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The internet thinks the iPhone 17 Pro design is ugly

Maybe just get a case?

Tim Marcin

on September 9, 2025

Ahhh, the orange plateau. Credit: Apple

Apple on Tuesday dropped its new premium iPhones — the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max — at its highly anticipated "Awe Dropping" event. Unfortunately for Apple, a large swath of the internet is not pleased with the way the iPhone 17 Pro looks. That's quite the public opinion reversal for a company long known for crowd-pleasing design.

Mashable's Stan Schroeder covered the new iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max in detail. But the new design brings major changes from the previous generation. The new phones have what Apple dubbed the "plateau," which houses the camera system. There's a centered, risen rectangle in lieu of the previous offset box that housed the cameras.

Another big design change: colors. It comes three finishes that Apple dubbed "deep blue, cosmic orange, and silver." (Basically navy, bright rust orange, and... well, silver.)

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So far, the internet doesn't seem happy with neither the plateau nor the colors, especially the orange. The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max has a lot of people online calling the design ugly.

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Change is hard and perhaps, with time, folks will begin to feel differently about the new phones.

Personally, I don't have super strong feelings about the look of the new phone. To me, it looks fine, which would be my review of pretty much any phone's aesthetic. Should I purchase an iPhone 17 Pro, it's getting a case and spending most of its life in my pocket — how it looks doesn't matter all that much.

But it sure seems that the internet doesn't seem to feel the same way.

Topics Apple iPhone

Tim Marcin

Associate Editor, Culture

Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).