iPhone 17 Pro reviewed by an Android user: Can it convince me to drop my Pixel?

Here I am, back for my annual dive into the wide world of iOS. It’s become something of a tradition at this point — I finish my review of Google’s latest Pixel flagship, then almost immediately swap my SIM (now an eSIM) into Apple’s top Android rival to see if Cupertino’s latest and greatest can tempt me to switch. Usually, I know how things are going to go: Apple will put up a pretty good fight with solid cameras and excellent optimization, only to come up short in terms of the overall experience.

This year, however, I feel like there has been less change from one generation of Android flagship to the next from the two most prominent players in the US. The Galaxy S25 line barely needed to exist, and the Pixel 10 series is the best phone Google has ever made, but it’s not life-changing — it’s still a Pixel, just better. This has opened the door for the iPhone 17 Pro to make an impression on me. So, I swapped to iOS for a month, and here’s how it went.

At a time when all of the best Android phones in the US look, well, the same as they did last year, the iPhone 17 Pro actually looks… different. Not massively different — you can still pick out the Apple logo on the back, and the three camera sensors still sit in the easily identifiable triangle, but it’s certainly changed more than either the Pixel 10 series or the Galaxy S25. And honestly, I like it.

Apple’s Pro-grade overhaul starts with the possibly controversial decision to send titanium packing and adopt a unibody aluminum construction in its place. Now, I know I’d previously made fun of Apple for making such a big deal about its obsession with titanium, but it’s almost weirder to make this pivot. The Cupertino-based company had just spent how many years declaring titanium the toughest and lightest stuff around? Well, now aluminum is better, I guess.

Alright, so at the very least, that change to a unibody construction means that the iPhone 17 Pro won’t shatter if dropped at just the right angle, which really is a good thing. I’ve seen too many friends carry spider-webbed iPhones for several months at a time before seeking repairs, so I’m glad to skip that step — a step that most Android flagships still risk if you don’t want to buy a phone case.

Of course, the new unibody aluminum design comes with two noticeable changes on the back: the camera bump is now significantly larger, and there’s a glass cutout around where the MagSafe ring and wireless charging coil reside. I don’t actually hate either change, as the new bump, dubbed the camera plateau, opens up much more space for the new telephoto sensor (which I’ll get to in a little while), and the Ceramic Shield insert complements the frame perfectly without sacrificing toughness.

This year, we picked out the Cosmic Orange version for our review unit, and I’m starting to think it’s the most iconic iPhone color in years. Walking around my adopted hometown of Baltimore, I can pick out other Cosmic Orange iPhones from several yards off, if not from across the street. The Deep Blue and Silver finishes are good, too, but not quite as noticeable as my chosen orange.

Around the edges, the iPhone 17 Pro feels the same as its predecessor, with the Action Button on the left, the power button on the right, and not a SIM tray to be found — it’s still eSIM all the way. It also keeps the Camera Control, which I’ve demoted to merely launching the camera, as it’s just a bit too tricky to use for navigation, in my opinion.

All of those buttons surround a 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR display that falls within my smartphone sweet spot. It’s the same size as the perfectly pocketable Pixel 10 Pro, although not quite as sharp or as bright, with a maximum brightness of 3,000 nits rather than 3,300. It does, however, match the Pixel 10 Pro with a 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, which has been perfectly smooth through all of my testing.

Additionally, since the iPhone 17 Pro arrived on my desk just after I finished reviewing the Pixel 10 Pro XL, it has enjoyed a bit longer run in my pocket. It’s been on hand for a music festival, a wedding, a trip to Washington, DC, for a soccer match, and a green, smelly tide that’s loomed over Baltimore’s harbor for the last few weeks.

For the most part, it’s slotted into my daily life without issue, offering the brightness to power through a sunny day, the sharpness to stream Champions League matches in good quality, and the reliability to navigate me to and from Philadelphia to celebrate two of my closest friends from college. I’ve also come around to love just how dim the iPhone 17 Pro’s display can get, as it’s kept me from accidentally blinding myself on several early mornings of both marathon training and marathon spectating.

