The iPhone 16 Pro is barely a month old, but we're already seeing some credible rumors for next year's successor – and the latest camera speculation for the iPhone 17 Pro has got me considering delaying my iPhone upgrade.
According to a research note from the usually reliable analyst Jeff Pu (via MacRumors), both the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max will see their 5x telephoto camera upgraded from a 12MP sensor to a 48MP one. Less excitingly (for me, at least), the front camera will also be boosted to a 24MP sensor.
The note contains other predictions for Apple's next flagship phone – both models will apparently get 12GB RAM (up from 8GB) to improve Apple Intelligence and multitasking speeds, plus a first major reduction in size for the Dynamic Island (thanks to a new metalens for the Face ID system). Naturally, there will also be a new A19 Pro chip.
But as a photographer who's close to upgrading to the iPhone 16 Pro, those telephoto rumors for the 17 Pro have given me pause for thought. I've previously written about why I skipped the iPhone 15 Pro, with the main reason being my golden rule to wait until any new Apple feature reaches second-generation refinement.
This year, the iPhone 16 Pro brought Apple's 5x telephoto camera to the smaller Pro model (it was previously a Max exclusive), but it is largely identical to last year with an f/2.8 aperture and 12MP sensor. That 'zoom' camera will reach real maturity, it seems, in the 17 Pro series with the same 48MP boost that Apple brought to the iPhone Pro's wide-angle camera this year – and that could be worth waiting for.
Why a telephoto upgrade would be a big deal
Apple left one of the iPhone 16 Pro's three cameras with a 12MP resolution – the telephoto one. The main camera is a 24mm, 48MP affair with a bright f/1.78 aperture, while the 13mm Ultra Wide was upgraded to 48MP. While the Ultra Wide doesn't pack the same computational 'Fusion' magic as the main camera, the resolution is still a helpful upgrade for things like macro shots.
Sensor size is at least as important as resolution, if not more so. But a higher-resolution 48MP sensor can help reduce noise through 'binning' – in other words, combining adjacent pixels to make larger ones that are more sensitive to light. Technical improvements like that are particularly helpful when light is being bounced around an internal tetraprism, like it is on the telephoto lens.
If the iPhone 17 Pro's telephoto camera combined a resolution boost with a larger sensor, its image quality would be much-improved. While our iPhone 16 Pro review found its 5x camera to be perfectly solid, it is still the weakest sibling of the phone's three hardware-based cameras – and one I'd probably only use in emergencies or as a handy pair of digital binoculars.
Of course, waiting for Apple to give the iPhone Pro series a 'perfect' photography setup – three 48MP cameras with large sensors and 'Fusion' processing – is a fool's game. Apple is a master of bread-crumbing these little camera upgrades just enough to keep you on the upgrade cycle. I will most likely still succumb to the temptation of an iPhone 16 Pro upgrade, but these rumors mean it's certainly tempting to wait one more year.
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