In a highly produced keynote presentation that has become synonymous with Apple’s annual product unveilings, Apple CEO Tim Cook and his team announced the new iPhone Air, a Unibody iPhone 17 Pro, next-gen Apple Watch, and Air Pods Pro 3 as part of their fall 2025 lineup.
But you’re here to learn about the Pro line, which emphasizes a thinner, more robust design that promises longer battery life. And the buzzword of the event was “plateau.”
Image Credit – Apple
Robust Unibody Design
For content creators, the standout features lie in the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. These models showcase a newly redesigned precision-machined aluminum unibody frame, enhancing durability and creating additional space for all-day battery life.
The Pro line includes a 6.9-inch display for the Pro Max and a 6.3-inch display for the standard iPhone 17 Pro.
Image Credit – Apple
The unibody design integrates an innovative laser-welded vapor chamber that employs water cooling to dissipate heat from sensitive components, ensuring the phone remains comfortable to hold.
Additionally, the new iPhone 17 eliminates the glass back, opting instead for a Ceramic Shield on both the front and back, which is four times more resistant than Gorilla Glass and accommodates a larger battery.
As a result, users enjoy up to four additional hours of usage on a single charge, achieving up to 39 hours of video playback and a 50% charge in just 20 minutes with a fast charger.
Image Credit – Apple
Regarding performance, the iPhone 17 Pro line caters specifically to resource-intensive tasks such as video editing, audio recording, and gaming. It features the next-generation 6-core A19 Pro Apple Silicon CPU and an equally powerful 6-core GPU architecture that includes Neural Accelerators built into each GPU core, a larger cache, and more memory than A18 Pro.
The result is a smartphone that is as powerful as a MacBook Pro. There’s also a Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion (supporting up to 120 fps), and a peak brightness of up to 3,000 nits with 10-bit color and expanded dynamic range.
Enhanced Pro Level Camera System
For the camera system, all three cameras on the iPhone 17 Pro Max are 48 MP Fusion cameras, allowing for double the focal length with up to 8x zoom at 100mm and 4x zoom at 200mm. Each camera supports 4K video recording at up to 120 fps.
The telephoto lens incorporates a second-generation tetra prism design, enabling macro photography alongside focal lengths from 13mm to 200mm. It also includes an upgraded Photonic Engine for enhanced image processing.
Image Credit – Apple
The cameras support 10-bit Dolby HDR, ProRes RAW, and ACES, along with Timecode and Genlock, which improves post-production workflows using the iPhone’s camera files.
Moreover, the iPhone 17 Pro line can also dual capture video with image stabilization to record from both front and rear cameras simultaneously.
The 18 MP front-facing camera supports Center Stage and features a square image sensor paired with AI, allowing it to frame the subject in the center automatically.
This camera seamlessly switches between portrait and landscape orientations without requiring adjustments. Users can manually tap to expand the field of view and rotate between portrait and landscape modes without losing grip on the device.
Image Credit – Apple
Final Thoughts
As previously mentioned, the buzzword of the day is “plateau.” While the iPhone continues to slim down, Apple has introduced a larger camera bump that spans the full width of the phone, referred to as the “plateau.”
This added width accommodates all three cameras and their associated sensors, along with the CPU, GPU, and antenna arrays.
However, one might question whether such a large plateau undermines the goal of maintaining a thin profile. If the phone is noticeably thicker across its width, why not make it uniformly thicker all around to allow for even more battery space and increased storage?
Pricing and Availability
The iPhone 17 Pro Max comes in three colors: Silver, Deep Blue, and Cosmic Orange, which is an intriguing choice.
It offers storage options ranging from 256GB to 2TB, starting at a retail price of $1,199 for the iPhone 17 Pro Max and $1,099 for the standard 17 Pro.
Apple also continues its trade-in program, with up to $700 credit toward your new iPhone.
Preorders will begin on Friday, September 12, with shipping scheduled for the following week on September 19, 2025.
[source: Apple]
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