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A flurry of new iPhone 17 rumours have added to what we already know about what's coming in iOS 26 to make the new phone a potential landmark release for mobile photography.
The launch of the next iPhone, the iPhone 17, is likely between six to eight weeks away now and the speculation is starting to reach a pitch that can best be described as fevered. When noted Apple sage Mark Gurman comments on a post claiming one of the new units was seen being tested in the wild and then his 'WowI This looks legit' post is endlessly analysed in turn to try and work out whether he was being sarcastic or not, you know we're heading into silly season territory.
Here's what we know so far.
Latest rumours
Joe Rossignol on MacRumors received a tip over the weekend from an anonymous source who claimed to be familiar with the iPhone 17 via a film company that is producing an ad for the new device. According to the tipster, three new features are coming to the Pro device at least that were previously under wraps.
- A new Telephoto lens with an 8x optical zoom. This is well in advance of the 5x optical zoom in the 16 Pro. Also it can allegedly move to allow for continuous zoom at various optical lengths.
- A new, Apple native pro camera app for both photos and video that would go up against the likes of Halide, Blackmagic Camera etc (though even the tipster admits this might be just a big update to Final Cut Camera).
- An additional Camera Control button on the top-edge.
All this needs to be tipped into the big ol' gumbo of rumours already surrounding the new capabilities of the iPhone 17, which include the presence of three 48 MP cameras upon the back accommodated in a new, opinion-dividing camera bar, a 24 MP front camera, and more. These could be across both phones. One rumour even says that the new Pro can record simultaneously using the front and rear cameras which potentially takes the unit interestingly close to 360-degree video territory.
Ask an AI to put together an image of the new camera bar based on rumours and this is what you get. Take with a large pinch of salt...
8K video is a possibility too. Mark Gurman has stated that video will be more of a priority for the new device. This seems to be not so much an attempt to woo any passing Hollywood directors though (see 28 Years Later and the challenges of adding VFX to iPhone 15 footage), but more a deliberate targeting of the vlogger market, which would make sense. There's always a trickle down effect sure, but selling a hundred phones to directors and hoping for that to kick in versus selling several hundreds of thousands of devices to the massive vlogger market is a no brainer.
Definitely new in iOS 26
What we do for sure know is what is coming in iOS 26, iOS 19 as was before the new naming convention took hold.
That brings in a redesigned interface to Camera which will prioritise Photo and Video modes as main tabs, with other capture options such as Cinematic, Slo-Mo, and Portrait accessed by swiping left or right. Swiping up will give you access to Exposure, Timer, Aperture etc. Meanwhile, controls for resolution and frame rate have been moved to the top of the screen, along with toggles for Flash and Night Mode. A long press on these icons will bring up additional configuration menus.
Balancing the need to reduce visual clutter with that to access advanced controls is a tricky task, but this seems to be a step in the right direction at least.
Apple Photos also gets a makeover. There will be Liquid Glass UI elements everywhere, though as the company seems to be progressively dialling these down with each release it is arguable whether there will be any left come September. Tab bar navigation thankfully returns with three buttons - Library, Collections (newly cutomisable), and Search -, but the big news seems to the addition of the ability to spatialise your photos. This effectively adds a depth map to everything and lets you pan around an image. It was ported in from visionOS, and will presumably also help turbocharge such things as removing objects and other post processing tools.
Oh, and there will probably be some stuff about AI tools that may or may not appear in the future. Time will tell on that score...
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