With one look at my belongings, it’s easy to tell my favorite color is orange. I have an orange water bottle, orange headphones, orange embroidery on my L.L. Bean tote, and orange pants I wear to death. So when I sat in the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, last week—as Apple unveiled its new slate of products—and that lineup included the orange iPhone 17 Pro, I became convinced that the cosmos were working in my favor.
The Pro is just one of the products Apple graciously sent me to test. During New York Fashion Week, I had the chance to take my new orange phone, the iPhone Air, and the AirPods Pro 3 for a spin. All three run on iOS 26—Apple’s new operating system, available now—and mark the first major shift in the company’s flagship devices in recent memory. Sleek, cutting-edge, and best-in-class, they genuinely make life a bit easier—especially if you have a fast-paced, on-the-go job like mine.
My recommendation? Go with the iPhone 17 Pro. And yes, the AirPods Pro 3 are absolutely worth it. Below, find my five key takeaways after having my hands on the devices for a week.
The photo and video capabilities open up new, creative possibilities for content creators—making it easier (and more fun) to innovate.
Taken at Paper Magazine x Demi Lovato at Standard High Line, on 1x zoom
Taken at Paper Magazine x Demi Lovato at Standard High Line, on 8x zoom
The camera on the iPhone 17 Pro is incredible, and throughout New York Fashion Week, my content absolutely soared. Whether I was sitting front row at a fashion show or waddling into an event at the back of the crowd, the photos and videos I took were consistently crisp and clear. The new Pro features 8x Zoom, making it easy to capture fine details even from far away. (Both images above, in fact, were taken from the exact same spot.)
The Pro, Air, and 17 also include the new Center Stage front camera, which lets you take a landscape selfie without rotating the phone. Thanks to a new square lens, the orientation auto-adjusts based on who’s in the frame. For those Gen Z-ers who refuse to take a landscape photo, don’t worry—this auto-adjustment can be turned off.
Using Dual Capture at Grace Ling’s spring/summer 2026 show.
A bonus feature for creators is Dual Capture, which Apple brilliantly showcased with a Dua Lipa concert video. It allows you to film using both the front and rear cameras simultaneously—perfect for creating BeReal-style content in real time. At the fashion shows this week, it was fun to use the feature to chronicle my live reactions to the looks coming down the runway. It’s also going to be a game changer for concertgoers. I’m already imagining the moment I film myself sobbing as Ariana Grande walks on stage during the Eternal Sunshine Tour.
With battery life this good, there’s no reason to wait.
Without the extensive battery life, this midnight video of Gabby Windey and Demi Lovato wouldn’t exist.
New York Fashion Week days can be long. One minute you’re at a show in Harlem, and the next you’re Ubering across town to an event in Brooklyn. Despite the chaos, the battery on the iPhone 17 Pro lasted me the entire day—and I’m on the social team, capturing photos and video almost nonstop.
With up to 33 hours of video playback on the Pro and 39 on the Pro Max, these devices are built to go the distance. An added perk? With the right power adapter, you can charge up to 50 percent in just 20 minutes. That’s a major advantage over the iPhone Air, which offers a still-solid but shorter 27 hours of video playback.
While the Air’s slimness is undeniably appealing, the Pro’s design is truly unmatched.
The iPhone Pro 17.
Over the past week alone, I’ve dropped the Pro about five times, on all kinds of surfaces. Runways, New York City streets, and yes, even in my sink. And not a single scratch. Because of the Ceramic Shield, the Pro is the most durable iPhone yet, which makes it totally worth the extra dough for a clumsy person like me.
Another standout feature is the Pro’s vapor chamber. It contains deionized water sealed inside a chamber that helps move heat away from the phone’s chip. If your phone used to heat up in one spot, that’s no longer an issue. The heat is now spread more evenly across the device, allowing for higher performance in a phone that’s more powerful than anything we’ve seen before.
That’s not to say the Air isn’t durable. It’s amazing what Apple has done with a design that skinny, and it also boasts the Ceramic Shield, however it does sometimes wobble on a flat surface, whereas the Pro stays put. The Air also lacks the camera qualities of the Pro.
Using your iPhone just got a whole lot easier with iOS 26.
Everyone hates change, and iOS 26 brings a lot of it. Released just last week, people have already flooded the internet with both praise and frustration about the update. The Phone app has been completely revamped, nearly everything is customizable, and the interface features a fresh new look called Liquid Glass. The software merges seamlessly with the new devices, but when I first opened my iPhone, the changes felt overwhelming—especially heading into one of the busiest weeks of the year.
However, after taking a few days to settle in, I fell in love with many of the new features. Using Apple Intelligence, Maps identified my most traveled routes, I could add calendar invites simply by holding my camera up to them, and my notifications were smartly prioritized—putting the most important texts right at the top.
Live Translation—and the AirPods Pro 3—are seriously that cool.
A close-up of the AirPods Pro 3.
Even AirPod naysayers will agree: the AirPods 3 deliver. They come with two incredible new features: heart rate sensing and Live Translation. The former tracks your heart rate (it helped me stay connected to my beats during a “break” from NYFW—a particularly tough Barry’s class), and the latter translates what someone is saying in another language. Because Fashion Month is such a global event, this function opens up a literal world of opportunities to communicate with our European counterparts. Powered by Apple Intelligence, it can also translate text messages and audio recordings on demand.
