Apple iPhone 17 Review: The Base Model Finally Grows Up

The basic iPhone used to be defined by what Apple had taken away from the Pro. That is now history. This year the standard iPhone 17 has been let off the leash and moved much closer to its expensive sibling — a genuinely major update to Apple's entry formula rather than the usual annual nudge.

Build quality is exactly what you expect from Apple: immaculate. The screen is protected by Ceramic Shield 2, and the phone carries the camera control button introduced with the iPhone 16. By default its more advanced functions are switched off, so it acts as a simple shutter release; you have to go into the camera options before a long press will change settings or lock exposure during a shot. Even then, it remains hard to make a case for it.

The 6.3-inch OLED runs at 2,622 x 1,206 pixels (460 ppi) in a 19.5:9 ratio, and this year it finally gets ProMotion at 120 Hz — a change owners have wanted for years.

Apple quotes a 3,000-nit peak and a 1,600-nit average peak. Measurement puts the HDR peak at 1,611 cd/m² and the outdoor peak at 3,030 cd/m², which is genuinely excellent: very few phones measured have passed 3,000 cd/m². In its price bracket the iPhone 17 dominates, beating even the Pixel 10 and its 2,826 cd/m². Turn off automatic brightness and you get a 834 cd/m² peak instead, and the automatic handling is exemplary — it never feels too dark or too bright.

On HDR it does give ground: 1,611 cd/m² sits behind the Pixel 10 and the Xiaomi 15T Pro at 1,922 and 2,737 cd/m². Where it shines is colour. The white balance of 6,347 K is slightly warm against the Pixel 10's 6,461 K and the Nothing Phone (3)'s 6,458 K, both nearer the ideal 6,500 K, but the calibration itself is very accurate and, more importantly, versatile. In P3 the average delta E 2000 of 2.76 is competitive with the Pixel 10's 2.81 and the Nothing Phone (3)'s 2.66, and comfortably ahead of the Xiaomi 15T Pro's 3.77. In sRGB the delta E is simply perfect at 0.68, which humiliates the entire field, and the grey delta E of 1 is another good sign. It loses a little ground on brightness and makes it back many times over on calibration: one of the best screens on the market, and without question the best at this price.

iOS 26 will unsettle long-time iOS users, starting with the name — it skips from iOS 19 — and continuing with Liquid Glass, a new design language that turns much of the interface to glass. The idea is simple on paper and complicated in practice, and it is not quite finished. It does give the whole thing a distinctive and rather flattering look, but Apple sacrifices one of its great strengths in the process: simplicity. The lack of contrast sometimes has you squinting to read interface elements.

Aesthetics aside, there is plenty here: 3D photos as wallpaper, customisation in Messages, new screenshot handling, and an option that makes it easy to use any track as a ringtone. The standout is native blocking of unwanted calls, which will do millions of people a real service. There is also an AI search that uses the camera — a long press on the camera button drops you into a conversation with ChatGPT — though it still has integration quirks that force you to delete a shot when you go back to ask a second question.

More broadly iOS 26 remains a very pleasant interface, rich and generally fluid. It is let down by occasional ergonomic gaps and frustrating restrictions, such as file handling and the closed ecosystem around certain apps, and by the inability to dismiss some intrusive notifications, like the one pushing you to buy more iCloud storage. This first version also has plenty of bugs: blocking freezes left the phone unresponsive for around thirty seconds, four or five times over ten days of use.

Apple has considerably improved the base configuration. There is still no telephoto — an incomprehensible omission at this price — but you get two 48-megapixel modules on the back, a wide and an ultra-wide, plus the new 18-megapixel Center Stage selfie sensor.

The wide-angle produces fairly natural shots that do not push shadow saturation too hard. Colour leans a little warm without being obvious, and sharpness is frankly satisfying, if not the most pronounced available. Without a telephoto, the wide also handles portraits, with the phone suggesting a 2x equivalent — though by default it does not always engage the background blur. At night under artificial light it keeps that welcome naturalness, and in near-darkness it still recovers enough information for a usable shot.

