Updated April 19 with report of new battery design in the iPhone 17 Pro Max and a different render video of the iPhone 17 Pro.

The iPhone 17 series is expected to launch in September, and one persistent rumor is that the rear camera panel will have a complete redesign. Not one, but two, renders aim to show what the new iPhone 17 Pro will look like, though one seems more likely than the other, I’d say. Meanwhile, a new report comments on how a different part of the iPhone 17 range will see a welcome design change: even longer battery life.

Apple iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max: will the next-gen models look strikingly different?

SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Let’s start with that. As Ryan Christoffel at 9to5Mac points out, the largest iPhone in the current range, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, already has great battery life. “The 16 Pro Max offers, per Apple’s website, up to 33 hours of video playback with its massive battery. This is up from the 29 hours quoted for the iPhone 15 Pro Max. And this year, it’s getting even better,” the report says.

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That’s because several rumors have fastened on the news that the iPhone 17 Pro Max is expected to be thicker than before. This seems to indicate the phone could have a bigger battery — after all, the internal components aren’t expected to get fatter and that extra thickness has to be used for something.

Christoffel thinks that just as the biggest Apple Watch battery is in the Apple Watch Ultra, so it’s possible that the Pro Max released this fall could be renamed iPhone 7 Ultra. I’m not sure about the naming, though it has been rumored before, but I can absolutely see Apple claiming bragging rights on the biggest iPhone having the best battery life ever.

“Prefer a beast of a phone with over-the-top battery life? This year’s iPhone 17 Pro Max will make that happen more than ever before,” the report concludes.

Back to the renders claiming to show the new external designs.

Instead of a squarish raised area in the iPhone’s top left corner, the panel is thought to stretch the width of the phone, a bit like the camera bar on the Google Pixel 9 Pro, for instance.

The first new render shows an image and video of how the back of the iPhone 17 Pro will look. The report comes from a 3D designer whose X handle is kanedacane tweets. You can see the video here.

What’s different in this image compared to previous renders is that it shows the panel in the same color as the rest of the back of the phone — something that a recent report specified in an interesting update . True, the render is in a dark gray finish, so we don’t get to see the colors shining through, but the effect of the uniform color is markedly different from some earlier renders and leaks.

It shows the panel rising smoothly from the body of the iPhone, with three lenses and the flash, microphone and LiDAR sensor. The flash currently sits above the third lens on the iPhone 16 Pro, with the LiDAR sensor and microphone below.

Instead, the render shows these sensors sitting at the extreme right of the wider panel, in a neatly spaced column.

The lenses for the three cameras protrude from the rest of the panel, as they do now.

And then there’s the second render, which comes in the shape of a concept trailer from 4RMD, which you can see here. This looks beautiful but I slightly take issue with it. First, it has the camera panel in a contrasting color to the rear of the phone, which contradicts Gurman’s report. Though, who knows, maybe 4RMD is right?

Also, it shows a periscope camera on the rear of the phone, suggesting this could be a 48-megapixel sensor. I think the sensor upgrade is likely, but the render shows the familiar rectangular shape that defines most periscope lenses. Apple already has a periscope telephoto, which it calls a tetraprism.

The company went to some pains to ensure it looks exactly like the other lenses, so I think the concept video is wrong here. I’m also doubtful that Touch ID will return this year to the iPhone, as the concept render suggests.

I’ll be frank, I’m also still not smitten with this new rear camera panel design, in either of these renders, though I have previously seen leaked designs and had to change my mind when the real thing emerges.

One good result from the full-width bar is that the phone doesn’t rattle back and forth as it does with a corner panel if it is lying on a table, for instance. But the raised lenses would diminish this stability unless there’s a case on the phone.

Still, this is a useful new hint at what the iPhone 17 Pro seems increasingly likely to look like.

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