As a travelling journalist, you learn quickly that you live in two worlds at once. In one, you are on calls, updating Excel sheets, hunting for images and firing off emails like your inbox owes you money. In the other, you are shooting, editing and squeezing through events while every other journalist breathes down your neck. One side of you is the creative pro with his tote bag and man bun. The other is the business pro with the clean-cut blazer and the even cleaner cut hair. Most phones that belong to travelling journalists barely survive the reality, forget keeping up with both alter egos. Then walks in the 2025 Apple iPhone 17 Pro, a device that swears it is built for professionals and promises to take on whatever chaos you feed it. 

So, I fed it everything. This was during a stacked work week and a Pune to Mumbai day trip where both of my inner pros had to show up and multitask without falling apart. I pushed the 17 Pro as far as it would go. Here is what happened. 

The Touch, The Feel, The Aluminium 

The first real toss up happens the moment you pick up the 17 Pro. The entire 17 lineup, except the Air, shifts to an aluminium shell. It is a pivot from last year’s titanium and you feel the difference instantly. I am coming from the iPhone 14 Pro Max, Apple’s last and possibly heaviest brick disguised as a phone. Compared to that, the all-aluminium body feels substantial without doubling as a forearm workout. 

Apple says the switch helps with heat dissipation. The business pro in me still misses the old stainless steel and titanium era, when the phone felt like a piece of jewellery that also answered calls. Weight used to signal authority, right before it signalled pain. One handed use on older Pros was slow pinky torture. The 17 Pro finally fixes this with a lighter 204-gram body. The creative pro in me appreciated this immediately, because holding a phone at odd angles for shots no longer feels like rehearsing for an arm injury. 

The design leans more towards creative pro taste too. It looks different from the 14, 15 and 16 Pros in a way that feels intentional. Apple brings back the cutout approach with thin stripes along the sides and around the camera plateau to keep your grip from choking your network signal. Then there is a full sheet of glass on the back that enables wireless charging. The silver model that Apple sent us wears all these quirks surprisingly well. The business pro in me still prefers cleaner lines but even he had to admit it looks distinct. 

Getting To Business  

The day of a travelling journalist usually begins with social media triage. Who is trending, who said what, who wore whom and which celebrity has started a fight with the algorithm. For that early morning chaos, the Super Retina XDR display does its job beautifully. I am allergic to exaggerated praise, but the screen is genuinely a pleasure to look at. Text is crisp, images stay natural, and nothing slides into the overly saturated, cartoonish look some Android rivals seem proud of. Everything looks painfully high resolution at 2622x1206, like those TVs in mall showrooms that cost as much as a used car. 

The 6.3-inch size helps even more. Your fingers can glide across the panel without stretching, yet the phone never feels tiny or compromised. It is compact in the way a good tool should be, not in the way a budget phone screams compromise. 

Then comes iOS 26 and its liquid glass aesthetic. I tried the early beta on my 14 Pro Max and hated it. It looked like skeuomorphism had crawled out of its grave. After the full release, it has settled into something far more polished. The depth effect is genuinely pretty, and spatial images are surprisingly fun for a feature I expected to ignore. 

The creative pro in me still leans towards more dynamic, colourful UI elements, but the system itself is stable. The real friction appears later in the day when juggling research, pitching, sourcing images, chasing quotes and preparing interview questions all at once. During moments like these, I did miss the split screen multitasking you get on some Android phones. Not a deal breaker, but it would have made life simpler. 

For the business pro, the 17 Pro is a dream. The A19 Pro chip runs everything without stutter or complaints. Even when the phone is obviously working hard, the new vapour cooling chamber keeps it cool enough that you barely notice. It is one of those devices that only reminds you of its power when you switch back to anything slower. 

The Shootout 

This is where both pros are put to work. For the business pro who has to “quickly hop on calls” and drop lines about shareholder value, Apple’s new square Center Stage sensor earns its keep. It crops a 24 MP square feed into an 18 MP frame and keeps your face centred whether you are in portrait or landscape. I tested this during a bumpy ride to a launch event, drifting from one side of the cabin to the other, and the camera never lost me. Even on Google Hangouts the tracking stayed smooth, and the microphone picked up my voice with a clarity my first-generation AirPods Pro have never managed. 

Switch to creative pro mode and the real work begins. Apple’s updated 48 MP Fusion system brings a sharper telephoto lens with 8x optical quality zoom and up to 40x digital. Specs aside, it is the colour science that stands out. Images look natural and grounded without the smudgy, over processed look you get from some competitors. The 8x zoom is especially useful when your frame is blocked by half a dozen journalists pushing in for the same shot. Shooting in RAW continues to be a serious advantage too, letting you control exposure, white balance and all the technical knobs a creative pro likes to tweak. 

The weak link is Apple’s new AI tricks. The AI eraser is unpredictable. Some attempts are spotless, others leave behind blotches that look like someone dragged a wet thumb across the screen. 

Where both alter egos meet in agreement is low light. Apple still has a real edge here. The 17 Pro avoids the heavy-handed brightening and smoothing that many flagships rely on. Instead, low light shots retain detail, balance and texture, whether you are in a dim meeting room, backstage corridor, or a late evening outdoor event. Stabilisation keeps handheld video steady, colours stay consistent across lenses, and the dynamic range does not collapse the moment light gets tricky. The phone does not solve every scenario, but it reliably gives you something usable. 

For the business pro, that means fewer retakes and fewer apologies for grainy images. For the creative pro, it means files that can be pushed, graded, and shaped without falling apart. In low light especially, the 17 Pro feels like the rare tool that actually meets the demands both personalities throw at it. 

The Juice 

Specs do not matter if your phone dies before you reach the venue. Here both pros finally hug it out. I left home with a full charge and put the 17 Pro through a routine that would drain most phones by lunchtime. Calls, writing, research, AI tools, an episode of Pluribus, music streaming, and an army of apps running in the background. By the time I reached the event, I still had around 70 per cent left. 

The second half of the day was even worse. Photos, videos, file transfers, location hopping, and more music. I got home at 3 am with about 20 per cent still alive and kicking. This is the smaller 17 Pro with its 3,998 mAh battery. My 14 Pro Max at 80 per cent health would have needed two top ups and some emotional support to survive that. 

It genuinely makes me wonder how ridiculous the Pro Max battery must be. My only wishlist item is Apple exploring silicon carbon batteries, since they allow more capacity in the same space. It is not urgent, but when rivals are pushing a two-day battery life, I would like to see Apple stretch itself a little. 

The Conclusion 

At Rs1.34 lakh for the 256GB model, the Pro sits comfortably in its own lane. The base 17 gets close on many fronts, but close does not cut it when your day looks like a highlight reel of deadlines, travel, shoots, edits, calls and existential dread. The Pro is built for people who treat their phones like a second brain, not a scrolling device. 

The iPhone 17 Pro is not just the better choice. For anyone who lives like a pro, it is for now the only one that makes sense. 

Image Credits - Apple