Everything you need to know about Apple iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max

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While iPhone Air stole the iPhone thunder with its slim body and mirrored finish, Apple also announced the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max during its keynote to sate its most fervent fans by meeting their Pro-level needs.

Here’s the down-low on what you’ll be getting with the 2025 Pro-grade iPhones this time.

New design with tried-and-true materials

Titanium was so last year. Apple has brought back aluminium for its iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro Max, and machined it to give it a unibody design. The phone is now one block of aerospace-grade, 7,000-series aluminium, replete with extra internal space where the old camera island could not offer.

This space, now called Camera Plateau, also saw new tenants. It now houses the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro Max’s phone antennas, which supposedly improves signal quality and strength in their new home (the antennas were previously along the rims).

The new design also enabled more durability and protection. Apple said the phones are guarded with a Ceramic Shield back and a Ceramic Shield 2 front glass (which is three times more scratch-resistant than Ceramic Shield).

Both Pro phones also get the seven-layer anti-reflective coating to reduce glare in bright lighting conditions (also available on the base iPhone 17).

A new hot bod also necessitated Apple to create a brand-new thermal management system. Included is an Apple-designed vapour chamber with deionised water sealed within its dissipation loop, which contributes to its raw performance uptime. This is on top of its return to aluminium alloy, which Apple said has 20x better thermal conductivity than titanium.

40% better sustained performance

The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max contain Apple Silicon A19 Pro, which is the same all-in-one mobile processor used in the iPhone Air. On board is a 6-core CPU with 50% larger last-level cache size for more energy efficiency, next to a 5-core GPU with second-generation dynamic caching. Interestingly, Apple showed that the neural accelerator (for AI compute workloads) has 4x the AI compute than the A18 Pro chipset, which is even higher than the iPhone Air’s AI compute despite sharing the same chipset.

According to Apple, these new Pro models offer up to 40% better sustained performance than the previous generation of Pro iPhone models, referring to its consistency over time. This performance increase is said to come through in intense, long workloads, like gaming and video editing.

Apple also integrated its connectivity options, introducing a new N1 connectivity chipset that houses Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread in one place, on top of using Apple C1X modem for cellular connectivity (up to 2x faster connectivity than Apple’s previous C1 modem, with 30% more power efficiency).

All three rear cameras are 48MP now

The changes to design also enabled iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max to carry triple 48MP cameras on the back. That means its main, ultrawide, and telephoto are all 48MP Fusion Cameras.

Apple said it offers the flexibility of eight lenses, with most of the love going into its telephoto camera. It now does 4x optical zoom at 100mm equivalent, and also 8x optical-quality zoom at 200mm equivalent, on top of bumping up its overall digital zoom to 40x (the previous iPhones capped out at 25x digital zoom). Telephoto also now gains access to enhancements from the Photonic Engine, which aids in colour accuracy and noise reduction.

For professional videographers, filmmakers, and content creators, Apple also added support for ProRes RAW (especially handy with Final Cut Camera and Blackmagic Camera) and Apple Log 2. An interesting addition is support for genlock, a broadcasting synchronisation technique that allows for seamless transitions without needing manual frame alignment.

Also upgraded is the 18MP Center Stage front camera with its unique square sensor, allowing users to take photos in landscape or portrait orientation without having to physically rotate the mobile during selfies.

eSIM only models are only available in select territories

The keynote also mentioned that there are eSIM-only Pro and Pro Max phones available, and they have two more hours of video playback battery life when compared to the regular SIM with eSIM versions.

However, Apple quickly followed up by adding that eSIM-only models are only available in select territories: Bahrain, Canada, Guam, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the U.S., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

That means users in Singapore are still going to get the usual ones that can hold physical SIM cards, missing out on the bonus battery and uptime.

Now starts at 256GB storage

Apple actually skipped past a lot of other things, but that’s largely because nothing much has changed in those areas. iPhone 17 Pro still has a 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR display, while the bigger iPhone 17 Pro Max goes up to 6.9 inches.

Crucially, these phones now have a starting storage of 256GB. It seems like 128GB is no longer enough these days, and that’s further emphasised with a new 2TB configuration for the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Pricing and availability

Apple iPhone 17 Pro (starting from S$1,749 at 256GB) and iPhone 17 Pro Max (starting from S$1,899 for 256GB) come in three colourways: Silver, Cosmic Orange, and Deep Blue.

Pre-orders begin on the Apple Store on 12 September 2025, 8 PM Singapore Time.

General retail availability begins on 19 September.

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