I spent some time with the iPhone 17 Pro and am already in deep like

I don’t think I fully comprehended just how radical a redesign and refashioning of Apple’s flagship handset, the iPhone 17 Pro (and 17 Pro Max), would be until I held one in my hand.

Aesthetically and architecturally, these are simultaneously softer and stronger smartphones. What Apple has done here is pulled something from its relatively classic build playbook and created, like the unibody MacBook before it, a milled, aluminum unibody design that reimagines the once familiar and even somewhat tired iPhone design into something fresh and once again worth talking about.

It’s not just the body, which features a raised plateau (formerly the camera bump) that spans nearly the full width of the phone. Torn apart, this iPhone 17 Pro might be unrecognizable from its predecessor. There’s the all-new and freshly powerful A19 Pro with 6 GPU cores, each with its own neural engine. It’s the kind of power that likely outstrips the needs of the current Apple Intelligence and Siri (but surely not the future one, right?).

Even the placement of that powerful CPU is different. Apple reshuffled all the components to put the logic board and that tiny yet powerful A19 Pro almost dead center in the phone, and then paired it with graphite and a brand new vapor chamber to dissipate heat in previously unimagined ways.