Our local Apple Store has stock on the iPhone 17 in various colors, so I could have walked out with a new iPhone 17 today if I wanted to. But I had questions, which I was able to get answered.
I also wanted to get my hands on the actual phones. The iPhone Air is pretty thin, but there are two many compromises that eliminate it from use as my daily driver. No stereo speakers when watching video or listening to music, for one. The single image sensor isn't all that bad, since it is the image-stabilized 48 MP camera, but eventually that would annoy me. Plus, no spatial data like the 17. And I can imagine the smaller battery would annoy me at some point. It might start out fine, but after two or three years, would I be cursing the limited battery life and the need to spend even more money on an external power bank to get it through the day. I'm glad I could hold it in my hands and go, "Oooo". It is noticeably lighter than the 17, and polished titanium does have a different feeling than the aluminum iPhones I've been using over the years. If you get this phone, you'd probably want it uncased, because otherwise, why bother?
I also wanted to look at the iPhone 17 Pro. Weight and bulk seem similar to my current iPhone 13, but the extra $300 over the iPhone 17 is hard to justify as I wouldn't be likely to use this phone for anything like what it's capable of. I didn't see any evidence of the Mag Safe transfer that's been reported in other stores. Holding the uncased Pro, the edge of the "plateau" felt wrong. It's like the only sharp edge/corner on a phone that's all smoothed out. Not a problem if you have it in a case, but it's just weird that this made it into production like this.
The other thing I wanted to check on were the cases. WeaveTech isn't available on the iPhone 17 cases, so that was easy. And the one case they had that I thought was pretty close to my current leather case was a Beats case for $45. I'll have to look over at Amazon and see what's available there. The Silicone case feels better than previous generations, but I'm still leaning towards leather.