iPhone 17 Pro Ditches Titanium, Here's Why

[haunebu]

Definitely getting it for the lower carbon footprint.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Everyone puts a case on their iPhone anyway so it don’t really matter about losing Titanium.

If the aluminum case dissipates heat from the vapor chamber thing better, and you put a case on your phone, covering the, in effect, heatsink, how well does a 17 Pro/Max cool with a case on it?

 

[darngooddesign]

I missed the announcement but did they explain the unusually large camera bump?

Moving components into the camera bump allows for a larger battery and better cooling.

 

[GUNSTAR1]

Dealbreaker for me. The loss of premium feel is going to hurt. I drop my naked titanium phones all the time and they don’t get the dings or sharp edges that even the stainless steel material got. The anodized finish is going to chip off leaving bare aluminum. How are they using a more energy efficient chip and even with the addition of vapor chamber cooling they needed aluminum to dissipate the heat? I do not buy it. Repair rates will be much higher with these phones, finally shortening the replacement cycle and making shareholders happy.

He’s outta line but he’s right..

 

[darngooddesign]

Dealbreaker for me. The loss of premium feel is going to hurt. I drop my naked titanium phones all the time and they don’t get the dings or sharp edges that even the stainless steel material got. The anodized finish is going to chip off leaving bare aluminum. How are they using a more energy efficient chip and even with the addition of vapor chamber cooling they needed aluminum to dissipate the heat? I do not buy it. Repair rates will be much higher with these phones, finally shortening the replacement cycle and making shareholders happy.

Your 16 Pro Max has a regular aluminum frame with a ~1mm titanium coating. I do agree with the durability of the titanium coating on my 15Pro, bare aluminum would have scratched by now.

 

[darngooddesign]

So what does this say about the new Air, which has the same new A19 Pro SoC without the fancy upscale cooling system?

They have a knack for painting themselves in a corner sometimes.

The probably expect power users will buy the 17 Pro, not the 17 Air. The Air’s chip might be underclocked a little.

 

[tobybrut]

But didn't the Base 17 get a size bump with NO price bump? $799 now gets you a 256gb iPhone 17, whereas $799 last year was a 128gb iPhone 16.

If they're doing the whole increase storage to justify a price increase, the strategy wasn't consistent.

I think all they did was to add a bigger battery. They didn’t rearrange the internals. I think the last price increase of $100 on the Pro Max was when Apple moved from stainless steel to titanium on the Pros. They bumped up only the Pro Max and doubled its storage instead of both. What I think Apple’s pricing strategy is that they’re concentrating the R&D costs for all four phones into one. Last time it was the Pro Max that was the unlucky one. This time it’s the Pro. If they had wanted to spread the R&D costs more evenly, they would have bumped both the Pro and Pro Max prices.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Durability sure, but it was a 1mm titanium coating on a regular aluminum frame, it added zero rigidity.

Not so much a coating of titanium, as a band that's bonded to the aluminum. That 1mm increases the strength of the frame by about 30-35% by some estimates, so it's not purely cosmetic or just for scratch resistance.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

I wonder whether the 17 Air uses the same bimetal approach used in the 15 and 16 Pro and Pro Max models, where the frame is actually mostly aluminum, with a 1mm thick band of titanium around its perimeter, or if the Air's frame is entirely titanium, which sounds pricey and more difficult to make than a band. If the Air uses the earlier bimetal design, maybe the titanium band is thicker than 1mm to achieve the strength that the Air's thinner design needs.

 

[subjonas]

The 17 Pro is 204g, which is really heavy despite moving back to aluminium.

I agree it's heavy. And it would have been even heavier with titanium.

 

[subjonas]

And why didn't they lower the price then?

By what, a dollar or two?

 

[subjonas]

So what does this say about the new Air, which has the same new A19 Pro SoC without the fancy upscale cooling system?

They have a knack for painting themselves in a corner sometimes.

I think it says that the Air will be throttling the chip much more than the Pro.

 

[EM2013]

Titanium's limitations in anodization are believed to have constrained Apple's ability to offer brighter finishes in previous Pro models.

Yet the air has blue & gold. And the colors look way better than any of the 15/16 pro options

 

[PowerButton]

Moving components into the camera bump allows for a larger battery and better cooling.

Ahhh, that makes sense — Glad it wasn’t only a design change without practical engineering.