Apple has announced that its annual September event will take place on September 9, and we’re almost certainly going to see full reveals for the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
With the Pro models tipped for a redesign and the iPhone Air due to replace the Plus entirely, it seems like it’ll be a quieter year for the standard iPhone 17.
The iPhone 16 is a great phone, and rightfully earned its place on our list of the best iPhones – but with strong competition from its Android rivals, Apple can’t afford to just rest on its laurels this year.
The iPhone 17’s main competitor is likely to be the Samsung Galaxy S25, at least until the Galaxy S26 comes out. To put it frankly, the Galaxy S25 is a more advanced phone than the iPhone 16, so if Apple wants the iPhone 17 to compete on a hardware and software level, it’s got some catching up to do. Here are our four suggestions for how the iPhone 17 can do just that.
A 120Hz display
Much to the chagrin of my editors, and hopefully any TechRadar readers at Apple HQ, I will not shut up about how outdated the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus’ 60Hz display is. Every other flagship phone, and even many of the best cheap phones, have either a 120Hz display or a variable refresh rate panel that tops out at 120Hz or higher.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 has a 120Hz panel, which has been standard for the Galaxy S series since the launch of the Galaxy S20 in 2020. Apple has, thus far, restricted its variable refresh rate ProMotion display tech to the Pro iPhones, but it’s simply inexcusable to fit a $799 / £799 / AU$1,399 phone with a 60Hz screen in 2025.
Unless the iPhone 17 ships with a 120Hz panel, it’ll look dated and poorly valued next to the Galaxy S25. Both displays are otherwise beautiful OLED panels that offer plenty of brightness, color, and detail, but without a 120Hz screen, I won’t recommend the iPhone 17 to anyone except the most diehard Apple fans.
A telephoto camera
With the release of the Google Pixel 10, the iPhone 16 is now the only base-model flagship of the ‘big three’ to not come with an optically zoomed telephoto camera. But make no mistake, it’s Samsung, not Google, that has led the way on this front.
Samsung has supplied its standard flagships with a telephoto camera since the release of the Galaxy S10, all the way back in 2019.
Since the release of the iPhone 11 series that same year, Apple has reserved its optically zoomed cameras for the iPhone Pro and Pro Max.
Optical zoom is a sought-after feature for mobile photographers and casual users alike, and with the iPhone 17 likely to inherit the Camera Control capacitive shutter button from its predecessor, adding this feature would make sense both as a response to Samsung and as a natural addition to existing iPhone hardware.
More RAM
The Samsung Galaxy S25 has 12GB of RAM, which is more than the 8GB capacity in the iPhone 16. As I’ve previously reported, Apple’s knack for optimization and control over the entire software and hardware experience means that this 8GB goes further than it would on an Android phone, but there are some situations that simply require more physical RAM.
Multitasking is one such situation – with more RAM, the iPhone 17 would gain more capacity to run several apps at the same time, run processes in the background, and handle larger amounts of data at once.
AI is the most pressing reason for more RAM, though – the Galaxy S25 is overloaded with AI, with two assistants (Gemini and Bixby) and deep AI integration throughout the entire operating system. Apple Intelligence lags behind, particularly when it comes to Siri, and more RAM could give the iPhone 17 series more headroom to expand.
A faster processor
The Samsung Galaxy S25 has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset, which is the fastest mobile chipset on the market according to our benchmarks. It’s the same chipset that the uber-powerful Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra uses.
The iPhone 16 uses the Apple A18 chipset, which doesn't quite reach the overpowered speeds of the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It’s no slouch, as our iPhone 16 review details, but Apple saves its best A18 Pro chipsets for the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.
A natural solution here is for Apple to mirror the Samsung Galaxy S25 series and fit the base model iPhone 17 with its faster Pro chipset, likely to be named the A19 Pro. That’s unlikely to happen, though, so it’s more realistic to hope for a faster base-model A19 chipset.
Luckily, Apple’s been on a hot streak when it comes to chipset upgrades in the last couple of years. The A18 has a 30% faster CPU and 40% faster graphics processing than the previous-generation A17 chipset – the same again would put the iPhone 17 in good stead.
Of course, we won’t know what the iPhone 17 will look like until next week – and it’s still possible that Apple could surprise us with an even more powerful phone than the Galaxy S25.
Let us know what you want to see from the iPhone 17 in the comments below.
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