Now that I’ve spent several hundred words talking about Apple’s refreshed iPhone 17 Pro design, let me spend about half of that on Apple Intelligence. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to write more about Apple Intelligence, but it’s still just kind of there. It’s not great, it’s not exciting, and it’s still missing one or two of the biggest features that Apple has been promising. It’s certainly a long way behind Google and Samsung, but I’ve at least found space in my life for a few features.

The first of which is a feature that Apple already tried once but had to roll back because of just how broken it was. Yes, notification priorities and summaries are back in action on the iPhone 17 Pro, and they’re not nearly as bad as before. I can mostly trust that my phone will give me an accurate summary of the last few texts to appear on my screen, which is a massive improvement over the time it told me that Trinity Rodman was Zendaya’s dad. Now, it just gives me pretty basic recaps, which is all I wanted in the first place.

Otherwise, I had hoped for a little more improvement from some of Apple’s more creative AI features, such as the Image Playground and Clean Up. I struggled to click with the former last year because of creepy eyes and Labubu-like teeth, and I figured that Apple’s new integration with ChatGPT would bring a bit more quality and a better variety of art styles to the table — it hasn’t. Each time I try to use ChatGPT on a prompt, I get an empty black box, almost as if it can’t understand what I’m asking for.

Clean Up, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have changed at all. It’s pretty much fine if you’re trying to remove a small object from a fairly clean background, but it suffers from some of the worst artifacting of any AI-powered photo editor if there’s any clutter. I took a second crack at cleaning up a crowded shot from the Amsterdam Marathon from last year, only to find that the A19 Pro chip still fills in the missing people with warped Lovecraftian horrors where a hospitality tent should be.

I think Apple’s Visual Intelligence is in a similar boat to its Image Playground in the sense that it tries to work with ChatGPT, but my questions usually come back unanswered. I’ve pointed it at everything from flowers to album covers and asked for more information, only to receive the answer of, “What would you like to ask ChatGPT?” Now, it’s occasionally on the ball, picking out little differences between pairs of running shoes and internet browsers, but I still run into errors when I least expect them.

And then, there’s Siri. Apple has been promising a more conversational, cross-app version of Siri since the day it launched Apple Intelligence. It’s still not here. Siri still doesn’t have on-screen awareness, personal context, or the ability to jump from Photos to Notes and back again — or between any other apps, for that matter. It’s all supposed to be coming in a future software update, but it’s more than a year behind Gemini Live at this point, and I just don’t see Apple catching up.

Whenever I try to decide whether it’s worth switching from Android to iOS, I usually reach this point before I go, “Wait, what am I doing?” See, as much as I like the compact reliability of an iPhone in my pocket, and as much as AI still feels like a wash to me, I never seem to want to give up the powerful Android cameras that I’ve carried for so long.

After all, Apple has made a habit of capping itself at 25x zoom on the last few iPhone Pro models, and I’ve always thought of its setup as video first, photos later, and that’s just not how I capture the world. So, when Apple brought back the same 48MP primary and 48MP ultrawide sensors for its iPhone 17 Pro, I thought I was in for more of the same — which is fine, just not my style.

Admittedly, though, I spoke too soon. Apple had one meaningful hardware change in store for the back of its latest Pro, and I think it’s made all the difference. It swapped from a 12MP 5x telephoto sensor with the equivalent of a 120mm focal length to a 48MP 4x telephoto sensor with a much more portrait-friendly 100mm focal length. Even better, the bump in resolution allows you to use sensor cropping to achieve optical-quality 8x zoom, and the entire package now tops out at 40x zoom.

And now, for some camera samples.

Of these first four shots, I feel like three of them paint the iPhone 17 Pro in a pretty good light. I love the shot of the puzzle to the right, not least because I did 1,000 pieces in one sitting. I think it’s perfectly lit, without sacrificing the detail of each piece or compromising the overall design, just like I think the view of Baltimore from the comfort of a water taxi is as clear as can be. It’s sharp both above and below the water with spot-on colors from the fading sun. And yes, the matcha latte to the left was as tasty as it looks — nearly as good as the natural bokeh off the edge of the table.

