I've seen a number of people in my life upgrade to an iPhone 17 Pro of late. Apple's newest pro phone seems to have struck a chord with people who've been waiting for an upgrade. Including my own dad.
If you're a regular TG reader, you may recall I wrote about the iPhone buying advice I gave to my dad back in June. But now he's made his purchase, I thought it was time to review the advice I gave, and what he ended up doing. Did he do as I suggested, or something different? More importantly, did he make the right choices for him? Follow along as I figure it out, and hopefully you can learn something if you're considering buying a new iPhone for Black Friday or some other point in the near future.
Finding the right model
Let's get the bottom line out of the way. The phone my dad ended up with was a Deep Blue iPhone 17 Pro, which he bought as an unlocked handset directly from Apple. He was able to trade in his iPhone 14 Pro in return for £295 off of the list price. It was a phone that had served him well but was starting to show its age, particularly with its battery.
Going for the iPhone 17 Pro to begin with was a sensible move. Even if my dad was willing to switch to one of the best Android phones, the iPhone 17 Pro remains a strong overall choice for its size and features.
A battery repair for the iPhone 14 Pro would have been another way to go. But given our joint love of tech, I foresaw a new phone on the horizon rather than a fresh battery. Plus, the iPhone 14 Pro won't be gathering dust in the understairs cupboard. Now it's back in Apple's hands, and it will hopefully go back on sale as a refurbished unit.
But did my dad need to upgrade his phone now? There was no great urgency, since Apple will likely continue supporting the iPhone 14 series with iOS updates for another two or three years. But this isn't a meaningless upgrade either.
There are significant differences between the iPhone 17 Pro vs iPhone 14 Pro, such as the 17 Pro having a larger display (6.3 vs 6.1 inches) with higher brightness and durability, 48MP ultrawide and telephoto cameras (with a higher 4x zoom to boot), a faster chipset with more RAM and longer battery life. There's also the Action Button and Camera Control keys to contend with, plus all the Apple Intelligence-powered updates in iOS 26 that the iPhone 14 Pro didn't have access to.
The right-ish price
The tricky thing is that most of the benefits mentioned above would have come along with the purchase of an iPhone 16 Pro, which my dad was considering buying back in the summer before I suggested he wait. If he had made the upgrade then, he would have missed out on the 48MP 4x telephoto camera, and Apple's latest chip and battery upgrades. But the display size increase and new buttons would be the same, and the A18 Pro and a slightly smaller battery would still be a big lift over the outgoing iPhone 14 Pro chip and power cell.
While he now has the latest model, rather than a slightly disappointing year-old one, this has cost him in two ways. First, the list price of the iPhone 17 Pro is £100 higher than the iPhone 16 Pro's. Second, the trade-in value of the iPhone 14 Pro fell in the intervening time, going from £425 to £295.
Hopefully, my dad still feels he has got his money's worth. But making the switch just as trade-in values change — and as Apple increases the Pro model's price for the first time since pro iPhones were introduced — is unfortunate timing.
The wrong case
But we have yet to cover my dad's worst mistake in buying the iPhone 17 Pro. I bear no responsibility for it - he made the choice himself. But I cannot say in good conscience that buying Apple's own transparent case along with the iPhone was a good idea.
While it's marketed as a "Clear Case," this isn't really a good description. For whatever reason, Apple decided to abandon its previous clear case designs, which block out only the embedded MagSafe magnets with white lines, and made the whole central portion of the case opaque. I think I get why Apple did this, since the new aluminum body design of the iPhone 17 Pro already results in a two-tone look in exactly the same area that the case conceals. But it goes against the core conceit of a transparent case — transparency.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, but my father and I agree that in this instance, Apple's in-house case is an odd-looking one. If only he had checked Tom's Guide's best iPhone 17 Pro cases guide, he could have found an alternative that doesn't look quite so peculiar.
As we approach the end of the year, I imagine a number of you are considering purchasing a new iPhone for yourself or a loved one as a holiday gift. To you I give three pieces of advice:
1. Keep in mind the phone it'll be replacing, and if an upgrade is necessary
2. Check our Black Friday iPhone deals to save the biggest amount on the new iPhones.
3. Unless you're really sure — don't buy Apple's Clear Case for the iPhone 17 Pro.
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