Scour iPhone forums and you’ll see a lot of people complain about their phones getting hot during gaming. Apple addressed this with its new vapor chamber cooling system, which helps dissipate heat during intense gameplay.
Combine that with a better zoom camera, the longest iPhone battery life ever and a head-turning Cosmic Orange color and this looks like a solid upgrade.
Cameras
The iPhone 17 Pro Max is a serious upgrade for anyone coming from an older model, particularly the 14 and 13 Pros. It features better heat management (thanks to a vapor chamber cooling system), faster charging, a larger screen and new cameras that are more versatile than ever before.
The trio of rear cameras on the phone is impressively versatile. Both the wide-angle and ultrawide lenses can capture a wide field of view, while the telephoto lens is now 5x zoomier than last year’s, although it loses a bit of resolution. Apple also added a 4x zoom option that is essentially a crop and is much better than the old 5x lens.
If you’re shooting video, the camera is even more impressive. The iPhone 17 Pro and Max have a new square image sensor that can record in vertical or horizontal format, and you can switch between the two onscreen by tapping an icon. It’s a nice addition, but I wish it had a more advanced portrait mode that could automatically rotate to the right orientation.
Both phones also offer Dolby Vision HDR recording, 4K120fps and the ability to capture raw video using ProRes RAW and ACES. The new ProRes supports genlock, which allows you to precisely synchronize multiple inputs and outputs for compositing, keying, and other professional techniques.
There’s also a new front-facing selfie camera called Center Stage that can record in square or landscape modes and can auto-zoom out for group shots. It’s not as good at capturing low-light photos as the 16 Pro’s selfie camera, but it does produce better quality video with less noise and a more natural skin tone.
Overall, the Pro 17 series is a very compelling flagship that should keep Apple at the top of smartphone camera rankings for years to come. If you own a 15 or 13 Pro, though, I’m not sure it would be worth an upgrade unless you want to make the switch to USB-C or take advantage of the new cameras. But the Pro 17 is a very solid upgrade for anyone coming from an older model, and it’s even more tempting with the promise of longer battery life and a head-turning Cosmic Orange finish.
Design
Apple continues to deliver an excellent experience for creators with its iPhone 17 Pro. Influencers and content makers get a great selfie camera that’s better at shooting in low light, while photographers now have high-resolution cameras in a wide range of focal lengths plus a usable 8x digital zoom option for more reach. Videographers get the best cinematic smartphone with improved features that make it easier to record professional-quality 4K videos and slow down footage with the new Slo-Mo mode.
The iPhone 17 Pro also offers more battery life than ever before. Scour phone forums over the last decade, and you’ll find hundreds of posts asking why Apple phones don’t have bigger batteries. Well, the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are thicker to accommodate larger batteries, and they offer the longest run time Apple has ever claimed for a single charge: 33 hours of video playback on the Pro, and 39 hours on the Pro Max.
These battery claims are backed up by real-world performance tests. In our 3DMark Solar Bay Unlimited graphics testing, the Pro and Pro Max scored a respectable 28.1 average frame rate and 7,396 score—that’s better than what I saw on my 16 Pro’s dual-lens camera bump-mounted Pixel 2.
In addition to faster processors, the new chips inside the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max use a more efficient design to help them stay cooler when in heavy use. A new vapor chamber and the shift to aluminum from titanium—which reportedly caused overheating issues in previous models—are designed to help dissipate heat more efficiently.
Finally, the new phones have a 120Hz display that makes scrolling web pages and jumping between apps look incredibly fluid. It’s also a big improvement over the 60Hz panels in iPhones past, which just feel sluggish by comparison.
The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are still the best smartphones you can buy if you’re an Apple devotee. They offer amazing cameras that’ll please creatives of all types, a super bright screen for outdoor use in bright sunlight, fast recharge times with the included Lightning cable, and support for all MagSafe accessories. But if you’re an Android user who cares about battery life, Google’s Pixel phones have longer battery lives than either the iPhone 17 Pro or Pro Max, and the Galaxy S25+ has a superior zoom camera.
Battery
Scour phone forums over the last decade and you’ll see many people asking why phones don’t have beefier batteries. The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max answer that call by packing bigger, higher-capacity batteries. Apple says they’re good for 33 hours of video playback on the Pro and 39 hours on the Pro Max. Both use a new, high-density battery cell that’s taller and thinner than previous models.
The taller design helps the phones achieve their impressive runtimes by allowing them to cool down faster. That’s important because when processors get too hot they start to throttle themselves, which can lead to performance dips and lag during graphics-heavy games. Both the Pro and Pro Max use a vapor chamber cooling system to help dissipate heat.
Apple has also made other battery improvements with the new phones. All the 2025 iPhones support wireless charging at up to 7.5W, and the 17 Pro and Pro Max have a special USB-C power delivery port that supports fast wired charging at up to 30W. Apple’s own charger supports this, as do third-party brands like Ugreen and Baseus.
Both the Pro and the Pro Max also have Adaptive Power Mode, which works alongside Low Power Mode to automatically limit background activity to preserve runtimes. This is a great feature for anyone who tends to over-use their phone and end up with a dead battery more often than they’d like.
In CNET’s 3-hour video streaming test, the Pro and Pro Max lost just 9% of their charge, which is much better than the iPhone 14 Pro (which lost 12%) or the iPhone 16 Pro (21%). That’s also a better score than the Motorola Razr (2024) that we tested recently.
The 17 Pro and Pro Max are crafted from aerospace-grade aluminum with a new brushed finish that’s strong, light, and thermally conductive. Both also have an Apple-designed vapor chamber that’s laser-welded into the aluminum unibody, which helps with thermal management. Apple is promoting its green credentials with both models, too, by using recycled content and renewable electricity in manufacturing. It’s part of Apple 2030, which aims to be carbon neutral by the end of this decade.
Performance
The iPhone 17 Pro Max is Apple’s most powerful large-screen flagship phone with a powerful zoom camera, better sustained performance thanks to vapor chamber cooling and the longest battery life ever. It also offers a head-turning design that might not suit everyone’s tastes.
This year’s A19 Pro chip is the most efficient one Apple has ever made. It uses less power to achieve the same performance and enables features like Live Translation in Messages and Phone and smarter Shortcuts. But it’s the camera AI upgrades that might make the biggest difference to many users. Apple has added more accurate Face ID, and its Portrait mode is now able to identify faces at a further distance.
It can also do more sophisticated depth-detection to create a better portrait without blurring their background. The front camera has also been upgraded to an 18-megapixel sensor for more detailed selfies. The cameras can also shoot video at up to 60 frames per second, which is great for high-speed sports footage and slow motion shots.
Apple is also using the larger rear-facing camera to deliver a 4x optical zoom capability. I put this to the test against Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra, which has a similar 4x zoom. The iPhone 17 Pro Max was able to capture a clearer image at 2x zoom, but the image quickly became overly warm and there was a loss of detail at 40x zoom.
The bigger sensor also means the iPhone can capture more light at higher shutter speeds, which is perfect for low-light photography. I took a series of photos in a dimly lit bar, and the iPhone captured some very impressive details. The image quality is very comparable to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and the two phones are close in terms of low-light performance.
The new Pro and Pro Max models have a sturdy aluminum chassis that feels good in the hand and is much more comfortable to hold without a case than last year’s titanium-framed Pros. This year’s model is also lighter than previous models and, thanks to the change in material for the back cover, has improved thermal conductivity. This is important because when you’re playing a graphically intensive game, the processor can get hot and cause problems. The improved thermal dissipation should help prevent this from happening, making the Pro and Pro Max feel more responsive than their predecessors.
