceramic Shield, which allows signal and wireless charging to pass through. Apple claims the scratch resistance is four times more effective. I find this effect very successful on the Orange and Blue models, less so on the Silver model, which we still chose to keep for filming because lighter colors absorb less heat.

Without a large glass back, one might be tempted not to use a case this year, a risk many customers regretted taking soon after.

Already in Apple Stores, scratches appeared just hours after being displayed, particularly on this vitreous ceramic plate reputedly scratch-proof. Apple blames aging MagSafe chargers and believes that most damage could be cleaned, but numerous customer complaints about scratches, especially around the camera optics, don’t quite confirm these claims. Others were surprised to find that aluminum absorbs too well the impacts, even though this material is known to be quite soft.

Apple is partly to blame for this excess confidence, remember the images broadcast during the keynote where camera operators filmed through mud and snow without any protective casing! It makes one wonder how these quality tests were conducted, and hopefully, Apple will find a solution soon for these issues, which are hard to swallow at this price level.

“Fabric” Cases, “Beats” or Shoulder Straps?

If there’s ever been a generation of iPhone where these accessories are almost mandatory, it’s definitely this year!

For once, Apple offers some quite successful new case designs. This includes the famous Technique Weave and the return of FineWoven. This time, the woven material provides a very plastic feel but promises much more durability – to be verified in use.

Beyond traditional silicone cases (which are not recommended due to their price and fragility), you can opt for these huge Beats cases, which do a great job of protecting the sensors at the cost of added bulk.

Another novelty, Apple offers a shoulder strap (at €69) that only works with certain cases (oddly not the Beats). Initially skeptical, it was the women who demonstrated to me the utility of such an accessory, far more practical for quick access to the device without digging around in a bag.

Finally, don’t forget the models from our sponsor, ShopSystem, which offers transparent and very resistant cases, as well as screen protectors.

An Ultra-Bright Display (Well, Not Always)

The jump from 2000 to 3000 nits for peak outdoor brightness is truly impressive! As someone who films a lot with an iPhone, the screens can never be bright enough in full sunlight, and this year, the panel seems to have made a huge leap forward!

Apple has also added an allegedly very effective anti-reflective layer… however, as you may have seen in the video, the difference didn’t seem so noticeable in outdoor settings.

The other issue that has plagued iPhones for several years is overheating! During our shoots in the south of France, we spent half the summer with the screen at 30-50% brightness… Ironically, these were the moments when the 2000 nits would have been most useful…

Unfortunately, after just a few dozen minutes in the sun at 30°C, the iPhone 17 Pro Max also suffered from this issue. Apple hasn’t resolved the problem, which seems to be intimately linked to an overheating of internal components – what a hassle! None of our cameras darken the screen in such a drastic way, even when it’s 40°C!

Almost Fast Charging

The iPhone remains quite average in terms of fast wired charging (I often say that my car charges faster than my iPhone…).

Apple announced it could reach 50% battery in 20 minutes, a figure no one has managed to achieve so far. It will be 24 minutes, regardless of the charger used. So, it’s only slightly faster than the half-hour needed last year.

Another oddity, all iPhone 17 models (Pro, Air, Pro Max, and the standard 17) paused, more or less long, around 80%. Bug or feature? Hard to say, but the devices were not particularly hot, around 36°C according to our thermal probe.

As a result, it takes at least 1H20 to fully charge an iPhone 17 Pro, while some Android models achieve a full charge in less than 15 minutes. So, there’s some improvement, but it remains quite modest. And importantly, Apple’s figures are largely inaccurate.

Note that only the iPhone 17 Pro Max accepts 40W, it will be 30W for the 17 and 17 Pro, 25W for the iPhone Air. Be careful with multi-port chargers, because sometimes the ports limit the individual power of each port, especially those from Apple.

