Apple has unveiled the iPhone 17 at its "awe dropping" event, and aside from a redesigned camera bump on the back, there are plenty of upgrades under the hood and on its display. That may not be enough to move the needle for consumers who picked up last year's iPhone 16, but there's plenty of small upgrades for folks who haven't upgraded in years.
The standard iPhone 17 remains the entry-level model of Apple's flagships, with all the new iOS 26 features but not all the spec upgrades that its Pro siblings get. But it's even more settled into its role now that the Plus model has been swapped out for the thinner and pricier iPhone 17 Air, which is more of a design marvel than simply a bigger non-Pro option.
Watch this: Everything Announced at Apple's iPhone 17 Event in 7 Minutes 07:18
The big upgrades for the iPhone 17 are a new chip, a brighter and sharper screen, better cameras and improved selfie cameras. Here's everything in Apple's new entry-level flagship phone.
iPhone 17 price and availability
The iPhone 17 will be available for preorder starting Sept. 12, and will hit store shelves on Sept. 19. The iPhone 17 price will start at $799 for 256GB of storage, retaining its starting price from last year, or $999 for 512GB, which is the same price as the iPhone 16 at that storage capacity.
That still makes the iPhone 17 the most affordable handset in the new lineup, with the new iPhone 17 Air starting at $999, the iPhone 17 Pro starting at $1099 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max starting at $1199.
Apple/Screenshot by CNET
iPhone 17 design upgrades and colors
By and large, the iPhone 17 hasn't changed much from last year's iPhone 16, which introduced the Camera Control button on the right side of the phone. This year's big shift is a rearrangement of the camera bump on the back of the handset, shifting from the diagonally-placed lenses in a square block to vertically aligning them within a rectangular block that spans the width of the phone.
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