iPhone 17 Event — big camera upgrades coming

With hours to go until Apple's "Awe Dropping" Event, we already have a clear picture of the new iPhones. We are most intrigued, however, by the camera upgrades.

This was reported by Techradar.

24 MP selfie camera

According to one rumor, the iPhone 17 lineup will feature a 24-megapixel front-facing camera with a six-element lens, compared to the iPhone 14 and 15 that have a 12-megapixel front-facing camera with five plastic lens elements. Last year's iPhone 16 lineup has the same camera hardware. The iPhone 17's upgraded resolution of 24 megapixels will allow photos to maintain their quality when cropped or zoomed in, and the increased number of pixels will capture finer details. The upgrade to a six-element lens should also slightly enhance image quality.

48MP telephoto lens

An upgraded 48-megapixel telephoto lens is expected to be included in Apple's premium devices iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max and optimized for use with the Vision Pro headset. However, there are no details yet on how the lens will interface with the headset. This upgrade would make the iPhone 17 Pro models the first iPhones with a rear camera system composed entirely of 48-megapixel lenses, enabling them to capture more photographic detail.

8x optical zoom

According to one rumor, the upgraded telephoto lens on Apple's iPhone 17 Pro & iPhone 17 Pro Max will have up to 8x optical zoom, compared to up to 5x optical zoom on the iPhone 16 Pro models. The lens can reportedly move, enabling continuous optical zoom at various focal lengths. This could explain why the devices are expected to have significantly larger rear camera bumps than previous models. The parts that allow the lens to move could be housed in the middle of the camera bump — between the lenses — LED flash, rear microphone, and LiDAR scanner.

Novyny.LIVE will have live text coverage of Apple's Awe Dropping Event on September 9, so you can follow along with our live blog while watching.

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