iPhone 17 Pro vs Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

iPhone 17 Pro

The 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR OLED with ProMotion 1-120Hz LTPO panel is essentially unchanged from the iPhone 16 Pro in resolution, but Apple has bumped peak outdoor brightness to 3,000 nits and added an improved anti-reflective coating. Almost every reviewer praises the screen, though the awkward complication is that the same 6.3-inch ProMotion panel is now also on the $799 iPhone 17 — eroding one of the Pro's traditional differentiators.

• The displays get super bright for easy viewing in sunny conditions, and the Pro models recharge fairly quickly with the right adapter.
• Outdoor brightness now reaches 3,000 nits with reduced glare and higher contrast — using the phone for navigation outdoors or in a well-lit train is noticeably more comfortable.
• The base iPhone 17 now uses the same 6.3-inch ProMotion display as the iPhone 17 Pro — a huge upgrade for the entry-level model that erodes one of the Pro's traditional differentiators.
• Apple has improved the anti-reflection treatment, though in real-world use it's been hard to determine what's changed compared to the iPhone 16 Pro's panel.
• Apple's Ceramic Shield 2 has held up well against scratches during a month of pocket abuse without a case — fared much better than every iPhone the reviewer has owned in the past six years.
• The 6.3-inch screen size is divisive — long-time Plus and Pro Max owners coming down to the smaller Pro find it 'feels like a toy' even though the display itself is excellent.

Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

A 6.83-inch 1.5K AMOLED at 144Hz with 2,160Hz PWM dimming — reviewers agree it's the best screen Nothing has built, with realistic outdoor brightness around 1,600 nits. The headline 5,000-nit peak, though, only materialises with special HDR test files; everyday brightness is far lower.

• Nothing's best-ever display: a 144Hz panel with 1,600 nits of outdoor brightness and a claimed 5,000 nits peak; the main camera is solid too with nice detail and well-reproduced colours.
• A claimed 1,600-nit outdoor brightness is realistic — no major visibility issues outdoors even in strong sunshine, putting it among the best affordable phones, and Nothing OS has some of the best design consistency of any Android UI.
• The 4,500-nit HDR peak was only validated with specific HDR test files, not actual video playback — real-world output is around 700 nits in SDR and 1,550–1,600 in HDR.
• The '5,000-nit peak brightness' spec means nothing in practice — a marketing figure pulled from a single-pixel measurement.
• 144Hz refresh (vs 120Hz on the regular 4a) and 1,600 nits white brightness / 5,000 nits peak, marketed as 66% brighter than the Phone (3a) series — though there's no extra output on a small 10% window.

iPhone 17 Pro

The A19 Pro with 6-core CPU, 6-core GPU and 12GB of RAM (up from 8GB on the iPhone 16 Pro) is meaningfully faster than its predecessor and benchmarks ahead of every Android flagship. The big news, though, is the laser-welded vapor chamber cooling system, which finally fixes the iPhone 15/16 Pro's notorious thermal throttling. Sustained gaming performance, ProRes video recording and image generation are all noticeably better.

• The benchmark scores blew everything else out of the water — Apple's A19 Pro with 12GB of RAM and the vapor chamber make these the most powerful smartphones around.
• Geekbench multi-core hits 9,994 and 3DMark Wild Life lands at 5,400 — confirming the A19 Pro's ~14% CPU and ~40% GPU lead over the iPhone 16 Pro.
• Playing Assassin's Creed Mirage at max settings was significantly smoother on the iPhone 17 Pro than on the iPhone 16 Pro last year, with stable frame rates and rarely any stutters.
• The vapor chamber isn't just marketing — the iPhone 17 Pro ran significantly cooler than the iPhone 16 Pro in all testing, with heat spread evenly across the back rather than concentrated in one hot spot.
• On 3DMark stress tests the iPhone 17 Pro delivered 35-40% better stability than the iPhone 16 Pro and 45-50% better on ray-traced workloads, with the phone never crossing 100°F in 40-60 minutes of gaming.
• 12GB of RAM is a real improvement — apps stay in memory longer, with Reminders retaining its state across three different grocery stores after using Apple Maps and other apps in between.
• Image Playground and Genmoji generation are notably faster on the iPhone 17 Pro than on the iPhone 16 Pro, thanks to the neural accelerators in the A19 Pro's 6-core GPU.
• The new A19 Pro is a big leap forward, much bigger than your typical yearly upgrade, and 12GB of RAM makes the device feel more future-proof for the next four to five years.
• Apple suddenly couldn't stop talking about thermal performance — they ditched titanium and completely redesigned the phone to fit a vapor chamber inside, but didn't show a single feature that needs it.

Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 with UFS 3.1 storage is a clear, tangible step up from the Phone (3a) generation — Nothing claims +27% CPU, +30% GPU and +65% AI. It's a perfectly capable everyday chip that feels noticeably quicker, but it's explicitly not a gaming powerhouse and warms up under sustained heavy load.

• Backed by OS optimisations and a custom CPU scheduler, the chipset delivers 27% better CPU, 30% better GPU and 65% better AI performance than the Nothing Phone (3a); storage is 147% faster in reads and 380% faster in writes.
• Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is a perfectly acceptable chip across the board, and the upgrade to UFS 3.1 makes this feel noticeably quicker compared to the Nothing Phone (3a) and prior.
• The CPU performance difference between the 4a Pro and the vanilla 4a is not massive, but it is still very much notable.
• Available in 8GB+128GB, 8GB+256GB and 12GB+256GB configurations, all running near-stock AOSP-style Nothing OS.
• Like most phones in this segment, it shows some basic heat build-up during really extensive tasks like gaming or 4K editing in high-end software, though it stays responsive while gaming.

iPhone 17 Pro

The single biggest selling point. The 3,998 mAh battery on the Pro and ~4,823 mAh on the Pro Max (5,088 mAh in eSIM-only markets) deliver Apple's biggest single-generation battery jump in years — Apple claims 33h video on the Pro and 39h on the Pro Max, and real-world reviewers consistently report two-day endurance on the Max and comfortable single-day endurance on the Pro. Wired charging via the new 40W Dynamic Power Adapter hits 50% in 20 minutes (verified), and MagSafe/Qi2 wireless tops out at 25W.

