iPhone 17/Pro/Air Impressions: Spot the Red Flags!

Hey, what's up? MKBHD here and welcome to your first look and hands-on of everything Apple just unveiled today at their 2025 September event. This is

iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Air.

Definitely get subscribed to be among the first to see the full reviews when they come out. But this is my first impressions, and I actually found it pretty simple to to synthesize my

thoughts on on everything they announced today. Like, there is some good tech.

today. Like, there is some good tech.

There's some interesting new designs and some questionable decisions. But the

funny thing is, you know, as I go to these events and as I think about all this stuff, what usually happens is I end up typically getting some texts from friends asking what I think of the announcements. And my mental task is to

announcements. And my mental task is to summarize everything I'm thinking about into one or two easily digestible sentences or just words to understand what's new and what happened. I don't

want to tell them too much information.

And so that's what I'm going to give you about each of the things Apple announced today. I'm going to give you my super

today. I'm going to give you my super super compressed version of what I saw.

So let's just start with the iPhone 17, right? The base new iPhones. My ultra

right? The base new iPhones. My ultra

simple summary for the iPhone 17 would be a it got prootion and a better selfie camera and the rest is mostly the same.

So the design is mostly unchanged other than the new colors. Same screen sizes, same dimensions, same camera bump, same buttons and camera control, which they

barely talked about, but there's a new A19 chip inside, which we expected. That

should see some nice performance gains and efficiency bumps. Roughly 20% faster CPU, which is nice. And battery life should be a few beats longer. And the

display is brighter, too, getting up to 3,000 nits. But this is the first time

3,000 nits. But this is the first time we are seeing a pro branded feature on a nonpro iPhone because every new iPhone across the range now has prootion. And

it's the same prootion, too. It's the

adaptive one to 120 Hz. Doesn't seem to be handicapped at all. It's funny. We

always used to have that, oh, regular people don't care about 120 Hz argument, but now here it is on the new base iPhones. So, hey, sounds great to me.

iPhones. So, hey, sounds great to me.

This makes the base iPhones much more usable and so does the new base storage of 256 gigs. So, those are welcome upgrades. But the other new thing was a

upgrades. But the other new thing was a selfie camera. And it was funny. The

selfie camera. And it was funny. The

keynote was pretty chill up until the point where they started to talk about this and it was actually the loudest applause and it was really tempting to make fun of it. But I actually do think this is really clever because all these

new iPhones have this massively upgraded selfie camera system. They're calling it center stage, but I actually think that kind of does a disservice because the actual center stage on their laptops and stuff is kind of annoying. But what's

happening is with these phones, they all have a larger 24 megapixel square selfie camera sensor. And so then when you go

camera sensor. And so then when you go to take a selfie, the phone can take a regular vertical selfie or can manually or even automatically take a horizontal

selfie without you having to rotate the phone. And honestly, this might be

phone. And honestly, this might be genius. Like the default for most people

genius. Like the default for most people is obviously to take a vertical selfie.

Now it just fits on the phone. You're

probably viewing it on the phone. But if

you go to take a horizontal selfie to fit more people, suddenly the camera lens is off to the side and it's a little bit less natural looking. So now

since the selfie camera is larger and a square, it can literally just crop an 18 megapixel selfie in portrait or landscape and for videos or photos. It's

I think it's great. It's very useful. it

might be the biggest upgrade to the iPhone 17. So then there's the iPhone 17

iPhone 17. So then there's the iPhone 17 Pro. And my quick friendly summary of

Pro. And my quick friendly summary of the Pro phones is, hey, they got better zoom and more battery and orange. So the

Pro iPhones actually look a little bit different. There's actually quite a bit

different. There's actually quite a bit going on here with this new design.

First of all, there's only three colors: cosmic orange, deep blue, and silver.

really buming me out that there's no black pro phone, but then I remember Dbrand exists. Never mind. But then the

Dbrand exists. Never mind. But then the thing that's going to catch everyone's eye on the back is the camera bar up at the top, which is what Apple keeps calling in their keynote a plateau. Uh

it kind of looks a little bit like the Pixel's visor, or frankly what we've been seeing on a ton of other Android phones for years now, just a huge bar across the top of the back of the phone.

