Apple launches iPhone 17 Pro with major camera upgrades

Apple launched the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max today with a new design and an upgraded camera system.

The devices are powered by the new A19 Pro chipset and have a larger battery, Apple said. Plus, it noted that eSIM-only models will have a slightly larger battery as compared to Pro models with physical SIMs.

The new Pro phones have an aluminium unibody instead of the titanium used in the previous year’s iPhone.

The company said it designed a new vapor chamber thermal system along with the new unibody. The company is also adding ceramic shield 2 protection on the front and and previous gen ceramic shield on the back.

The company is upgrading the telephoto camera from a 12-megapixel sensor to a 48-megapixel sensor. With the sensor change, users will be able to get an 8x optical zoom. This is one of the highest optical zoom capacities on the market, with the Vivo X200 offering 8.7x optical zoom with its periscope kit.

Apple is offering 40x digital zoom. This is lower than 100x offered by Google or Samsung, but it is not clear if Apple is doing digital regeneration using AI like those companies.

All of this is housed by a new rectangular camera bar covering the entire width of the back of the iPhone, which Apple has chosen to call “plateau.”

The selfie camera is also getting an upgrade from a 12-megapixel to an 18-megapixel sensor. Apple will now also allow for a video recording from both the front and the back camera simultaneously.

The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1199. These devices are available to pre-order on Friday and will be available on September 19. Both models now start at 256GB base storage, and the company is also offering a 2TB model for the 17 Pro Max.