iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max Might Hit The Market With Upgraded Telephoto & Selfie Camera

Apple might be planning to equip the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max with a 48MP telephoto camera supporting 5x optical zoom—an improvement over the 12MP telephoto camera on the iPhone 16 Pro series.

The front-facing camera on iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max is expected to be upgraded to a 24-megapixel sensor.

Source : Apple

The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are rumored to feature notable camera upgrades, according to details shared by a tipster on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging platform. Although these successors to the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are not expected to launch until later this year, leaked information over the past few months has revealed potential design and hardware changes.

One significant update includes a redesigned rear camera island featuring a horizontal layout for the iPhone 17 Pro models.

iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max: Camera Specifications (Expected)

According to Digital Chat Station (translated from Chinese), Apple plans to equip the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max with a 48-megapixel telephoto camera supporting 5x optical zoom—an improvement over the 12-megapixel telephoto camera on the iPhone 16 Pro series. Additionally, the front-facing camera on these models is expected to be upgraded to a 24-megapixel sensor, compared to the 12-megapixel TrueDepth camera on the current iPhone 16 Pro lineup.

This isn’t the first time reports of upgraded camera specifications for the iPhone 17 Pro series have surfaced. In January 2024, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF Securities International, predicted that the iPhone 17 models would feature a 24-megapixel front camera. Earlier, in November 2023, a report suggested Apple intends to keep its Tetraprism telephoto lens—enabling 5x optical zoom—exclusive to the Pro models.

Meanwhile, other reports indicated that the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Air could become the first non-Pro models to include telephoto cameras, signaling a broader rollout of advanced camera technology across Apple’s lineup.

Earlier leaks have suggested additional enhancements for the iPhone 17 Pro models, including the introduction of under-display Face ID technology, which may lead to a smaller camera cutout. The iPhone 17 lineup is rumored to feature Apple’s A19 chip with 8GB of RAM, while the Pro variants could be powered by the A19 Pro chip, paired with 12GB of RAM for improved performance.