Finally, we tested the devices with UGreen’s 25W Qi2 chargers and Apple’s puck, but the charging times haven’t changed much: you’re still looking at about 35 minutes to recover 50% of the battery. This remains acceptable for wireless charging, but if you have a USB C cable lying around, you’ll always save 10 minutes.

Performance: As Fast as a Mac M2!

The new A19 Pro chip that powers the iPhone 17 Pro is still etched at 3nm and also offers 6 CPU cores and 6 GPU cores.

However, frequencies have increased (+5%) to 4.26GHz under normal use, allowing Apple to boost performance without drastically altering the architecture. The problem is, the higher the frequency, the hotter the chip gets…

In GeekBench’s CPU benchmarks, the improvement easily surpasses 12%, indicating that Apple has indeed reworked its chip. Added cache, faster bandwidth… These discreet improvements boost performance, even though we’re far from the days when mobile CPU power doubled each year.

But the most impressive part is the graphics. Apple modestly announces a small +40%, which matches what we get in GeekBench. Moreover, the scores are close to that of a… M2 chip! Yes, you read that right, a smartphone is now as powerful as a Mac that’s only a few years old!

However, in practice, the power increase is much more noticeable! In the very demanding SolarBay tests of 3DMark, we recorded gains of 50 to 60%! A record for a single generation of GPU! The second generation of Dynamic Caching and the increase from 8 to 12GB of RAM undoubtedly play a role.

Of course, to see any real difference, you’d better play Assassin’s Creed than BrawlStar! More prosaically, this also helps the device last much longer… Today, young folks still have iPhone 8/X models that hold up quite well, while Androids from that era are clearly outdated.

It should be noted that on the Pro models (Non Max), performance inevitably declines over time, even on the 17 Pro, which is equipped with a vapor chamber. Clearly, for stable performance over an hour of gaming, it’s better to opt for a Pro Max rather than a standard Pro.

Still Overheating?

All these tests obviously lead us to the issue of overheating, a significant problem in recent years, to the point of making devices nearly unusable during the summer months.

Last year, many media outlets and influencers favored by Apple announced that the company had solved the problem that had affected the iPhone 15 Pro, yet we had demonstrated the opposite in our first tests upon the product’s release.

The addition of a vapor chamber seems to prove that Apple is finally addressing the issue. You might have read here and there that the problem seemed resolved this year… which is not entirely accurate.

In reality, as you could see in the video, the temperature rise of the casing is much more gradual and better distributed across the surface. Even at full load, only the sensor plateau heats up quickly (logically, since the chip is right below), but the rest of the phone remains relatively cool, around 35°C.

But if the test is extended, after about 10-15 minutes, the heat makes a big comeback. We recorded up to 40 degrees and even 43°C on the hottest part of the device (mainly at the top of the casing). That’s only 3 degrees less than on the 16 Pro Max, but whose heat was more concentrated.

This vapor chamber system is still just passive cooling, like a radiator. It simply delays the overall temperature increase. Moreover, if the environment is already hot (like during the summer), the fluid used will struggle to return to a lower temperature once vaporized in the chamber. That’s what happened when our screen turned off during filming, as you saw in the video.

Another source of heat, charging in the car (wired or wireless) coupled with CarPlay and Waze was often the winning combo for error messages and a smartphone that refused to charge. Good news, after a few hundred kilometers and outdoor temperatures flirting with 30 degrees, we didn’t have any particular issues in our Ford Puma test car, whose wireless charger wasn’t even ventilated.

It remains to be seen if, in extreme heat, the device will still be usable, which isn’t necessarily a given.

Photo/Video: A Real 8x Zoom?

While the camera block appears to have been completely overhauled, Apple hasn’t really changed much.

The main sensor is still a 48MP 24mm ƒ1.78 with a considerable size for a smartphone (1/1.28″), which delivers excellent shots regardless of the lighting. However, we’re still far from the 1″ sensors of the DJI Osmo Pocket/Mini 5 Pro or even an APS-C sensor from a camera.