After a year with the iPhone 17, I've found plenty to appreciate about it, but that still doesn't make me love it.
The iPhone 17 was Apple's 2025 baseline release. For whatever reason, the general public really took to it. Apple's own Tim Cook pointed out repeatedly that the phone was one of Apple's best sellers of all time.
As fate would have it, it was also the iPhone I was, more or less, forced into buying. My beloved iPhone 13 mini was on death's doorstep, and because I live in 2026 and not 2006, I can't really be sans iPhone.
So, I gave Apple a big stack of cash and the corpse of my previous iPhone. In exchange, they handed me a new glass-and-metal rectangle.
How I feel about it after that year of use is complicated.
I actively hate interfacing with my phone, any iPhone, casually. It feels like an anchor around my neck.
But they do have some utility in my life, like they do in everybody's. I don't own a car, so I do rely on rideshare a few times a year when I can't bike or walk to a location due to weather or distance.
I enjoy the fact that I have access to up-to-date maps, especially when I travel. I don't have to worry about getting completely lost when I travel.
I like having a capable camera on my person to snap pictures when I need to. And really, that's about it.
So my upgrade from my iPhone 13 mini, a phone I would have kept forever given the chance, was not because I was so moved by the iPhone 17 that I needed to have it.
It was because my iPhone 13 mini was actively dying. It struggled under the weight of iOS 26. Its battery life was not great towards the end, either.
And I knew that I was going to eventually have to upgrade, so I rationalized it to myself. I knew Apple wasn't bringing back the iPhone mini form factor, so there was no real reason to hold out.
And I thought, "Well, the iPhone 17 doesn't seem so bad."
So here's what that experience has been like one year later.
The iPhone 17 is still too big for my tiny, little baby hands. It does not fit comfortably in the pockets of my jeans.
iPhone 17 review, one year later: I had concerns that its cumbersome size would cause me to drop and break it. And I was right.
It's sporting an attractive crack in the screen protector from a recent tumble down my stairs. I suspected that this would happen. And it did.
But barring that, it's a decent daily driver. It still feels zippy as all get out, which I appreciated more right after I upgraded, but I still appreciate it now.
The camera works great, though I think I've used the Center Stage front camera exactly twice, and once was for my first review of the iPhone 17.
iPhone 17 review, one year later: This thing is still gigantic in my tiny, little baby hands.
It still handily performs the four roles I need an iPhone to perform, which are as follows:
Beyond that, I don't really interface with my phone a lot. I've never been a big fan of mobile gaming, so I'm not spending tens of hours with whatever AAA port made it to iOS.
I don't really use social media, either. I keep TikTok on my phone purely for those days when Mike wants me to investigate some sort of bogus claim relating to Apple devices.
Generally, I don't text much; most of my close friends and family use Discord. If I do actually text, I almost always text from either of my two Macs.
So I'm probably not the best person to speak on that kind of stuff. But the one thing that this job has taught me is that there are actually a surprising number of people who interface with their devices in the same way I do.
I think one of the funniest parts about upgrading every three or four years is the fact that features that used to be relegated to the Pro line are now just standard.
For instance, I jumped from a 60Hz display to a 120Hz ProMotion display. That was extremely notable. It was also very much appreciated.
The larger storage size is neat. I always pick the absolute bottom-tier baseline phone, so jumping from 128GB of storage up to 256GB was nice.
