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For years now, every Apple launch has left journalists and consumers alike frustrated with one key detail: the non-Pro iPhones belligerently stuck to an outdated 60Hz refresh rate for their displays, where all other flagship smartphones had long since upgraded to 120Hz and beyond.
Well finally, after years of frustration and disbelief, Apple has finally caved and upped the refresh rate on the iPhone 17 to 120Hz. It’s an LTPO screen, too, which means that you also get an always-on display running at 1Hz.
This is a fantastic move for Apple fans, finally getting them the same kind of fluid scrolling and gaming frame rates that Android users have been enjoying on their flagships for years now, and it’s not the only display upgrade, either.
The screen is now a 6.3in OLED panel, slightly larger than the 6.1in display on the iPhone 16, and has a higher peak brightness of 3,000 nits. There’s a layer of the new Ceramic Shield 2 glass over the top for scratch protection, which Apple claims is up to three times as scratch resistant as the first generation ceramic shield, and there’s a new seven-layer anti-reflective coating, designed to help with fending off glare.
The build looks almost identical to the previous generation, right down to the vertical camera bump – whereas the rest of the series has moved to a full-width camera bar, similar to Google’s Pixel 10 series. The only physical difference is the new swatch of colours, with Lavender, Sage and Mist Blue joining the standard black and white variants.
Inside, we’ve got the new 3nm A19 chipset running the show, which is said to be 20% faster than the previous generation, and storage starts at 256GB this year, dropping the 128GB model out of the lineup. Impressively, however, it starts at the same £799 as the iPhone 16, meaning you’re getting double the storage for no additional cost.
There was no specific mention of battery size but Apple claims the iPhone 17 can achieve eight more hours of video playback compared to the iPhone 16. Additionally, wired charging is said to be faster (though no exact wattage was stated), getting you up to 50% in just 20 minutes.
The main camera is once again a 48-megapixel (f/1.6) unit but the other two get upgraded. The ultrawide on the rear is now also 48-megapixels and the new “Centre Stage” selfie camera gets a higher resolution of 18-megapixels and a new square sensor.
The jury is very much out on how useful the latter will be but the idea is that it will enable you to take better quality landscape selfies without rotating your phone, as well as automatically expanding the frame when more people enter the shot for a selfie.
The final feature to mention is Apple Intelligence. After a very hit-and-miss start, Apple’s AI is slowly developing, and iOS 26 is bringing a couple of new features. Most notable are the long promised Visual Intelligence, which is basically Apple’s take on Circle to Search, and live translation.
The iPhone 17 will be launching on 19 September with the rest of the family, and preorders are open from this Friday, 12 September. We’ll be putting it through its paces in the very near future, so stick around to see if this is as good value for money as it seems.
