The iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are available for ordering now, with shipments starting this Friday. The early reviews for the phones were posted on Wednesday, and the general consensus is that Apple has quite a lineup to consider. Here are some highlights from several of the reviews. Macworld plans to have full reviews of the new iPhones in the near future.
iPhone Air reviews
The main concern with the iPhone Air is battery life–a thinner phone means a smaller battery. Nicole Nguyen of the Wall Street Journal addresses this concern right off the bat in her review. Using the iPhone Air during her typical day, she found that her fully charged iPhone Air ended the day with 19 percent battery life left in the tank. “It wasn’t the letdown I had feared,” said Nguyen.
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The Verge’s Allison Johnson said the iPhone Air, “isn’t your average phone” and calls it “a big phone with small phone energy.” Johnson didn’t notice an unbalanced feeling due to the camera bar, but did find that the Air’s curves and the Ceramic Shield on the back made for handling that made the Air feel less secure.
As for the iPhone Air’s camera, Raymond Wong of Gizmodo said that the rear camera is great for posting to social media, and found the 2x optical zoom “more than sufficient.” Still, Wong found times when having an ultrawide and telephoto lens would have been nice. The Air’s 18MP Center Stage selfie camera “is the real star of the show,” said Wong, and the Air’s ability to take horizontal shots while being held horizontally makes “selfies look so much better because of this.”
Meanwhile, the Air’s single speaker was Sam Rutherford’s “main issue with the Air’s design.” Over at Engadget, he wrotes, “Granted, it packs a punch both in terms of volume and presence, but after years of stereo sound being the de facto equipment on premium smartphones, one-sided audio doesn’t sit quite right.”
Mark Spoonauer of Tom’s Guide summed up the overall thinking well: “Overall, I think the iPhone Air is worth buying for those who want a super slim phone that’s very easy to carry that doesn’t sacrifice too much on performance. But you will have to live with some trade-offs if you want something this compact.”
iPhone 17 reviews
At The Standard, David Phelan, like many iPhone customers, is excited about the iPhone 17’s display and how ProMotion is now available on non-Pro iPhones. Phelan said the iPhone is “no longer the country cousin” to Android phones with 120Hz screens. “Now, it’s the leader of the pack again.” Phelan also called the always-on display an “excellent consequence.”
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John Velasco of Tom’s Guide found that the iPhone 17’s A19 chip offers “performance with basic tasks…on par” with the iPhone 17 Pro and its A19 Pro chip. Velasco was more “impressed” with the iPhone 17’s GPU performance, which posted a vast improvement in frame rate performance in graphics benchmarks.
At Cnet, Abrar Al-Heeti took a close look at the iPhone 17’s 48MP wide-angle and 48MP ultrawide cameras. The cameras help “this baseline device makes a case for itself,” said Al-Heeti, who also found that the 12-megapixel 2x telephoto images that she shot “maintain a solid level of detail as you punch in.”
iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max reviews
In her video review, YouTuber iJustine talks about how Apple made a “bold choice” with its Pro color choices, having a Cosmic Orange and a Deep Blue phone in the review. iJustine shows how the new Cosmic Orange is reminiscent of the “accents of the Apple Watch [Ultra].”
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HSALS at Geek Culture looked at the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which has the same A19 Pro chip as the iPhone 17 Pro. HSALS found the CPU performance to be marginally better compared to the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro, with the A19 Pro posting Geekbench scores of 3,547 (single-core) and 8,953 (multi-core). The A18 Pro’s scores were 3,460 and 8,730.
Engadget’s Cherlynn Low found the iPhone 17 Pro’s cameras “impressively versatile,” taking pictured that “deliver rich detail and vibrant colors.” However, Low found the dual camera feature a little tricky, whether it was figuring out how to hold the phone optimally, or being conscious of where to look while shooting. But “it’s a nice tool to have handy.”
Check out our reviews of the best cases for iPhone 17, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max and iPhone Air.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor, Macworld
Roman is a Macworld Senior Editor with over 30 years of experience covering the tech industry, focusing on the Mac and other products in the Apple ecosystem. He is also the host of the Macworld Podcast. His career started at MacUser, where he received Apple certification as a repair technician (when Apple did that kind of thing). He's also worked for MacAddict, MacLife, and TechTV.