Apple finally held another "It's Gonna Be Great" event yesterday, and this time they actually fixed some things that should have worked years ago. The iPhone 17 lineup isn't just the usual spec bump - they're desperately trying to catch up to Google on AI while sneaking in useful features that Android phones have had since 2019.
The Front Camera That Actually Makes Sense
Here's the thing nobody expected: Apple actually fixed the selfie camera. The Center Stage system lets you take landscape selfies without doing that awkward sideways phone grip that makes you look like an idiot. It shoots 18MP and auto-includes everyone in group shots, so you can stop playing Tetris with people's faces.
Apple's finally admitting their camera philosophy was backwards - instead of just adding more megapixels, they're using AI to make the experience less terrible. The "Dual Capture" mode records front and rear cameras simultaneously, which Samsung phones have done for years, but better late than never.
The real test is whether it works in actual lighting conditions, not Apple's studio setup. Their front cameras have been trash in restaurants since the iPhone 12 - I've gotten better selfies from my webcam in 2020. The iPhone 14's front camera turns everything into a grainy mess unless you're literally under stadium lights. Tried taking a group shot at dinner last week and everyone looked like they were filmed through gauze.
A19 Chip: Fast Enough to Run AI Without Melting Your Phone
The A19 chip runs on 3-nanometer tech with Neural Accelerators built into each GPU core. Apple claims it's faster than the iPhone 13, but your iPhone 13 probably still works fine for everything except AI stuff.
The chip powers iOS 26's Live Translation feature, which could actually be useful if it works better than Google Translate's camera mode. The "visual intelligence" that screenshots and takes actions sounds cool until you realize it's basically what Google Lens has been doing for three years.
Will it murder your battery running AI models all day? Apple won't tell you, but thermodynamics doesn't lie. My iPhone 15 Pro already craps out by 3pm when I use the new Siri stuff - and that's barely smarter than the old version. Can't wait to see what happens when it's running full language models locally while I'm trying to get work done.
iPhone Air: Thin for the Sake of Being Thin
The iPhone Air is Apple's answer to nobody's question: "What if the iPhone was even thinner?" They won't tell us exactly how thin, which means it's either impressively thin or "thin enough to be annoying to hold."
Cramming the full A19 chip into an ultra-thin design sounds great until your phone thermal-throttles during a FaceTime call because physics is still a thing. We've been here before - the 2018 MacBook Pro that got so hot it couldn't maintain base clock speeds. That bastard would slow to a crawl just from opening Chrome with more than 5 tabs. Spent $3000 on a laptop that performed worse than my 2015 model under load.
The Air will probably look amazing in photos and be uncomfortable to use for more than 20 minutes.
iOS 26: Let's Hope It's Less Buggy Than iOS 25
iOS 26's "Liquid Glass" design language sounds like marketing speak for "we made more things translucent and added animations." The real news is that Apple's finally opening their AI foundation model to developers, which could mean actually useful AI features in third-party apps.
This is Apple playing catch-up to Google's strategy from 2021 - embed AI everywhere and hope developers build something useful. Whether this leads to innovation or just more apps that use AI to summarize emails nobody asked to have summarized remains to be seen.
The Price Reality Check
Starting at $799 for 256GB storage, Apple thinks you'll pay extra for AI features that come free on Pixel phones. The doubled storage is nice, but let's be real - you're paying for Apple's tax on being two years behind on AI integration.
Pre-orders start Friday, and they'll probably sell millions because people want the new camera and don't care that Pixel phones do most of this stuff already. Apple's timing is perfect: just late enough to seem deliberate, just early enough that most people haven't tried Google's AI features.
The real question is whether Apple's AI will actually work better than Google's, or if we're just paying premium prices for features that should have been standard in 2023.
Available September 19, which gives you exactly one week to decide if $799 for catch-up technology is worth it. Spoiler: if your current iPhone works fine, it probably isn't.