iPhone 17 Pro Max just tipped for major camera upgrades — here's what we know

A render of the iPhone 17 Pro Max — (Image credit: Wylsacom)

A brand new report suggests that Apple could be offering some major camera upgrades to the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. According to Mark Gurman, in the latest issue of his Power On newsletter, Apple could be courting vloggers and other video creators.

Gurman doesn’t go into a lot of detail with this prediction. However, he does say that Apple will “stress improvements to video recording” on this year’s Pro-series iPhones. Apparently this is an attempt to get content creators to ditch standalone cameras, and start filming more content on the iPhone.

There’s no indication of what these features might be, but it makes sense that Apple would continue to improve the video capabilities on the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Not only have the Pro models seen major improvements to camera hardware, they’ve also received new features like ProRes video — a “visually lossless” video compression format that records videos directly to external storage.

The end of standalone cameras?

an iPhone 17 Pro Max render — (Image credit: Wylsacom)

The idea is that this feature will improve the post-production process, and negate any need to transfer videos from the iPhone to a desktop. This would essentially offer an experience closer to that of standalone video cameras.

So we can likely expect Apple to offer features that match what cameras can offer, and pair that with software features that only a smartphone can offer.

Apple will 'stress improvements to video recording' on this year’s Pro-series iPhones in an attempt to get content creators to ditch standalone cameras.

These changes could be anything from better stabilization during video recording, better microphone placement and quality, or potentially various AI-infused enhancements. Wccftech even speculates that Apple could offer professional tools that let creators do everything they need to do on an iPhone.

However, I suspect that would likely only appeal to social media videos that are already filmed on phones, like TikTok or Instagram Reels, rather than longer form content — or even Hollywood movies.

Personally, I’m more inclined to believe that Apple would leverage AI pretty heavily. For example, we've already seen AI features added to video like the Audio Mix feature on the iPhone 16 series, which can help remove background noise.

We won’t know for sure until Apple actually reveals the iPhone 17 series later this year. In the meantime, be sure to check out our iPhone 17 Pro Max hub for all the latest news and rumors.

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Tom is the Tom's Guide's UK Phones Editor, tackling the latest smartphone news and vocally expressing his opinions about upcoming features or changes. It's long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He’s usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of coffee, or complaining about how terrible his Smart TV is.

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