The festive iPhone to buy
The software has moved along as well. iOS 26 arrived with its share of grumbles, from a Liquid Glass design that made parts of the interface harder to read to Apple Intelligence feeling thin without the Siri overhaul people had been waiting for. iOS 27 has put much of its effort into smoothing those rough edges, and it finally brings that Siri along.
The iPhone 17 went on sale in India in September 2025 at Rs 82,900 for 256GB, and once the iPhone 18 Pro arrived, Apple moved it up to Rs 99,900. The phone now costs Rs 17,000 more than it did on day one, so it pays to look closely at what this year’s festive offers actually save. The iPhone 17 was the first regular iPhone in a long while to leave very little on the table for the Pro models, bringing a 120Hz ProMotion display with always-on after years of the base iPhone sitting at 60Hz while Android phones at half the price moved on. Storage doubled to 256GB, the ultrawide jumped from 12 to 48 megapixels, and an 18-megapixel square selfie sensor let Center Stage widen the frame as friends crowded in, without anyone turning the phone sideways. The battery, rated at up to 30 hours of video playback, still gets me comfortably through to bedtime with the always-on display switched on. The cameras have aged just as well, with the 48-megapixel pair still turning out sharp, natural-looking photos by day and dependable ones at night. That new Siri AI is the biggest change the iPhone 17 has seen since it went on sale. At 6.3 inches it is nowhere near the compact iPhones a loyal few still miss. If either was a dealbreaker in 2025, a discounted price tag won’t change that now. The iPhone 16 is also the obvious alternative on sale, going for somewhere between Rs 65,000 and Rs 72,000. It costs less today, but it does without the 120Hz screen and the upgraded cameras, which happen to be what will keep the 17 feeling current four or five years down the line. Step further back to the iPhone 15, which Flipkart has from Rs 63,999, and Siri AI goes off the table altogether.
The only catch is the price tag. It helps that the phone itself has worn its first year well. Siri can now hold a proper conversation, answer open-ended questions, read what’s on screen and draw on messages and documents on the phone, while a new Camera mode can split a bill from a photo of the receipt. It works in English in India for now, with Hindi still to come. There’s no telephoto camera, so zooming past 2x means cropping.
What it lacked last year, of course, it still lacks.
Anyone still on an iPhone 13, iPhone 14 or older, especially a 60Hz model whose battery has seen better days, will feel the jump the first time they scroll, and so will Android users who have wanted an iPhone without paying Pro prices. iPhone 16 owners are the ones who can sit this one out, since a smoother screen alone is a hard sell for another Rs 80,000.
Which is why the old festive rule of picking last year’s iPhone has rarely been easier to follow.