The next iPhone may have a big screen upgrade, multiple reports have claimed. If true, the iPhone 17 will gain something that’s been a province only of Pro models until now: the display with dynamic refresh rate that Apple calls ProMotion.
I’ve asked Apple repeatedly why the regular iPhone has been stuck with a 60Hz display while the Pro iPhone and screens on phones from rival manufacturers have long had 120Hz screens. Apple’s take has been that ProMotion is a pro feature (the clue, I suppose, is in the name).
The 60Hz screens on phones like the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are excellent — until you put them alongside the 16 Pro. The advantage of 120Hz screens is that they are much smoother, so scrolling through menus, as a basic example, is stutter-free and pleasing to the eye.
The ProMotion display has dynamic refresh rates, so that smoother scrolling can be done at 120Hz while static images, such as when you’re reading an email or web page, for instance, sees the refresh rate drop to save battery life.
And it’s the capability to drop the refresh rate right down to 1Hz that enables the industry-leading always-on lock screen on handsets like the iPhone 16 Pro. In turn, this helps create an always-on screen when the phone is plugged in, called StandBy. This works briefly on the iPhone 16, but can show a clock, calendar or other items all night long on the iPhone 16 Pro, as long as it’s in horizontal orientation.
In other words, adding ProMotion to the regular iPhone is quite a big deal, and long overdue. A new report from AppleInsider highlights that ProMotion, while “not definitive… would certainly be an attractive addition. At the same time, however, the iPhone 17 Pro would lose one of its major selling points, so it remains unclear exactly what route Apple will take,” the report says.
My gut feeling is that this is the year for the regular iPhone to gain ProMotion. That’s partly because the iPhone 17 Air is predicted to have it, so excluding the iPhone 17 from the party feels a bit mean. Plus, if there is an iPhone 17e, which isn’t certain yet, it would almost definitely not have ProMotion, which would be a useful point of distinction.
