Apple’s September 2025 event delivered three new iPhone models: the 17, 17 Pro, and the all-new Air. Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD on YouTube and other social media channels, has already boiled down his thoughts to a stinging verdict. It’s fair to say he hasn’t got high expectations for the Air.
Brownlee doesn’t mince words on the base model. “My ultra-simple summary for the iPhone 17 would be, hey, it got ProMotion and a better selfie camera, and the rest is mostly the same.”
He’s glad Apple didn’t hobble the display: “But this is the first time we are seeing a Pro-branded feature on a non-Pro iPhone, because every new iPhone across the range now has ProMotion. And it’s the same ProMotion too.
“It’s the adaptive 1 to 120 hertz. Doesn’t seem to be handicapped at all.” Practicality gets a nod as well: “This makes the base iPhones much more usable, and so does the new base storage of 256 gigs.”
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The big win on this model, in his view, is the revamped selfie system, which is able to produce landscape photos with the phone held portrait.
“But what’s happening is with these phones, they all have a larger 24-megapixel square selfie camera sensor. And so then when you go to take a selfie, the phone can take a regular vertical selfie, or can manually, or even automatically, take a horizontal selfie without you having to rotate the phone.
“And honestly, this might be genius. Like the default for most people is obviously to take a vertical selfie now. It just fits on the phone. You’re probably viewing it on the phone. But if you go to take a horizontal selfie to fit more people, suddenly the camera lens is off to the side, and it’s a little bit less natural-looking.
“So now since the selfie camera is larger, and a square, it can literally just crop an 18-megapixel selfie in portrait or landscape. And for videos or photos. I think it’s great, it’s very useful. It might be the biggest upgrade to the iPhone 17.”
On the Pro, he points to real gains.
“They got better zoom, and more battery, and orange.”
The new rear ‘plateau’ isn’t just for show:
“Apple’s done some rearranging of the insides of the phone, to actually shove more components, like the A19 Pro chip, and the logic board and storage up here in that bar, so they could fill out more of the bottom of the phone with more battery.”
Cooling gets a rethink, too.
“But now they’re switching back to aluminum in a unibody form because it’s much better thermally. And so there’s also a new vapor chamber right in the middle of the back of this phone. First time we’ve seen a vapor chamber on the iPhone.
“The number that they quoted on stage was 39 hours of video playback, which, whatever, dumb stat, video playback. It’s kind of ridiculous. But okay, we’ll take that.
“The main improvement being the new 48-megapixel 4X telephoto camera… This new zoom camera is a 56% larger sensor, and has way more resolution. It’s 48 megapixels.”
Then there’s the Air – jaw-droppingly thin, but with that comes a number of caveats.
“This thing is a stunningly, ridiculously thin 5.6 millimeters at the thinnest part.
“But we also just heard a whole long list of choices Apple made with the Pro phones to make them more thermally efficient to not overheat… So it sounds like this phone could get much hotter, and throttle performance much quicker. It’s a red flag.
“There’s just no way battery life can be good on this phone, right? There’s just no way. I’ve been reviewing phones for more than a decade, and all signs point to it being trash.
“I really think this phone is gonna be a hard sell, because if you subtract emotions from it, it’s the worst one.”
Still, Brownlee floats a bigger purpose: a signpost to a foldable iPhone.
“The same way Samsung made the ultra-thin S25 Edge, and then a few months later they came out with their super-thin foldable, the Z Fold7, and I felt like the Edge phone was one half of that foldable. Maybe that’s also what Apple’s doing.
“Maybe we’re gonna see an ultra-thin foldable iPhone next year. Maybe.” Until that future arrives, his bottom line holds as the following:
“Either way, I do think it’s clear that you probably won’t find too many logical reasons to pick up this first-gen iPhone Air. But I do also think that picking it up and holding it is gonna convince a lot of people, ’cause it’s pretty stunning in person.”
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