iPhone 17 review: the best iPhone deal for everyone
The base model iPhone is almost perfect this year
Review score: 4.5 out of 5
🏅 Editor’s Choice Award
✅ Pros
🔆 Brighter 3,000-nit screen with a faster 120Hz refresh rate
📱 Always-on-Display to match the iPhone Pro
🧠 Storage doubled from 128GB to 256GB at no extra cost
🤳 Auto-rotating selfie camera saves your wrist from awkwardly turning your phone
📷 Sharper 48MP ultrawide camera
🔌 Faster 30W wired charging for a quick battery top-up
❌ Cons
🟰 8GB of memory remains unchanged
🔭 Lack of usable zoom beyond its 2x digital crop
🐢 USB-C limited to 480Mbps USB 2 speeds
The Shortcut Review
The base iPhone has never been a better value than it is now with the iPhone 17. Still $799, the same price the iPhone has maintained since the iPhone 12, this year’s base iPhone receives a pro-level display that’s bigger, brighter, faster, and will stay on even when the phone is locked. Better yet, the iPhone 17 has doubled its storage from 128GB to 256GB for no extra cost – crazy in this economy.
The iPhone 17 feels significantly faster, thanks to both the new ProMotion display and the A19 chip. Meanwhile, selfies have never been easier with the new 24MP square-shaped sensor, which can automatically rotate and zoom to fit all your friends and family. The ultrawide camera has been upgraded to 48MP to match the main camera, although a dedicated telephoto camera is still not available.
Choosing the base iPhone in the past felt like settling for less, without the iPhone Pro’s brighter screen, 120Hz ProMotion, and always-on display – but these upgrades negate that. With the added storage and camera improvements, the new iPhone 17 is almost a steal for $799. The real deciding factor for spending $300 more for the iPhone 17 Pro will come down to whether you need the 8x “optical-quality” zoom, larger battery, and better cooling.
Full Review
📱 Bigger screen, thinner bezels. The iPhone 17 has grown up with a larger 6.3-inch screen versus the iPhone 16’s 6.1-inch display. It feels a little wider in the hand as a result, but it hasn’t gotten too big to handle. You also get more screen real estate not only from the larger display, but also from the slightly thinner bezels around the screen.
🌈 Colors. The iPhone 17 comes in a series of softer colors this year, including lavender, sage, mist blue, white, and black. My unit came in mist blue, which hues to a more neutral, strictly blue color that is noticeably less vibrant than last year’s ultramarine iPhone 16. The gentle lavender or plant-shaded sage would have been my primary color choices for the iPhone 17.
Specs & Performance
🔆 Sunlight screen. The iPhone 17 now has a screen as bright as the iPhone 17 Pro. The screen peaks at 3,000 nits in outdoor light, allowing you to see what’s on the display more clearly in broad daylight. Alternatively, HDR looks even better on the iPhone 17 now that the HDR brightness peaks at 1,600-nits. Even normal usage is improved as the display’s typical 1,000-nit brightness makes everything on the iPhone 17 look more vibrant.
🏃♂️ 120Hz ProMotion. The screen isn’t just brighter; it’s also faster, with a 120Hz refresh rate that matches the iPhone Pro series. Scrolling feels buttery smooth with the faster refresh rate, and iOS 26’s new liquid glass animations look especially slick on the new display. ProMotion also gives this display a variable refresh rate, which will drop down to 1Hz on static menus. This includes the always-on display finally available on a base iPhone, allowing you to see your clock, widgets, and notifications on the lock screen.
♨️ Running hot. The iPhone 17 also runs faster thanks to its upgraded A19 processor. The chip makes everything feel snappy, from starting apps and playing games like Zenless Zone Zero to running serious creator apps like Photoshop. More strenuous tasks cause the iPhone 17 to heat up to the point of discomfort, though, as it doesn’t feature the vapor chamber or other cooling improvements found in the iPhone 17 Pro.
⚖️ Pro or regular. The iPhone 17 is essentially the iPhone Pro as we’ve known it up until now. It features a larger, brighter, and faster screen, along with increased storage. However, it still lacks a true telephoto camera available only on the iPhone Pro models. The iPhone 17 Pro, meanwhile, is even more of a beast with its new 8x optical-quality telephoto camera, a higher-spec A19 Pro processor, 4GB more memory, a larger battery, and improved cooling. Those upgrades are worth the $300 if you need them for a better and longer-running phone, or if you do more video work with your phone. Otherwise, the iPhone 17 is simply a better value
Cameras.
🤳 Selfie mode got a 0.5x upgrade. If you love taking selfies, you’re going to love the iPhone 17’s new 24MP front-facing camera. Not only is it higher resolution, but the sensor inside has been replaced with a new square-shaped imaging chip and a wider lens to boot. This new sensor enables you to switch between horizontal and vertical selfies with a single button press, eliminating the need to twist your wrist awkwardly. You can also set the selfie camera to auto-rotate and adjust the framing to suit the number of people in your shot.
📸 48MP ultrawide camera. The ultrawide camera also received a big resolution bump, increasing the megapixel count from 12 to 48. Apple still pixel-bins the final images down to 24MP, but any photos I took with the ultrawide camera looked noticeably sharper compared to the iPhone 16. This is true of any macro mode photos I took. There was noticeably more detail, allowing me to see fine textures too small to see with my eye alone.
🔭 Needs more zoom. The iPhone 17 still lacks an actual telephoto camera, and that’s a noticeable omission compared to the Google Pixel 10 and Samsung Galaxy S25. The best you get on the iPhone 17 is a 2x digital zoom, which essentially just uses half of the pixels centered on the 48MP main camera. You can still digitally zoom beyond that, but images look awfully pixelated beyond 4x.
Battery
🔋 Battery life. I saw a consistent 20-25% remaining battery life after a long day of iPhone 17 usage. This typically involves a mix of gaming, taking photos and videos, doomscrolling on X and Reddit, watching YouTube, streaming music, and using GPS to route to events. Overall, battery life is just slightly longer, by about 30 minutes, than I saw on the iPhone 16. Still, those 30 minutes could be all you need to help you navigate home or call an Uber.
🔌 30W faster charging. Charging up the iPhone 17 is also quicker than ever, thanks to its new 30W wired charging support. The iPhone 17 soaked up a 39% battery charge in just 15 minutes, and then 71% after 30 minutes. Wireless charging, meanwhile, remains at the same 25W as the iPhone 16 series.
Should you buy the iPhone 17?
✅ Yes, if…
📱 You wanted an iPhone with a brighter and faster display
💡 You’ve been waiting for Always On Display to finally come to the base iPhone
☎️ Your current phone is an iPhone 15 or older
🤳 You’re tired of turning your wrist to switch between vertical/horizontal selfies
❌ No, if…
🔭 You need more reach with a telephoto camera (get the iPhone 17 Pro instead)
♨️ You never want to feel your phone running hot (get the iPhone 17 Pro instead)
🔋 You’re looking for more battery life in your phone (get the iPhone 17 Pro Max instead)
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.