iPhone 17 Pro hands-on: The unibody and camera plateau feel more significant in person

Surprising absolutely no one, Apple has unveiled the new iPhone 17 series, including the iPhone Air, which CEO Tim Cook said freed the company up to make the Pro handsets the most Pro ever. Here at Apple Park, I was able to take a high speed hands-on demo of the iPhone 17 Pro, and made a beeline for the new Cosmic Orange model. I’m already very taken with the way it looks and feels, and don’t even mind the new camera plateau, but maybe that’s just because I’m a sucker for change.

This isn’t a shiny new thing, to be clear. Far from it. The iPhone 17 Pro that I played with was the orange version and it has a sort of matte finish and a vague “soft touch” feel compared to the iPhone 16 Pro I’ve been using for about a year. In spite of the new unibody design, I found the camera control button on the right still reasonably easy to press, although I think I’m more used to the one on the iPhone 16 Pro and find it a bit easier to click at the moment.

I also had a chance to quickly check out the new Centerstage selfie camera, and I have to say it now makes sense why Apple had to redesign the camera app with iOS 26. To enable new features like the auto-rotating aspect ratio or the dual-camera video capture, you’ll have to dive deeper into menus. I didn’t immediately know where to find the switches for these but I’m sure I’ll learn over time. For now, a helpful Apple representative standing next to the phone showed me where everything was.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/iphone-17-pro-hands-on-the-unibody-and-camera-plateau-feel-more-significant-in-person-185553855.html?src=rss