It seems like only yesterday that I was marveling at the iPhone 16 Pro Max‘s larger screen, faster A18 Pro CPU, speedy Qi2 charging, and novel Camera Control button – and yet here we are, just days away from meeting the newest members of the iPhone family.
I’m excited to see what comes next, but after spending a year with the iPhone 16 line I do have some requests – or at least hopes – for what comes next in the iPhone 17.
I get that this isn’t 2007, and there’s no longer such a thing as one iPhone for all people and purposes. The iPhone lineup these days comprises smartphones large and small, big batteries and smaller ones, powerful cameras and not-so-powerful ones, fast screens and less speedy ones – and in 2025, that range may soon include an ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air. My point is, there’s enough variety to satisfy almost any consumer.
But, yes, I want more – here’s my wish list of all the things I want from most, if not all, of the iPhone 17 lineup.
Big zoom
Now that even the base-model Google Pixel 10 is offering 5x optical zoom (I know it’s only at 10.8MP), I think it’s high time that Apple finally goes big with an optical zoom sensor and lens that can bring us 10x closer to the action.
Imagine the excitement if the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max both included a 48MP 10x optical zoom lens. I’m sure it would have to be periscope technology, and that it would never fit in the ultra-slim iPhone 17 Air, but that’s okay with me and millions of others – the iPhone 16 Pro Max is already the second-most popular iPhone.
If Apple does this, then it would probably make sense to follow Google’s lead and finally introduce a zoom lens (5x, of course) on the base iPhone 17 (and the 17 Plus, if we see such a phone this year).
The ultimate sensor
I take the majority of my photos with the camera I have in my pocket, which is the 48MP wide lens on my iPhone 16 Pro Max. It’s a great camera, and Apple’s Photonic Engine image processing does an excellent job of producing rich, sharp, color-accurate images. Naturally, though, I want more…
Over the last few years, I’ve been testing and using a series of Samsung Galaxy smartphones, including the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, that feature 200MP sensors.
Even though I usually shoot at a standard 50MP setting, all that extra pixel information adds significant detail and quality to images. In my most recent tests, Samsung’s photos are either meeting or exceeding the quality I see from the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It’s not a huge difference, which I credit to Apple’s fantastic image processing, but imagine what the iPhone 17 could produce with that engine and a 200MP sensor.
Right – it would be awesome.
So let’s do it, Apple. Put a 200MP camera in the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, and make this prosumer photographer’s dreams come true.
No-scratch screen
No offense to Apple screen-glass partner Corning, but there is, to this day, still no such thing as a scratch-proof smartphone screen. Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and the Ceramic Shield Corning makes for Apple are plenty strong, but they still scratch quite easily when rubbed against a pants pocket rivet or a pair of keys.
Most of us (not me, I must admit) buy glass-based screen protectors that we sandwich on top of the so-called tough display glass to protect them from scratches and drops. It’s kind of like the cases that so many of us are afraid to live without.
But isn’t it time for a stronger, more break- and scratch-proof iPhone? The iPhone 17 should introduce a real breakthrough in screen-protection technology.
I wonder if what Apple is currently learning from its research into folding screens would help here. After all, if something can bend, it can probably stand up to some pressure, and maybe even naturally bend away from hard objects that might scratch it.
I know, it’s unlikely, but I still want a better solution than the current state of the art for screen protection. So, Apple, what comes after Ceramic Shield?
No bump, no problem
Imagine carrying an iPhone 17 with a perfectly flat back. No more giant camera bump to accommodate those ever-larger lenses. Instead, the iPhone 17 of my dreams (regardless of model) offers a level plane of metal and glass.
There are a couple of ways of accomplishing this. One is to completely reengineer the camera system so that you no longer need any distance between the stacked lenses and all those sensors – and that’s unlikely.
A better option is to make the phone thicker, and use the extra space for a larger battery. Apple could regain some overall thickness space by reengineering the body materials, but I don’t know that they could do it enough to make a real difference.
Admittedly, this would be a trade-off. Instead of super-thin, super-light iPhones, we’d get slightly thicker and heavier ones, but with better lines and incredible battery life.
The iPhone 17 Air, though, would naturally be exempt – and if such a change were implemented across the rest of the line, would seem even thinner by comparison.
Am I the only one willing to make this tradeoff for what would obviously be a huge design win?
Longer battery life
The 16 hours (on average) of battery life I was initially getting with the iPhone 16 Pro Max is nothing to sneeze at, but the hockey-stick performance of iPhone battery life is still a real thing, and a year into using that phone, I no longer enjoy those 16-hour days; I’m now in that place where five or six hours of intense use means I’m scrambling for a charger by hour eight.
What I hope for with the iPhone 17 is a reengineered power system using silicon-carbon infused batteries, which promise to vastly improve battery life. A two-day iPhone 17 could be possible. The technology is too new to understand its resilience, but even if the falloff from silicon-carbide batteries is similar to lithium-ion a year in, we’ll still probably be getting at least a day of use from our iPhones.
Shrink the Island
There was a time when I thought I wanted Apple to get rid of the Dynamic Island, that wide-pill-shaped and often black space at the top of your iPhone 16 screen. Now, though, I think I just want Apple to redesign it a bit.
The Dynamic Island is actually two cut-throughs in the Super Retina XDR display joined by a handful of pixels in between; one cutout is for the selfie camera and the other for the Face ID sensors.
There’s a school of thought that Apple could finally do away with Face ID and introduce an ultrasonic, screen-based fingerprint reader in the iPhone 17 line, which would instantly reduce the cutouts by half and leave just a selfie camera punch hole that Apple could cover with pixels when it’s not in use.
However, I do not expect Apple to do that – and what I’d prefer is two cutouts that have a pixel overlay when not in use, so we finally have a full iPhone screen with no black spaces.
In lieu of this, perhaps Apple can just shrink the Dynamic Island down when it’s not in use to help minimize the size of that black pill.
I don’t necessarily want to lose the Dynamic Island info (my Sports app gameplay updates are especially useful); but when it’s not in use the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 17 should be a lot less noticeable.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
