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Review: A Week With the iPhone 17 Pro

Like BendGate, seems enough people deliberately go instore to scratch these devices.
Hopefully some store security footage will surface showing exactly what these people are doing to cause the marks.

Keys? Coins? Something else?

If real users arent complaining from everyday use :)
 
uacd said:
I’ve heard that there might be a “fix” in photographic styles but I am yet to try it out, i.e. de-boosting the “tone” setting or using “natural” preset.

Given the amount of people who dislike all of this processing they could have easily added a special photographic style and called it “old-school”, “lofi” or smth where you would get more true-to-life image, I actually waited for them to at least give some upgrades to photographic styles this year, sad that they didn’t deliver it
Click to expand...
It’s not so easy as making an old school and requires more fine tuning I think
 
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uacd said:
While I totally respect your opinion and most people who shoot casually will absolutely love iPhone 17 Pro cameras, I feel like HDR came way too far, and Apple doing nothing about it.

Imagine if you walk into sunset and from a distance you look like a shadow, due to how light works. And then iPhone decides to use SmartHDR, Deep Fusion and Photonic Engine all at once to get you out of this shadow. And I am not even making this up at this point! It happened to me even with such an ancient device as 11 Pro, but on it at least I can disable HDR whenever I want to, I do still have that toggle in camera settings! Also the burst shutter trick works to avoid this.

But what truly makes all iPhone photos look same and “stand out” in a bad sense is this, stole that example from Reddit but I guess everyone got that:

View attachment 2559461

I mean, what is that? All iPhones since 12 shoot sunsets like this. I have never ever seen similar sunsets in real life, this is not how it actually looks.

I am pretty sure older iPhones had more balanced photo output.

And sunsets is the only one example, it happens everywhere: when shooting buildings, daytime landscapes, even greenery and trees. I think Apple should give way to opt out of this cheap-looking AI stuff on new phones
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Seems like you did not shoot RAW, a choice we photogs need to make. And the iPhone needs to be held still, a challenge given the UX of iPhones. About half the time I find landscape positioning and use of the camera control button for shutter release helpful; best however is using voice control ("turn the volume up") for shutter release. Voice control's delayed shutter release helps me immensely to concentrate on reducing the iPhone's movement.

Failing to shoot RAW and/or poor technique causes the iPhone to computationally create its own optimized image capture that can look overprocessed to someone with a good eye. Some captures [e.g. sunsets, heavily backlit, etc.] are challenging to make look good, particularly using tiny phone cameras. It often is necessary to chimp, and keep trying different capture tricks; some photogs use specialty apps like Halide.
 
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raybo said:
I would never think of going without a protective case on a phone that cost me $1500, a phone I plan to keep for at least 5 years. The clear case allows me to enjoy the beautiful orange without worrying about dents and shatters.
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The key I guess is your verbiage "worrying about dents and shatters." You do and I do not. My lack of worrying is partially personality of course, but primarily is based on solid empirical evidence.

I beat phones up pretty hard and used cases years ago, replacing the cases every few months because I wore out the cases. Then first cases improved (Apple leather) and at some point (~ with the iPhone 11 Pro IIRC) the iPhone Pros became tough enough to tolerate remaining caseless despite getting dropped on concrete ~every couple of weeks. So I have been abusing caseless iPhone Pros every day for > 5 years now. I did crack the back on the 16 Pro Max, but that was due to a 15 foot drop to concrete that few cases would have prevented the cracking. The iPhone 16 Pro Max still worked, but heat management seemed like it might have been impaired. It cost me ~$250 for repair at an Apple Store while I waited about an hour.

Apple gave me $700 trade in for the 16 PM when I bought the 17 PM.
 
pi6xjdskfa said:
I got 17PM on day one and I am a little disappointed with battery life. I noticed the last couple of days that the battery drain is quite significant going from 100% to 50 in 3-5 hrs with little activity except email and some browsing. If I switch to low battery mode the battery drain stops. I don't have the typical battery draining apps like Facebook and have background updating for most apps except email off. I also "clean installed" it without migrating any data or backups from 16PM I had previously. I expect battery drain first couple of days since it is "indexing" etc. but seems like battery life is same or worse than 16PM.
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I find that the 17 PM has clearly improved battery life over the 16 PM. Maybe your sample is a bad one and needs to go back to Apple if it does not show improvement after a week.
 
uacd said:
I’ve heard that there might be a “fix” in photographic styles but I am yet to try it out, i.e. de-boosting the “tone” setting or using “natural” preset.

Given the amount of people who dislike all of this processing they could have easily added a special photographic style and called it “old-school”, “lofi” or smth where you would get more true-to-life image, I actually waited for them to at least give some upgrades to photographic styles this year, sad that they didn’t deliver it
Click to expand...
The iPhone Pros have had an easy RAW setting for a while now. Simply shoot RAW and hold the iPhone still.
 
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CopyChief said:
I picked up my 17 Pro Friday and jetted off to vacation on Tuesday. I’m shooting in raw, so avoiding the overcorrection. The cameras are awesome. Yes, I’m disappointed that the 8x isn’t 8x optical as was brushed over during the unveiling but clearly stated on screen. But otherwise the image quality and clarity is exactly what I wanted, and better than I expected.
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If they'd split the telephoto into two separate cameras this year – a 4x 12mp, and an 8x 12mp – would you be fine with them calling the second an 8x optical?
 
I'm still enjoying my 16 MP, and will stick with it until I see what Apple has in store for the folding iPhone next year or in '27. Normally, I try to go 3-4 years between iPhone upgrades, and I keep the old ones until they're just too old to be useful for their cameras or as added control devices around the house.

I actually AM thinking of getting a Watch Ultra 3 in Titanium. My Watch 6 is finally giving me warnings about its battery life rating being down to 65%. So I'd trade that in for $50 or so and just keep my Ultra 2 in black, alternating between the black and titanium.
 
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"If you're still on the fence about upgrading from an older phone to one of the ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ models, it's potentially worth it." What does that even mean? If I upgrade from a iPhone Xs or from and iPhone 13pro the upgrade is only "potentially" worth it? What is "potentially" here?
 
My phone gets mounted to motorcycles and wireless charging, so it went into the new case before I even left the Apple Store. 🤷🏼‍♂️
 
Loving my Deep Blue 17 Pro! Upgraded from a 14 Pro. I personally don’t mind aluminium so I’m not freaking out about it like others on this forum seem to be. I also quite like the new design, the 14/15/16 all look the same and was getting stale.
 
schuhlelewis said:
If they'd split the telephoto into two separate cameras this year – a 4x 12mp, and an 8x 12mp – would you be fine with them calling the second an 8x optical?
Click to expand...
Yes, which is essentially what we have, but that’s not how it was presented (by the speaker, but the details were on screen).
 
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