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9.2 / 10
SCORE iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max $1,099 at Apple Pros The 17 Pro Max's incredible battery life
The brighter screen looks fantastic
Center Stage camera with the ability to take landscape selfies vertically is sweet Cons Wished Dual Capture had a 50/50 split
Live Translation's Siri voice can overlap with speakers'
iPhone 17 Pro battery life is on par with the iPhone 16 Pro
From the first moment I picked up the new iPhone 17 Pro Max, I was beguiled by its bold, bright redesign. It's a complete turnaround from the years of Apple's subdued titanium motif. The square camera bump of previous Pro models is now a body-wide bar that Apple calls the "camera plateau." The 17 Pro and Pro Max now come in actual colors -- you won't find one in black or space gray. This phone, especially in cosmic orange, wants you to look at it. It's as if the iPhone 17 Pro Max is flexing its new muscular aluminum unibody and begging, "Please notice my camera plateau." Is the iPhone having a midlife crisis?
Like a true midlife crisis, you need to look beyond the trendy clothes and whitened teeth to what's going on underneath. And that's where you'll find the iPhone 17 Pro Max's most monumental feature: its battery. Some of those wild outer changes allow more space for a bigger battery on the inside. The result? The iPhone 17 Pro Max has the best battery life of any phone that CNET has ever tested.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max comes in a bright, bold orange color. Celso Bulgatti/CNET
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