iPhone 17 Pro vs iPhone 16 Pro: What’s new in Apple’s latest Pro iPhone?

Design and display

The biggest and most noticeable difference between the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro is in the design. For years, iPhones have had a minimalistic-looking looking squarish camera island, but with the iPhone 17 Pro, Apple has completely changed how the phone looks.

The iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max both now have a rectangular camera island that spans across the width of the phone, but the camera sensor layout is the same as last year. Below the humongous camera island, we also see another rectangle that houses the Apple logo.

Another difference between the two is that the iPhone 17 Pro now has a new aluminium design, unlike the titanium build on the iPhone 16 Pro.

And both the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro have a 6.3-inch XDR OLED ProMotion display. The new model gets brighter outdoors, thanks to Apple bumping the maximum brightness to 3,000 nits. In case you were wondering, the iPhone 16 Pro had a peak brightness of 2,000 nits.

The display on the iPhone 17 Pro is protected by Ceramic Shield 2, which Apple says offers three times more scratch resistance comapred to the Ceramic Shield used on its predecessor. Also, the back of the iPhone 17 is more durable as it is protected by Ceramic Shield.

Performance

The iPhone 17 Pro is powered by the A19 Pro – Apple’s fastest and most capable chip  to date. Compared to the A18 Pro, which powered the iPhone 16 Pro, Apple says it offers “up to 40 per cent better sustained performance than the previous generation”.

On paper, both the A18 Pro and the A19 Pro have a hexa-core CPU and GPU alongside a 16-core Neural Engine, but the new A19 Pro comes with Neural Accelerators, something the A18 Pro missed out on.

Another area where the two differ is in terms of RAM. While Apple never officially mentions how much RAM the iPhones come with, the iPhone 17 Pro is said to have 12GB versus 8GB on the iPhone 16 Pro. However, we will have to wait to know for sure.

Camera

The iPhone 17 Pro brings significant upgrades to the world’s most popular camera capabilities. Compared to the 12MP selfie shooter on the iPhone 16 Pro, the iPhone 17 Pro sports a new 18MP Center Stage camera.

The rear camera setup also got a huge upgrade. Like the iPhone 16 Pro, the iPhone 17 Pro comes with a 48MP primary camera alongside a 48MP ultrawide shooter, but Apple has now upgraded the telephoto sensor from 12MP to 48MP with up to 8x optical zoom. This should allow the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max to take better and more detailed pictures. You can also digitally zoom up to 40x.

The iPhone 17 Pro also brings new video capabilities like ProRes RAW, Log 2 and Genlock support, with Apple saying that it will enable videographers to “precisely synchronize video across multiple cameras and inputs.” Like modern Android devices, you also get Dual Capture, a feature that lets you record video simultaneously from both the front and rear cameras.

Battery and storage

Apple says it has significantly improved the battery life on the iPhone 17 Pro. While the Cupertino-based tech giant does not officially list the battery capacity of any of its phones, the iPhone 17 Pro should last longer thanks to a bigger battery and the more power-efficient A19 Pro chip.

Compared to the iPhone 16 Pro, which offered up to 27 hours of video playback, the new iPhone 17 Pro comes with up to 33 hours of video playback. Talking of storage, the base variant of the iPhone 17 Pro now comes with 256GB of internal storage, which is double than that of its predecessor.

iPhone 17 Pro vs iPhone 16 Pro: Is the new Pro worth it?

The newly announced iPhone 17 Pro brings some of the biggest changes to Apple’s Pro smartphone lineup in years. Apart from the new design and faster chipset, the phone also comes with a huge upgrade to the telephoto shooter and a better, more durable display.

If you are into photography or just want a faster and longer-lasting smartphone, the iPhone 17 Pro is a notable upgrade over its predecessor. However, those who use the device for things like messaging, watching videos, or browsing the internet and other light workloads may not notice a significant difference between the two apart from design.

The iPhone 17 Pro starts from Rs 1,34,900, whereas the iPhone 16 Pro was available for Rs 1,19,900. The newer Pro model is definitely expensive, but it does come with 256GB storage. To give you a quick recap, the 256GB version of the iPhone 16 Pro was priced at Rs 1,29,900.