The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max could receive a telephoto camera downgrade according to a new leak, even while other specs get improved significantly.
The info comes from tipster Majin Bu, a leaker with a mixed accuracy record but one that seems to be on the money with iPhone 17 tips going by the response from other leakers.
As we've heard before, Majin Bu explains that Apple will apparently use a 48MP sensor for the iPhone 17 Pro's telephoto camera. That's four times as pixel-dense as the 12MP sensor used in the iPhone 16 Pro models, and in line with the 16 Pro's 48MP main and ultrawide cameras.
But the shocking spec in this leak tells us that the iPhone 17 Pro's telephoto camera will feature a 3.5x lens, rather than a 5x one as the iPhone 16 Pro has.
That is an on-paper decrease from the previous Pro models, but Apple will instead allegedly rely on the extra pixels to provide a 7x "hybrid" zoom - using both optical magnification and digital cropping.
This would work similarly to the 2x zoom mode offered on all iPhone 16 models, which uses a cropped image from the main camera to achieve that zoom level.
This could be unfortunate news for iPhone users who like their full-fat 5x zoom, especially given the smaller Pro model only got Apple's 5x zoom for the first time last year.
But it's possible that others will find the 3.5x zoom more useful for everyday photography, and the quality drop for 5x zoom and above will be acceptable considering how often they actually use it.
If this rumored telephoto camera change is accurate, then we'll be sure to test the performance thoroughly.
Majin Bu also says the new telephoto camera will be better in low light, and that the extra pixels will be helpful when editing images.
Apple wouldn't be the first
With Apple apparently undertaking this downgrade, it seems a trend's starting to emerge among leading smartphone camera makers to slowly downgrade their flagship phones' optical zoom abilities in favor of cropping in from higher-resolution images.
The first example of this was Samsung, which used to offer a 10MP 10x zoom on the Galaxy S23 Ultra and older Ultra phones. But the Galaxy S24 Ultra last year, and now the Galaxy S25 Ultra, swapped that for a 50MP 5x sensor.
Like Apple's rumored approach, Samsung's latest flagships rely on higher resolution sensors to increase the reach of their phone cameras. Larger sensors usually mean more detail and better color, plus downsizing the telephoto lens can mean parts of the phone can be smaller or lighter.
We should see the iPhone 17 series, consisting of a base model, the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max and the new iPhone 17 Air, this September assuming Apple keeps to its normal release pattern.
While these supposed changes to the iPhone 17 Pro models' telephoto cameras could be big news, the all-new Air model could steal the show with its new slim design.
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