Apple's iPhone 17 Tipped For An Upgrade That Will Leave iPhone 15 And 16 Users Envious

Apple's iPhone 16 won't even hit the shelves until the later part of this year and yet, the iPhone 17 rumor mill is already busy churning away. The latest report points to a significant upgrade to the front selfie camera leading to a smaller Dynamic Island.

Reputed Apple and tech analyst, Kuo Ming-Chi, speculated in a long post (related to Apple camera lens supplier GSEO, or Genius Electronic Optical) that the iPhone 17's front camera sensor is expected to be upgraded to a 24MP unit over the 12MP sensor on the iPhone 15 and 16. Not only that, Kuo thinks that Apple will upgrade the 5-element design that's in its latest flagships to a 6-element design. 

With in-phone and cloud-based photo processing being so good as they are nowadays, it's hard to tell what sort of benefit having a sixth element will have over the competition. While some lens elements gather and focus light onto the sensor, other elements help to correct for distortion and aberrations. The extra element in the iPhone 17 would therefore boost image quality in low-light situations.

Another strong rumor related to the front camera is that the iPhone 17 Pro is expected to feature under-display Face ID, which will be a first for any iPhone. Doing so will shrink the Dynamic Island cutout to a smaller central circular cutout for the selfie camera.