The iPhone 17 Pro is the best phone Apple has ever released -- top specs, long battery life, a crisp screen and outstanding cameras. The first three also make it a great gaming device, but how great? I decided to test it to find out. And if you can find another phone that doesn't heat up when playing a graphics-intensive, console-quality game like Resident Evil 8, I'd like to see it.
Most games will play on even the lowest performing phones. Game developers want to open their market to as many players as they can, even if that means having their games run slow and look ugly. But better specs mean sharper graphics, more frames per second and an overall better gaming experience. The iPhone 17 Pro is at the top of the performance rankings among all our tests, so it's no surprise that the phone handles games well. It's fast, powerful and beats most other handsets in battery life.
And its specs are impressive. The A19 Pro chip and estimated 12GB of RAM or more (according to iFixIt and GSMArena — Apple never releases RAM numbers) handle game graphics smoothly. With a starting storage of 256GB, owners have plenty of space to download games, as well as options for 512GB and 1TB, or 2TB on the Pro Max, ensuring there's enough room for photos and other files with large data footprints.
The iPhone 17 Pro plays plenty of games well, and its App Store features mobile versions of popular PC games like Dredge, pictured. David Lumb/CNET
The 6.3-inch display is large for a "smaller" phone, and its 2,622 x 1,206-pixel resolution is vibrant. Even better is its 3,000-nit maximum brightness, which might be one of the highest among phones sold today, making it easy to see in bright daylight.
For clarity, I've been playing games on an iPhone 17 Pro, meaning I miss out on the slightly longer battery life and larger display of the phone's sibling, the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
While the latest iPhones regularly match or overcome their competitors in photo or video quality, in recent years, Apple has pushed the narrative that all of its devices, large and small, are capable of playing the latest top games -- another usage niche that the company wants to dominate. That's been true for the small selection of console-quality games that have been ported to iOS, like Resident Evil 8 and Alien: Isolation, complete with phone-friendly touch controls. Obviously, this is a feather in Apple's cap to hold over competing Android devices, but it also shows off the iPhone's horsepower.
This year, the iPhone 17 Pro added something on top of its premium silicon: a vapor cooling chamber that sits on top of the A19 Pro chip. While gaming phones have long incorporated these cooling infrastructures, which are typically tiny chambers filled with water to vent hot air away from graphics-processing silicon, this is the first iPhone to have one. Apple also reverted from its titanium frame in prior years' Pro models to an aluminum one, which is better at venting heat. This combination allows the iPhone 17 Pro to run games for longer without overheating.
The iPhone 17 Pro, left, and iPhone 15 Pro Max, right, both playing Resident Evil 8, around 20 minutes into the game. David Lumb/CNET
I put these claims to the test, pitting my two-year-old iPhone 15 Pro Max with a titanium frame against the new aluminum iPhone 17 Pro with a vapor chamber. Downloading and playing the first 20 minutes of Resident Evil 8, which is heavy on in-game cutscenes and dramatic graphics, with both phones was illustrative. The older iPhone 15 Pro Max heated up quickly and its glass back was slightly toasty under my fingertips, while the iPhone 17 Pro remained cool until I reached an overlook in the game with a nice view for a photo (above), at which point it got warm.
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