Of this next set, I think the shot of the Empire State Building is the most impressive. It holds very good details in both the tower itself and the much lower building in the foreground, with only a few windows blown out due to bright lights. For a shot where I simply aimed the iPhone 17 Pro at the sky and held it for a second, I can’t complain about much.

Moving to the 48MP ultrawide sensor, I have to say that Apple’s wider field of view has really won me over in recent years. Yes, it makes my arm look extremely hairy at the music festival in the middle, but it also gives proper scale to both the stage on the right and the tall sailing ship docked on Broadway in Baltimore. Colors are good across all four shots, too, with no annoying glare from the sun despite it sitting comfortably in the background of my selfie.

By far the best camera on the iPhone 17 Pro, however, is its 48MP 4x optical telephoto sensor. It’s both excellent at 4x zoom, which is equivalent to a 100mm focal length, and at 8x zoom, which takes a sensor crop to reach a 200mm focal length. The image of a pigeon in the first row is one of the very first shots I took with the iPhone 17 Pro, followed shortly by the white flowers, which were intended as a throwaway shot just to show what the camera could do.

I’m just as impressed by the detail in the black and white image of Lancaster’s Central Market, which I took in color and flipped with a Photographic Style. The shadows are just right along each bump in the roof, and it’s still possible to pick out each brick. Also, just how cute is the picture of the dog to the right in the fading evening sun?

These next shots go to show what the iPhone 17 Pro can do across its entire zoom range — well, outside of the ultrawide camera. I like everything up to the 20x shot in the second row, only because you really start to see where the 4x telephoto sensor loses its effectiveness. The maxed-out 40x zoom shot on the right is noticeably fuzzy, with some blurring on the cross and general muddiness to the clouds. I do, however, think that the 8x zoom image is one of the best I’ve taken of a church that I see every single day.

I’m also not the biggest selfie snapper, but I’ve found that Apple’s new 18MP Center Stage selfie camera — which utilizes a square sensor for multiple aspect ratios — is excellent for FaceTime and Zoom calls. It seamlessly tracks me as I wander around my apartment, making it seem like I’m always perfectly framed even as I step back from the sensor.

Apple’s typical camera strength, however, lies in its video capabilities, which remain excellent. Its stabilization is rock-solid, even when zoomed to 2x or 4x. Support for both ProRes RAW and 4K with Dolby Vision at 120fps are impressive, too, though I’m more of a point, shoot, and upload to Instagram kind of guy. I’m sure there are video editors out there who could work actual magic with Apple’s advanced features, but they’re admittedly beyond me.

What’s not beyond me, though, is Apple’s stable of Photographic Styles and its tap (or scribble) based Clean Up feature. The former works like a set of customizable filters, which have helped bring punch to some of my simplest shots, while the latter is a riff on Magic Eraser that works well with well-defined obstacles but struggles with more complicated scenes.

You can check out full-resolution versions of the camera samples above (and several more) at this Google Drive link.

While I was pleasantly surprised by Apple’s upgraded camera experience, I couldn’t claim the same level of surprise from the rest of the iPhone 17 Pro’s internals. Not because they’re not very good, but because I already had high expectations for Apple’s latest in-house chipset going in. After all, top-notch optimization has long been Apple’s secret to doing more with less, pushing its smaller batteries and limited RAM to the same heights as the best Android phones.

So, when Apple made some lofty claims about its A19 Pro chipset, which is finally backed by 12GB of RAM, I had to find out if that was still the case. It’s hard to believe this is the first time Apple has bumped its top-tier flagship beyond 8GB of RAM to support its 3nm chipset, but here we are. And, on paper, that sounds like it should bring a sizable boost to the iPhone 17 Pro’s benchmarking numbers. I’m not one to unquestioningly accept Apple’s claims (or anyone else’s), though, so I loaded up our usual benchmarks and let the iPhone 17 Pro do its thing.