• I haven't worried about battery life on either phone — hit nearly 7 hours of screen-on time on the iPhone 17 Pro with 30 percent left, and over 5 hours on the Pro Max with 55 percent remaining.
• The Apple smartphone sets new high scores for battery runtimes — 'fabulous battery life' is one of the headline pros in the verdict.
• The Pro Max made it to the end of Saturday before dropping to 20 percent after being charged on Thursday morning — two full days of use is genuinely achievable on the larger model.
• Charging hits 51% in 20 minutes with a 40W plug (matching Apple's claim) and a full charge takes 80 minutes — about 25 minutes faster than the iPhone Air.
• MagSafe wireless charging now hits 25W (with a 30W adapter), and Qi2 is officially supported — 0-50% in 30 minutes wirelessly.
• Could confidently leave home without a power bank and still return with 15-20 percent juice left after hours of music streaming — battery anxiety on a smaller iPhone is finally cured.
• On r/apple owners report ~10 hours of screen-on time per charge and the phone stays 'ice cold' — battery is the most-praised aspect of the iPhone 17 Pro in user threads.
• iPhone 13 Pro Max and 15 Pro Max upgraders on r/apple report battery feeling 'exaggerated' or even slightly worse than their old phone — likely tied to iOS 26 overhead or AI features.

Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

The ~5,080mAh cell reliably gets through a day and endurance improved across all of GSMArena's tests versus the 3a Pro — but it's only an 80mAh bump over last year and looks small next to 6,000–7,000mAh budget rivals. 50W wired charging is the trade-off win; there is no wireless charging at all.

• Endurance has improved across the board in all tests compared to last year's Nothing Phone (3a) Pro; with a 68W USB-PD charger the phone peaked at around 42W.
• The review unit gets through a day without problems, but it'll certainly be into the red and close to done after about 15 hours of use; the OnePlus 15R has a much meatier battery to last longer.
• It's only an 80mAh increase over last year — small fry next to budget rivals like the Poco M8 Pro, which uses silicon-carbon tech to reach 6,500mAh.
• 50W wired charging is very respectable at this price — besting anything Google, Apple or Samsung offers below £500.
• Because the processor isn't power-hungry and the battery is large for the chip, real-world battery life is excellent.

iPhone 17 Pro

The iPhone 17 Pro ships with iOS 26 and its new translucent 'Liquid Glass' design language, which is itself polarizing — some reviewers love the refresh, others find it visually busy or hard on the eyes. Apple Intelligence remains the biggest disappointment of the generation: reviewers across The Verge, Trusted Reviews, Digital Trends and 9to5Mac say it's still hardly worth mentioning two years in, with most useful tasks falling back to ChatGPT integration. Apple-style long-term update support remains a major plus.

• Apple Intelligence is still merely a footnote in the review — features like Writing Tools and Clean Up can't compete with Google's and Samsung's equivalents.
• Apple Intelligence is still somewhere between useless and MIA — listed as one of the iPhone 17's main cons in the Pro/Bad summary.
• What's up with Siri? — listed as a 'Bad' in the iPhone 17 Pro review summary, reflecting widespread frustration that Apple's AI assistant has fallen behind Gemini and ChatGPT.
• iOS 26's Liquid Glass aesthetic is a significant refresh that matches the vibes of the new hardware — bigger buttons, new lock screen styles, and refined Camera and Photos apps.
• After three months Liquid Glass has matured — there are now ways to reduce the transparency effect, and 'the way certain parts of an app blend behind others is a real joy.'
• iOS 26 with the always-on display and Priority Notifications is a genuinely useful combination — you can glance at the lock screen to see if anything needs immediate attention.
• Apple is good at supporting phones for extended periods (industry expects 6-7 years of iOS updates), and Android competitors are still catching up on that front.
• r/apple commenters openly speculate Apple may abandon Apple Intelligence as a primary selling point given how poorly it has performed — 'crazy to think they missed that badly on a feature they invested so much in.'
• Android switchers continue to flag the iOS keyboard, lack of universal back gesture, and per-app data controls as the things they can't get past — Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro switchers on r/iphone, r/Android, and r/GooglePixel all return to Android within 2-3 months.

Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

Nothing OS 4.1 on Android 16 is the universal favourite: near-stock AOSP functionality with a distinctive monochrome visual identity, almost no bloatware, and AI that's present but not forced. The one hard reservation is update length — only 3 years of OS upgrades against 6 years of security patches.

• Nothing OS sticks close to a clean, near-stock Android (AOSP) experience in functionality, but stands out with its distinctive visual identity.
• After a week the phone is 'absolutely brilliant'; software is where Nothing phones shine, even if the camera 'window' at the top of the display is basically a pseudo-iPhone look.
• Software is where Nothing phones absolutely shine — the clearest reason to pick this over rivals.
• There's a smattering of AI here, but it's not shoved down your throat — and the software is basically the same clean setup as the regular Nothing Phone (4a).
• Unlike Samsung's Galaxy AI which is in your face from day one, Nothing's AI stays out of the way — an impressive, restrained package overall.