A review of the latest iPhones

Ok so I’m no MKBHD, heck I don’t even have any of these devices, but I spent 15 minutes snooping in the Apple Store today so I feel eminently qualified to dish the dirt.

iPhone 17

It looks and feels like all the other iPhones, but it finally has a 120Hz screen. This is a pretty great option if you’re price conscious, so I would recommend.

7/10

iPhone 17 Pro

This is noticeably lighter than my hefty iPhone 15 Pro because it’s made with aluminium not titanium.

The screen looks wonderful, just as all iPhone Pro screens have for about 5 years. The cameras are wonderful just as all iPhone Pro cameras have been for about 5 years. The body doesn’t look good. It looks cheap because it is.

The orange isn’t my cup of tea, the blue is ok, the silver looks rather cheap. This phone is a complete scratch magnet – my guess is it will look tatty quickly, unless you encase it, which you probably will. Aluminium Macs look great and weather well, but you don’t manhandle them all day and shove them in your pocket. These phones have been in store for 5 days and they already look dreadful. I looked at lots of them, same scratchiness all round. Imagine what they’ll look like in a year or two?

4/10

iPhone Air

I had low expectations about this marketing ploy but it’s actually wonderful. Really. Yes it’s slim, yes the battery is average (but better than my iPhone 15 Pro), yes it only has one camera, but I kinda like this restriction. It’s a throwback to ye olde iPhones of the early teens. You probably want to use it sans case, just like we all did in the good old days. Remember them?

It looks gorgeous because of its svelteness but also because of the titanium. No cheap alu compromise here. It feels fantastic in the hand, like the Galaxy S25 Slim but more refined, curvier, and more desirable.

9/10

The Air probably represents the design future of the baseline iPhone, and the thinness is also Apple prepping for a foldable iPhone supposedly debuting next year. I had no intention of changing phones but having toyed with this in store, I’m sorely tempted 💸

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The Apple Marketing Philosophy

I feel it would be a good idea to recirculate this among Apple execs in 2025.

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Foldables are Apple's foible

I tried a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 today and it genuinely blew my mind. It's £1700 (💸) but it looks and feels incredible!

Apple seem to be falling behind on the tech front. I'm sure the iPhone 17 Pro is a fabulous phone, but all they're really selling is a camera that can do better selfies, has longer battery life (can't be much worse) and there's something about liquid glass and a vapour chamber. Is that all you got?

The iPhone 17 Pro is 8.8mm "thin". The Fold7 is 8.9mm when folded in half! Unfold it and you have essentially an iPad mini that's 4.5mm thin. It appears to have all the features of the iPhone (camera, video, clever selfies, etc), in a form factor that seems light years ahead.

I know Apple have a history of waiting longer than the competition to release products, and that you could argue that when they finally get around to it the result is more refined, but a revolution of the iPhone feels long overdue and the rumours are saying we won't get a sniff of anything foldable until at least 2026, or maybe longer.

It's too long. They need to get moving. There's a vibe shift happening in tech, from foldable phones to upgradable laptops running free and open source software, but Apple are too busy navel gazing at the bottom line to notice.

I’m rooting for Apple, but when underdogs become incumbents it takes a revolution to turn things around. With Cook at the helm, that ain't happening.

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