Right off the bat, it seems like everything is fine. The A19 Pro chipset picks up right where its predecessor left off, dominating the single-core Geekbench 6 test and staying neck and neck with the Galaxy S25 Ultra in multi-core CPU performance. Unsurprisingly, it also surpasses Google’s updated Tensor G5, which has never been about achieving the highest benchmarking scores. The iPhone 17 Pro keeps up the good run of testing on the GPU side, finishing its 20 runs just behind the OnePlus 13 but offering more consistent scores from start to finish.

To me, there’s very little exciting — or even interesting — here; the iPhone 17 Pro puts up the shiny and exciting numbers we’re used to seeing from Apple’s well-optimized flagship. It might not jump out ahead of the rest in the same way that it used to, but it’s certainly not falling behind. We’ll have to wait and see how it stands up to the forthcoming crop of Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 flagships, but for now, I’m pleased with what Apple is putting down.

In day-to-day life, the iPhone 17 Pro largely backs up what it does in our carefully controlled testing, effortlessly handling everything I’ve asked of it without issue. During my month with the phone, I’ve put it through a wedding, a music festival, a trip home to see family, and spectated two marathons, never feeling like the chipset couldn’t keep up. I had no problems switching from Spotify to control the marathon playlist, to Apple Maps to find my way around the course, and to the official Marine Corps Marathon and New York City Marathon apps, just to ensure I had enough time to see my runners.

I do, however, think that the iPhone 17 Pro has one problem that I didn’t anticipate: This phone runs hot. It was almost too warm to pick up and use by the end of its GPU stress testing, and I noticed it warming under consistent loads of either music streaming or navigation, or both. Unfortunately, that warming has a very adverse effect on the iPhone 17 Pro’s battery life, as I quickly discovered in our controlled drain test. Perhaps the most confusing part to me is that Apple claimed its new vapor chamber would both improve cooling and battery life, only to not really achieve either goal.

At first, I thought those perceived battery woes were just in my head. After all, I had become accustomed to my iPhone 16 lasting a day with little battery left, so at first, it felt like business as usual — especially when I’d only just set up my phone. Then, I ran our controlled battery test, which simulates everything from web browsing to a video call, and realized just how poorly the iPhone 17 Pro was performing.

It came last or next to last in almost all categories, falling short of even its predecessor in terms of camera and web browsing, and only surpassing the Pixel 10 Pro XL once, while looping a 4K video. And yes, I ran the test twice because I could hardly believe what I was seeing, but the scores you see above are the better of the two runs. I expected battery struggles like this from the slimmed-down iPhone Air, but I never imagined such limited performance from the usually reliable iPhone Pro line. Granted, Apple’s battery is smaller than those in its Android competition, but excellent optimization usually takes care of that — or so I had expected.

Honestly, I expected the iPhone 17 Pro to pull a Pixel and struggle for a little while as it learned my usage and my needs. I figured that its new Adaptive power mode would help me save some juice during the day, stretching the roughly 4,200mAh cell a bit further, but it hasn’t. Instead, I feel that the tiny battery drains quickly, and it often requires me to manually toggle Low Power Mode to get through long days. I’ve needed it for the wedding, both marathons, and a late-season Washington Spirit game, which wasn’t even that long of a day.

On the bright side, I guess, the iPhone 17 Pro finally charges a little bit faster than its predecessor. It’s still slower than virtually every Android phone I tested it against, losing out to the Pixel 10 Pro XL and its significantly larger 5,200mAh battery by around 10 minutes. The gap is even worse when compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra with its 45W wired speeds, and Apple doesn’t come anywhere close to the OnePlus 13’s 80W SuperVOOC capacity.

Now, Apple doesn’t disclose its charging rates; instead, it states that the iPhone 17 Pro can reach a 50% charge in 20 minutes. I noticed peaks of roughly 30W when I plugged it into Google’s new 67W dual-port charger, though, which is an improvement of at least a few watts over the previous generation. I will say Apple was probably right with its estimate of 50% in around 20 minutes, which is nice, but that also means the other 50% takes a full hour to trickle in. It’s fine-ish for the days when I need a little charging pick-me-up, but I’ve yet to go more than a day without plugging in overnight — or at worst, first thing in the morning.

