By Charles Wang ’27
The new “upgraded” iPhone 17 lineup was released just over a month ago, and the community has been greatly polarized in whether or not it can actually be considered an improvement. Certainly, there has been much discourse with regards to the changes in past generations, with some arguing that they “only ever change the camera” while others are quite impressed (Chung, 2025). Here, we will look at how the iPhone 17 differs from the previous phones as well as how the WPGA community has responded to it.
Apple has advertised that the base model of the iPhone 17, starting from $1129 CAD, now has 120 Hz refresh rate and an anti-reflective display, which are welcome upgrades, though ones that other brands of cell phones already possess. With regards to the camera, the 17 allows the user to take photos in landscape even while holding the phone upright, and the back camera also has reportedly 4x the resolution of the previous model. There is also the new A-19 chip and the doubled starting storage at 256 GB.
Starting this year, Apple has also introduced the iPhone Air, starting at $1449 CAD, which aims at a thin and sleek design while still retaining the power of regular phones. At just 5.6mm, it is the thinnest iPhone ever yet still holds the A-19 Pro chip. The back features just a single camera that combines “multiple advanced cameras in one.” One major worry is the battery life of such a small phone with a strong chip, but tests have shown that it can last around 12 hours for web surfing. This may not be considered “all day” battery life, but it also is impressive in the air’s form factor, and is less than an hour behind the iPhone 17.
As for the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro-max, Apple has finally changed up the appearance of these high end phones, which start at $1599 and $1749, respectively. Another notable change is the reversion to an aluminum frame, which seems to be a downgrade from the titanium frame that Apple featured extensively in the iPhone 16 pros. Additionally, the 17 pros have “the longest iPhone telephoto ever.”
The community also has some interesting views on the subject, with Hugo Chung (‘27) claiming that “I think the iphone 17 is the 17th derivative of the iPhone X.” Clearly, this student has been traumatized by his AP Calculus class, and can now only think in terms of dy/dx. However, he is correct in that each iteration of the iPhone is derived from the last and aims at improving it. However, since the derivative of a function effectively lowers its power, Hugo is in fact suggesting that the iPhone has been downgraded with each generation.
Hayden Heath (‘27) has made the bold attestment that the iPhone 17 is “overpriced, weak, bad, stupid, dumb, obnoxious, money grab, not an upgrade, ugly, poor, inferior; I can’t think of anymore words but just find synonyms for ‘bad.’” In many ways, all products are aimed at making a profit, However, Hayden seems to believe that money is all that Apple cares about, and that its phones are certainly not an upgrade. Thus, while Apple has “upgraded many aspects of their new iPhone, that is not what the community thinks.