Updated June 1 with more rumors of the iPhone 17 Pro Max design in further leaks.
When Apple releases its next iPhones this fall, it’ll be clear whether reports of a thicker-than-ever iPhone Pro Max are true. How thick is too thick? A new video showing a dummy may give us clues and now the same source has provided us with a further picture of an iPhone 17 Pro dummy for comparison. More on that in a moment.
A recent report claims that the iPhone 17 Pro, Pro Max and the slim phone presumed to be called the iPhone 17 Air will all have 12GB of active memory (RAM) while the basic iPhone 17 will have 8GB. Other new features for the iPhones include new tech for the proximity sensor and potentially an all-new Dynamic Island. Details of all these reports at the end. First, though, the new video.
It comes from prolific leaker Majin Bu, with the caption “iPhone 17 Pro is beautiful,” followed by a 33-second video. To be clear, this is not the real thing, though it’s a well-built mock-up. Assuming it’s following the well-leaked details and dimensions (and assuming they are accurate in the first place), what does it tell us?
This mock-up shows the rear camera panel in a shade that matches the rear of the iPhone, unlike most earlier leaks which showed the camera panel in black. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in April that this wouldn’t be the case.
Here it looks like the camera panel, which stretches across the width of the phone, is made of glass, with the iPhone’s color showing through.
So, how thick is it? There have been several reports that the iPhone 17 Pro Max will be thicker than ever, potentially to provide a great benefit: increased battery life.
In a separate post on X, Majin Bu has published an image showing and iPhone 16 Pro alongside a dummy of the iPhone 17 Pro, to show how the camera modules will change. It’s hard to tell but it looks like the iPhone 16 Pro may have slightly larger lenses, though this could be down to the 16 Pro simply being nearer the camera.
The most striking differences remain the full-width camera panel and the repositioning of the flash, LiDAR scanner and microphone.
In the latest video, the dummy phone is shown from more or less every angle, including side-on. The iPhone 16 Pro Max measures 8.25mm from front to back, while reports have suggested this fall’s replacement will be 8.725mm thick. That’s a difference of 0.475mm, which isn’t exactly gargantuan.
As a result, it doesn’t look much thicker, if at all, in the video. This may calm those who worry a thicker phone, especially of this screen size, could be too much in the hand.
Of course, Apple will have thought of this and curved the edges, for instance, to mitigate this. Though since many people put this expensive piece of technology in a case, there’s the thickness of the case to be factored in here, too.
The dummy shows other elements just as you’d expect to see them, such as the volume rocker and Action button on the left edge, side button and Camera Control on the right.
By the way, it looks like this dummy is a non-U.S. iPhone, as the SIM tray is there, where the mmWave antenna lozenge sits in American iPhones. Of course, if the dummy reflects accurately what the iPhone 17 Pro Max will look like, that SIM tray is likely to be the only cosmetic difference.
Back to the other reports. It looks like the iPhone’s proximity sensor is being updated. The proximity sensor is at the top of the display and knows when your ear is next to the iPhone’s earpiece, and it turns off the display accordingly. But a new metalens will reduce the size of the Face ID sensor. In turn, this could affect the size of the Dynamic Island on the iPhone display. Analyst Jeff Pu previously said this new tech would only be on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but now thinks it will come to all iPhone 17 devices. It’s worth adding, though, that another analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, thinks the Dynamic Island will be mostly unchanged on the next phones. So, we’ll have to see.
Jeff Pu’s report, picked up by 9to5Mac, also says that the entire iPhone 17 range will be made of aluminum, even the Pro models which introduced titanium for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 series. Instead, it’s claimed, only the new slim iPhone, the iPhone 17 Air, will have titanium as its frame, presumably to provide greater strength on such a thin chassis.
Pu also says that the processors will also be different from what was expected. Previously it was thought all iPhone 17 series handsets would use the A19 processor. Pu says the iPhone 17 Air will have the A19, the two Pro models will use a variant called A19 Pro, while the iPhone 17 will have the A18 found in the iPhone 16.
It’s not impossible — Apple has held over processors before. However, I will say that I am skeptical of this.
Finally, Pu mentions that the front-facing camera will have a 24-megapixel sensor on all iPhones, and that all three cameras on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max will have 48-megapixel resolution for the first time.