After spending who knows how long praising Google for chasing the iPhone with its last few Pixels, I can’t believe I’m here. For once, I feel like the shoe is on the other foot, with the iPhone 17 Pro doing its very best impression of the Pixel 10 Pro and essentially pulling it off. From the build quality to the updated camera design to the general Android-ness of iOS 26, it feels a lot like I have a Google phone in my pocket, and it’s made the annual exploration of Apple’s walled garden much more enjoyable.

Honestly, there are a few iPhone 17 Pro features I expected to love — I figured I’d trust the cameras and the long-term updates above all else. However, I didn’t expect a 4x optical telephoto camera to feel quite so excellent, nor did I expect Apple’s simplified camera interface to be so natural. Apple’s build quality is a great match for what Google has done with its last few Pixels, too, though I still think I might prefer titanium over aluminum in case of drops. Sorry, but the marketing works.

Strangely enough, though, the iPhone 17 Pro shares some of the same pitfalls as Google’s latest Pixels as well. Its battery life and charging setup are only average, as the heat from the A19 Pro chipset builds up, causing the device to drain quickly and resulting in a slight performance slowdown. I’d hoped for more from Apple’s new battery claims, especially with a 50% charge in just 20 minutes and a vapor chamber to beat the heat, but neither has really lived up to expectations, even after a month with the phone.

And then, there’s Apple Intelligence. I thought it would be much closer to matching Google’s roster of Gemini features by now, but it remains oh so easy to ignore. I barely use the Image Playground; Clean Up still leaves me with wonky artifacts, and a more conversational Siri remains missing in action. I’ve almost given up on expecting its arrival. Yes, Apple has introduced some new calling features and brought back notification priorities, but that’s pretty much the bare minimum in terms of usefulness.

I tested the iPhone 17 Pro for this experiment, but there’s also the iPhone 17 Pro Max to consider for anyone who wants all of the above, but with better battery life and a larger screen. Conversely, the regular iPhone 17 ($799 at Apple) makes some sacrifices on the camera suite and performance, but it’s a great phone that actually outdoes the vanilla Pixel 10 in some key areas.

But if an iOS-powered Pixel doesn’t sound like your dream phone, fear not. There are plenty of Android-powered alternatives ready to take their place in your pocket — including an actual Pixel. In fact, I’d probably list the Pixel 10 Pro ($999 at Amazon) as the top competitor to the iPhone 17 Pro, pretty much for a mix of reasons mentioned above. It’s the closest in size, has the most comparable cameras, and offers a mountain of AI capabilities that actually work. You might still grumble about Google’s charging speeds, but the years of updates will be worth it.

On the Samsung side, you might have expected the Galaxy S25 Plus ($999.99 at Amazon) to slot in as our pick. I’m actually going to recommend the Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1299.99 at Amazon), though, as it’s the only Galaxy S25 to offer a well-rounded experience. We dismissed the two smaller Samsung flagships as generally unnecessary this year, leaving only the quad-camera carrying, S Pen packing Ultra as worth your money. Oh, and it charges faster than either the iPhone or the Pixel, though One UI isn’t as clean as either iOS or Pixel UI.

If you really want to make things interesting, you could check out Motorola’s Razr Ultra ($1299.99 at Amazon) as a flip phone option, or wait for the upcoming OnePlus 15 as a wildcard. Motorola’s top-tier Razr will command the same steep price as Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra, but it’ll match it with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, a pair of 50MP cameras, and our favorite cover screen experience on a flip phone by far.

The OnePlus 15, on the other hand, has not yet launched in the US, but it comes with a brand-new imaging pipeline, some of the fastest wired charging available, and a massive 7,300mAh battery. If it comes to the US with the same specs as the international model, it might slot in as the best Android phone for battery life — quite the opposite of Apple’s limited cell. And hey, if the OnePlus 13 ($849.99 at Amazon) happens to go on sale after the 15 arrives, that’ll absolutely still be worth a look — it’s great.

So after all that, will I be switching permanently to an iPhone? Well, no, it’s still Android for me. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Pixel users are taking an extra glance across the aisle this year.