But it's actually not just cameras in here. Apple's done some rearranging of

here. Apple's done some rearranging of the insides of the phone to actually shove more components like the A19 Pro chip and the logic board and storage up

here in that bar so they could fill out more of the bottom of the phone with more battery. And that approach is going

more battery. And that approach is going to make even more sense in a little bit.

But my first reaction to that is, oh yeah, great. That sounds like these Pro

yeah, great. That sounds like these Pro phones might actually come with a real substantial battery upgrade from last year, which is again very welcome. Now,

you might also notice some other little things like the millimeter wave antenna at the top of the phone and the ring around that plateau actually also being an antenna. But then the other new

an antenna. But then the other new design element is that they actually switched back to aluminum, which is interesting because we just saw like 2

years ago the iPhone 15 Pro's whole thing was titanium, the new titanium color and titanium rails, and it was a whole big deal. But now they're switching back to aluminum in a uni-body

form because it's much better thermally.

And so there's also a new vapor chamber right in the middle of the back of this phone. First time we've seen a vapor

phone. First time we've seen a vapor chamber on the iPhone. And so this new cooling system and new unibody aluminum build should mean the iPhone shouldn't get nearly as hot from sustained loads

to the chip, which is different from normal bursty quick on andoff workloads of everyday use. I'm talking more about like rendering long videos or playing an intense game for a long time with ray

tracing at high frame rates. This phone

should be able to keep cool and keep that performance high without overheating. Apple is saying 40% better

overheating. Apple is saying 40% better sustained performance. So yeah, this

sustained performance. So yeah, this design it is just a little bit more than meets the eye. You know, rearranging some components here and there, being more efficient, better cooling, and

better battery. The number that they

better battery. The number that they quoted on stage was 39 hours of video playback, which whatever, dumb stat video playback is kind of ridiculous,

but okay, we'll take that. And I also looked up the iPhone 16 Pro Max's video playback, and that was also a great battery life phone. That one quoted 33 hours, so maybe up to like 10% battery

life on this phone, which is sick. And

then there's the cameras that I mentioned. They always go hard with pro

mentioned. They always go hard with pro phones and cameras and this generation is no exception with the main improvement being the new 48 megapixel

4x telephoto camera. Now 4x might be a lesser number than last year's 5x but that was a smaller 12 megapixel sensor.

This new zoom camera is a 56% larger sensor and has way more resolution. It's

48 megapixels. So that is a smaller gap between the main camera and the zoom.

and you should be able to continue to zoom further and crop more with less consequence now that you have 48 megapixels. The Pro phones also get the

megapixels. The Pro phones also get the new selfie camera. They also get the new brighter display. He's also got C2

brighter display. He's also got C2 support. And then they also got some

support. And then they also got some seriously pro features that I'm looking forward to testing like genlock sync support and also ProRes RAW video which

I will hopefully be getting to test in an autofocus video coming up very soon.

But of course, there was one more new iPhone, the iPhone Air. No number, just Air. And you all know what that means?

Air. And you all know what that means?

They're doing the ultra thin thing, and they're leaning in hard. So, this thing is a stunningly, ridiculously thin, 5.6 mm at the thinnest part. And you can

tell from the commercials, you can tell from my footage here. And you know, the first time I hold the phone, it has the same effect on me that the S25 Edge did from Samsung, which is just it's so

sick. Like clearly nobody's asking for

sick. Like clearly nobody's asking for thinner phones, but once you hold one, it is pretty impressive that they're able to make something like this. But

there are also absolutely some red flags that come along with this. So the basics are it's a 6 and 1/2 in prootion display. It's got the A19 Pro chip

display. It's got the A19 Pro chip inside, titanium body. Uh the new selfie camera of course is in there and it has a single 48 megapixel fusion camera on

the back with the new design again. Same

camera as the iPhone 17 but with the nice plateau from the Pro phone. And

then there's a new N1 chip inside for all the networking connectivity which is Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread, and a new more energyefficient C1X modem for cellular. I put out a short that

cellular. I put out a short that basically already said this, but I really think this phone is going to be a hard sell because if you subtract

emotions from it, it it's just it's the worst one. This is going to jump in the

worst one. This is going to jump in the lineup at $9.99. It replaces essentially the plus phones in the lineup. And it is surrounded by other iPhones that are better than it in basically every way

other than being super thin and light.