The ultra-wide is the weak point. Despite the new 48-megapixel sensor it loses noticeable sharpness against the main camera, with a number of flaws — a darker image, or oversaturation depending on the scene. It remains perfectly usable for the wider field of view, unless you want it at night, where results are often blurry and disappointing.

Zoom at the 2x equivalent delivers on the lossless promise: colour, dynamic range and sharpness all hold up, and it adds welcome versatility. Push further and it falls apart — at 4x and 10x equivalents the detail visibly disappears, though the option is there if you need to capture the moment.

The new square 18-megapixel selfie sensor is excessively fun. It offers automatic zoom and automatic rotation, adjusting to the scene for a tighter or wider framing, which produces creative results with slightly more incisive sharpness than previous generations. There is no visible difference in processing against the other modules, and selfie video is as well handled as ever.

The A19 is a slightly less muscular version of the A19 Pro in the 17 Pro. The phone starts with 8 GB of RAM and, importantly, 256 GB of storage — a change that sounds minor but delivers a real upgrade without a sharp price rise.

Day to day it handles most tasks quickly and without trouble, allowing for the occasional freeze that is best blamed on iOS 26's teething problems. As usual Apple has done an excellent job on the CPU, and the A19's lead is obvious in Geekbench 6. It also excels on Geekbench's GPU test but suffers in others: AnTuTu is far harsher on the A19, leaving it well behind rivals, and GFXBench agrees. 3DMark suggests why — Apple appears to prioritise stability and low temperatures over peak power, and in the Wild Life stress test the chip delivers performance well below rivals across 20 loops while holding it almost perfectly steady throughout. External temperature peaked at 43.6 °C, which is entirely acceptable without being impressive.

In a mixed endurance test simulating continuous use — HDR video, audio playback, 3D gaming, browsing — the iPhone 17 took 17 hours 7 minutes to fall from 100% to 5%. The best phone through that test reaches 22 hours 30 minutes and the 17 Pro manages 19 hours 10 minutes, nearly two hours more. So not excellent, but not embarrassing either, and it felt markedly better than the iPhone 16.

Charging is the weak spot: 1 hour 42 minutes to a genuinely full charge, measured from completely flat to beyond the 100% the interface reports. That is a poor score in absolute terms, though on iPhone terms it is nearly 10 minutes better than before. Using the same 67 W Apple charger as the iPhone 16, it recorded a better peak of 31.4 W against 26.9 W, and a slightly improved average across the charge of 11.7 W against 10.5 W.

As every year, the iPhone is hard to fault on sound. At all volumes, including very loud, it keeps a good bass foundation, the two speakers stay balanced with neither dominating, and distortion is kept in check. All very well controlled.

Previous base iPhones offered exceptional quality in some areas while neglecting many others, so often the honest advice was to buy last year's model instead, because the newest one did not really justify its price.

This year Apple finally strengthened its hand. The 60 Hz screen is gone, replaced by 120 Hz. The 128 GB base is gone, replaced by 256 GB. The iPhone 16's somewhat disappointing battery life is forgotten, and endurance is now genuinely good.

The camera configuration is perhaps the last thing that still grates. The two main sensors offer an experience on a level with the 17 Pro and can rival plenty of competitors, but it is impossible not to regret the absence of a proper telephoto, even a 3x equivalent, for real photographic versatility. You can be irritated too by the slow charging and by iOS 26's teething problems, though those are already offset by welcome additions such as call filtering. Overall, though, the iPhone 17 has finally become honest value in the tier just below flagship money — and with its exceptional update lifespan and irreproachable build quality, it is hard not to recommend with your eyes closed.

It was £749.00 on Amazon UK for the 256 GB model when we checked on 2 August 2026. Renewed listings were cheaper but have been excluded. Check the price on Amazon UK or search on Amazon US