Surprising absolutely no one, Apple has unveiled the new iPhone 17 series, including the iPhone Air, which CEO Tim Cook said freed the company up to make the Pro handsets the most Pro ever. Here at Apple Park, I was able to take a high speed hands-on demo of the iPhone 17 Pro, and made a beeline for the new Cosmic Orange model. I'm already very taken with the way it looks and feels, and don't even mind the new camera plateau, but maybe that's just because I'm a sucker for change.
This isn't a shiny new thing, to be clear. Far from it. The iPhone 17 Pro that I played with was the orange version and it has a sort of matte finish and a vague "soft touch" feel compared to the iPhone 16 Pro I've been using for about a year. In spite of the new unibody design, I found the camera control button on the right still reasonably easy to press, although I think I'm more used to the one on the iPhone 16 Pro and find it a bit easier to click at the moment.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
I also had a chance to quickly check out the new Centerstage selfie camera, and I have to say it now makes sense why Apple had to redesign the camera app with iOS 26. To enable new features like the auto-rotating aspect ratio or the dual-camera video capture, you'll have to dive deeper into menus. I didn't immediately know where to find the switches for these but I'm sure I'll learn over time. For now, a helpful Apple representative standing next to the phone showed me where everything was.
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Apple's "Awe dropping" event is happening now. The company has announced the iPhone 17, iPhone Air and AirPods Pro 3 (with live translation and a heart rate sensor). Additionally, the Apple Watch Series 11, the Apple Watch SE 3 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 are all now official, too. Still to come, we expect Apple to unveil the new iPhone 17 Pro models as well as a final release date for iOS 26. Stay with Engadget for live coverage of the iPhone 17 launch. You can watch the Apple iPhone 17 event live on YouTube, too.