So, it's a fascinating gamble. This

phone has the same A19 Pro chip in it as the Pro phones, minus one GPU core.

Interesting choice. Apparently, it's a bit more efficient than the base A19, so that's good for battery life. But we

also just heard a whole long list of choices Apple made with the Pro phones to make them more thermally efficient to not overheat, switching from titanium to aluminum and adding a vapor chamber to

the back. But this phone is still

the back. But this phone is still titanium and absolutely does not have room for an advanced thermal solution or any sort of vapor chamber. So it sounds like this phone could get much hotter

and throttle performance much quicker.

It's a red flag. Now we also know that ultra thin phones have a tendency to be a little bit less durable. They've bent

over the years. And I'm not going to be the first one to point this out. I mean

you I'm sure already glued to JerryRig Everything's channel for his bend test.

And Apple, of course, has thought about this. They've for sure tested this and

this. They've for sure tested this and they're telling us it's the most durable iPhone ever. But I mean, I'm looking at

iPhone ever. But I mean, I'm looking at the phone and I think it qualifies also as a red flag. And then we already know

there is just no way battery life can be good on this phone, right? There's just

no way. I've been reviewing phones for more than a decade and all signs point to it being trash. There was a slide in the keynote today about how they were still proud to achieve all day battery

life, but like come on really. I mean, they still do the thing where they rearrange the components up until the little plateau at the top to make room for more battery

at the bottom, but there's just absolutely not enough room in this phone for a large battery. And it doesn't appear to be silicon carbon or any sort of a special ultra highdensity battery.

And Apple also announced it alongside a special dedicated MagSafe battery accessory just for this phone that adds 3,149

mAh and just barely combined will match the 17 Pro in terms of coded video playback. So, if that doesn't scream red

playback. So, if that doesn't scream red flag, I don't know what to tell you. It

is also eSIM only globally because there's no room in any version of this phone for a plastic SIM card. There's

also no millimeter wave 5G. And like I said, it's coming in at $1,000, which is more expensive than the base iPhone, which will have a better camera

system and better battery life and may overheat less. So, look, I think there's

overheat less. So, look, I think there's two ways to look at this phone.

This is either Apple just throwing something new at the wall and seeing if it sticks. Like, we

just saw them try. Okay, they had the mini phone for like 2 years and that really didn't sell that well. So then

they moved to the Plus and that was also a little bit underwhelming. So now

they're trying that same spot in the lineup for a ultra thin phone and seeing if maybe they can market that to turn into some more sales. So you can see it as that or you can see this as a

visionary long time in the making preview at the future of all phones.

Like maybe someday in the future every phone will be this thin and Apple is just now today getting the tech together with the battery and display and modem

and Apple silicon to make this phone possible. Maybe kind of like how the

possible. Maybe kind of like how the first MacBook Air sucked and was underpowered, but then eventually all laptops became that thin. Maybe that's

also what's going to happen to smartphones. And maybe the same way

smartphones. And maybe the same way Samsung made the ultra thin S25 Edge and then a few months later they came out with their super thin foldable the ZFold 7 and I felt like the Edge phone was one

half of that foldable. Maybe that's also what Apple's doing. Maybe we're going to see an ultra thin foldable iPhone next year. Maybe. Either way, I do think it's

year. Maybe. Either way, I do think it's clear that you probably won't find too many logical reasons to pick up this first gen iPhone air. But I do also

think that picking it up and holding it is going to convince a lot of people cuz it's pretty stunning in person. And it's

the same thing I said about the Samsung phone. It's pretty sick. But only time

phone. It's pretty sick. But only time will tell for that part of the story.

Now, there were a couple other announcements today. There were new

announcements today. There were new AirPods Pro 3, which have twice as good A&C as the last gen, which is crazy.

Plus IP57 and heart rate tracking during workouts, all at the same $250 price.

Definitely going to test those. And

there's also a new Apple Watch Series 11 now with 5G and possible hypertension detection and a slightly new watch Ultra 3 with thinner bezels, LTPO3, and slightly longer battery life. I'm going

to be testing all this stuff over the next couple weeks. So, get subscribed and I'll see you in those videos. And

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you guys very soon in the next videos.

Peace.

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