Ryan Haines / Android Authority
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been telling my friends and family to buy Pixels. I have several reasons for this — customization, updates, and AI features are on the list — but my favorite one has always been to hype up the cameras. See, I’ve just always loved the way Google can pull details and colors out of my stills, not to mention the fact that Magic Editor is, well, magic. The problem, though, is that Google has always been just okay when it comes to videos (sorry, Jonas Brothers).
Apple, for its part, has always struggled with the opposite problem — it’s long been the king of video, only to leave me underwhelmed by its photos. Now, though, Apple seems determined to put its stills on par with the best Android camera phones, and I wanted to see if that was really possible. So, I took the iPhone 17 Pro for a busy week around town, and here’s how its camera has shaped up so far.
A little bit of new hardware goes a long way
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
Obviously, there’s something different about the camera on the iPhone 17 Pro. It has blossomed from its corner-mounted camera bump into a full-blown camera plateau, nearly doubling the space that Apple’s three sensors can occupy. Oh, and it did so without adding a silly temperature sensor (looking at you, Google).
Anyway, the expansion of the camera bump isn’t purely aesthetic; it actually serves a pretty important purpose. Although the 48MP primary and ultrawide cameras are identical to those on the iPhone 16 Pro, Apple’s upgraded telephoto sensor now has the space it needs to breathe. It’s jumped from a 1/3.06-inch sensor to a 1/2.55-inch design and swapped its 120mm focal length (5x optical zoom) for a more comfortable 100mm equivalent (4x optical zoom), which is much more portrait-friendly.
Apple's telephoto swap has completely changed my level of comfort while zooming.
The swap from a 12MP telephoto sensor to a 48MP one also means that the iPhone 17 Pro can take a central crop for 8x optical quality, though without the background separation of a proper 200mm shot. Annoyingly, that means Apple will tell you that the iPhone 17 Pro supports a total of 16x optical magnification, which, I mean, whatever. It’s kind of a made-up number in my book, as I’d hardly count 0.5x zoom from the ultrawide camera as doubling the optical range.
That’s not too important, though, I’m just being nitpicky when it comes to Apple’s marketing speak. It’s like declaring that the iPhone 17 Pro has four cameras on the back because its ultrawide sensor supports macro mode — sure, it does, but that’s not an extra camera so much as an additional thing you can do with your existing cameras. Anyway, enough about hardware. Let’s get to some samples.
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