Which iPhone is the Best?
Over the years its become a meme that apple will always say in their iPhone keynotes "Its the best iPhone we've ever made" but is this actually true? Of course specs wise at the time of writing the 17 Pro/Pro Max is the best iPhone. But raw power aside what is the best iPhone?
iPhone 17 Pro
There has been a lot of debate about this over the years but personally I think the best iPhone is the iPhone 5, this thing was crazy at the time. The average phone at the time was bulky and still mostly plastic even in the apple camp bulk was a factor with the iPhone 4 and 4s measuring up at 9.3mm thick and about 140g. The Competing blackberrys at the time where about 12mm thick and weighed about 110g and over in android land the HTC One S was about 8.9mm thick and weighed 130g.
Left: iPhone 4 Center: BlackBerry Curve 9320 Right: HTC One S
But this would all change in September 2012 when Apple unvailed the iPhone 5 with its super tall for the time aspect ratio, phones where mostly around 3:4 still at this time. But most notably its thin and sleek design at only 7.6mm thin and 112g. I dont think this was thinness at all costs either, that was more the iPhone 6 but the iPhone 5 struck that balance of thing and sleek but still comfortable and sturdy in the hand. Which is proven in the fact that the base model iPhones have hung around that 7.5-8mm range even to this day with the base iPhone 16 and 17 sitting at 7.8mm.
iPhone 17
Holding it for the first time blew me away it felt like this device was truly from the future. Especially the first time when I was stood in the apple store and holding it in one hand with my iPhone 4 in the other I knew I couldn't not have one. Being about 15 at the time though I still only really had paper round and lawn mowing money since I couldn't get a proper job yet. So as the master negotiator I was I managed to convince my parents to go 50/50 on one for my birthday.
This was also the last iPhone to feature apples skeuomorphic design with iOS6 shipping on this out the box before it was ruined by the iOS7 redesign the next year. This was the first iPhone to also feature the now hated but at the time beloved lightning connector, this was a different era remember and while apple where cooking up USB C still in the lab with intel it wouldn't see the light of day until 2 years after the iPhone 5 and wouldn't be put onto the iPhone at all until another 11 years on the iPhone 15 series.
iPhone 5
So in the meantime they had a difficult choice of either adopting micro USB or inventing a stop gap connector (that albeit lived on a little too long in the end) in lightning that was more well wearing than micro USB and reversible while still being compact. I think at the time this was the right choice as Apple was still under the allure of Steve Jobs who had passed away while the iPhone 5 was still likely in its early stages of development and Micro USB was antithetical to everything Steve Jobs wanted out of technology.
So while many people will argue the iPhone 4 was the pinnacle of iPhone design and I would be inclined to agree it is a very good design and defiantly consequential in a lot of other ways. the iPhone 5 was also a refinement of a lot of those ideas and probably one of the biggest year over year updates the iPhone lineup has ever had and therefore to me is the greatest iPhone ever made.
Last Edited: 4 weeks, 2 days ago.