Apple iPhone 17 Design Change Promises Long-Overdue Upgrade, New Report Claims

I know, I know, the iPhone 16 series has only just been launched. Maybe you’re thinking of buying one. You can read my iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus review here, and my iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max here. But a new report says that what has been seen by some as the iPhone 16’s Achilles’ heel—its display—will be radically changed next September in the iPhone 17.

When Apple launches the iPhone 17 and its larger cousin, which may not be called Plus but have the suffix Air, both phones will have ProMotion for the first time, according to Ross Young from Display Supply Chain Consultants, in contact with MacRumors.

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Here’s why it’s a big deal, in case you’ve never tried ProMotion. While the display on the iPhone 16 is excellent, side-by-side with the iPhone 16 Pro, you can see the difference.

The iPhone 16 has an OLED display with a fixed 60Hz refresh rate, the Pro has an OLED with a dynamic refresh rate. This goes right up to 120Hz, which means that when you’re scrolling through menu list or swiping text up the screen, everything is butter-smooth and judder-free. The same for video playback.

Because it’s dynamic, the iPhone is clever enough to drop the refresh rate when you’re looking at static content, which saves battery life.

There’s another benefit: the always-on display of the Pro models. When the iPhone is in standby, it can still display the time, any widgets on your lock screen and a muted version of your lock screen wallpaper. You no longer need to tap your iPhone to see what the time is.

It achieves this without sacrificing much battery power by dropping that refresh rate heavily. The Pro models from iPhone 14 onwards have been able to drop the refresh rate as low as 1Hz, while the iPhone 13 Pro before them only managed to go down to 10Hz.

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus displays don’t offer this and the problem is that many Android phones which are more affordable than the iPhone, have 120Hz refresh rate displays (though none of them matches the elegance of Apple’s always-on screen).

In other words, Apple’s iPhone display is beginning to look a little behind the times. The good news is, if this report is accurate— and Young has an excellent track record—next fall’s iPhone will correct this issue, although it’s not yet clear which minimum refresh rate we should expect.

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