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iPhone 17 Pro Ditches Titanium, Here's Why
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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?
Moving components into the camera bump allows for a larger battery and better cooling.
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.
The probably expect power users will buy the 17 Pro, not the 17 Air. The Air’s chip might be underclocked a little.
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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.
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.
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.
I agree it's heavy. And it would have been even heavier with titanium.
Yet the air has blue & gold. And the colors look way better than any of the 15/16 pro options
Ahhh, that makes sense — Glad it wasn’t only a design change without practical engineering.
I mean that's fair, but they try to "hide" the price increase with the 256gb storage bump. My point is they forfeited that opportunity with the 17, so they'll have to use another trick to bump the price in the future. Or perhaps they see $799 as a price point that will stay for a long time for the base model.
You do know 15 Pro and 16 Pro is not made of titanium, right? It’s just the outer band layer for cosmetic purpose. Main structural chassis is made of recycled aluminum.
So yeah, technically speaking, 15Pro and 16Pro is aluminum phone coated with 1mm of titanium plates.
So yeah, technically speaking, 15Pro and 16Pro is aluminum phone coated with 1mm of titanium plates.
Yep, that’s been my point except the titanium is a more durable finish instead of just cosmetic styling; after two years the aluminum frame on my XR was scratched up, even from grit getting between it and the inside of the case, while my 15 Pro is still pretty pristine. But all this handwringing over Apple going back to aluminum or ditching titanium is overblown.
One could argue the iPhone 17 (non Pro) actually got a $100 price reduction due to the doubled storage. Apple just doesn’t have any pricing power these days now that the pace of innovation has slowed dramatically.
It’s enough to keep it from getting damaged when dropped on hard surfaces. The stainless steel phones would get all banged up, chipped, sharp edges. Titanium phone has a big drop, and nothing happens to it. Now aluminum will be even worse than the stainless steel ever was, and those bold anodized colors chipping off to reveal bright aluminum underneath is going to look awful. You might even have frame damage meaning a $99 deductible with each drop, even if someone has AppleCare+.
There were 2 problems with the titanium frame.
a) Heat dissipation
b) Glass in front and rear often crack due to insufficient rigidity
The aluminum unibody makes the phone very good in heat dissipation as well as being able to absorb shocks better. Titanium often causes the glass to crack.
Yes, it will scratch and likely the silver body will show less than the orange or blue bodies.
a) Heat dissipation
b) Glass in front and rear often crack due to insufficient rigidity
The aluminum unibody makes the phone very good in heat dissipation as well as being able to absorb shocks better. Titanium often causes the glass to crack.
Yes, it will scratch and likely the silver body will show less than the orange or blue bodies.
It wasn’t a titanium frame; it was an aluminum frame with 1mm of bonded Ti coating