Credit: Apple

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple's basic iPhone 17 is the one most people will use, and the new iPhone Air will get attention for its thin design and novelty. But the iPhone Pro series is still the absolute best the company has to offer, and that continues to be true of the new iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max that Apple announced today.

The new phones start at $1,099 and $1,199 for the Pro and Pro Max, respectively, each with 256GB of storage. Preorders start this Friday, and the phones will be available on September 19.

While the best feature of the iPhone 17 is its screen, the screens are virtually the only thing not to be overhauled for the iPhone 17 Pro, though they do get the more scratch-resistant, anti-reflective Ceramic Shield 2 coating. The new designs have a new aluminum unibody enclosure, with a glass cutout on the back to allow for wireless charging and a huge new camera bump that Apple calls the "camera plateau," stretching all the way across the back.

Per usual, the camera is the start of the show on the iPhone 17 Pro.
Credit: Apple

All three of those lenses on the camera plateau are now 48MP Fusion Cameras. At the default zoom levels, these condense 48MP images into smaller photos, using "pixel binning" to improve quality. But at the higher zoom levels—and the telephoto lens can now go up to 8x—the phone can simply crop a native-resolution chunk out of the center of the image, delivering what Apple calls "optical-quality zoom." Apple has used Fusion Cameras for the Pro's other sensors before, but this is new for the telephoto sensor, which Apple says is also 56 percent larger than the old telephoto sensor.

The inside also contains other improvements. A new A19 Pro chip, the same one used in the iPhone Air, includes a six-core CPU with two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, plus a six-core GPU; Apple also said the chip included more memory than the 8GB that came with the iPhone 16 Pro, though it didn't say how much.

The new phones include an Apple A19 Pro chip with a redesigned cooling system.
Credit: Apple

That A19 Pro is paired with a new vapor chamber cooling system that uses de-ionized water to move heat away from the processor and dissipate it through the aluminum frame. Apple says that thanks to the combination of the new chip and new cooling system, the A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro has up to 40 percent better sustained performance than the iPhone 16 Pro.

Battery life has also gotten a bump. Thanks to the removal of the physical SIM tray (and the removal of the internal area where a physical SIM tray could go), Apple has squeezed a larger battery into both Pro phones, delivering "the biggest battery in any iPhone." Apple says the battery should be good for up to 39 hours of video playback.

We're on the ground at Apple's product event in Cupertino and will bring you more impressions of the new phones' look and feel later today.