This one rumor has me more excited about the iPhone 17 than anything else

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

The latest rumors revolving around the iPhone 17 lineup that Apple is expected to unveil tomorrow (September 9) at its big Awe Dropping event potentially reveal every single detail for all four new handsets, from the iPhone 17 to the iPhone 17 Pro Max and that ultra-slim iPhone 17 Air. However, no one rumored spec has me as jazzed as the upgraded telephoto cameras on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.

According to the latest reports – and yes, I take all of these rumors with a grain of salt – both flagship Pro models will feature 48MP, 8x optical telephoto cameras.

The iPhone zoom detail I want

If this is real, it's quite likely that I will use the 8X optical zoom's 48MP sensor in a default binned mode, meaning that it will shoot at 12MP and use 4pixels of information for each final pixel. I'm okay with that because the resulting pictures should be incredible.

After all, when I was shooting 10x optical zoom with a 10MP sensor on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, I noticed that at full size or zoomed in a bit, the images did not hold up that well. The level of detail was too low. The detail here promises to be much, much better.

Apple's potential plan could bring a significant amount of additional information to these high-zoom images. If Apple does even more work on its computational image processing engine, especially in the areas of exposure and speed, I envision some exciting moon and wildlife shots in my future.

People wonder why I'm obsessed with optical zoom. Part of it has to do with my background in photography. I've been using DSLR and big zoom lenses for decades. Nothing beats optical zoom and a big sensor. But every year, smartphone companies get closer to at least approaching some of those capabilities, and one of the chief ways to do it is to raise their own optical zoom lens capabilities. The limiting factor has always been the size of these phones. There's virtually no distance between the lens and the sensor: hence the periscope.

And please don't be fooled by Samsung Space Zoom or Google's recent "100x AI Zoom". In both cases, the ultra-smart AI-capable CPUs are recreating what optical zoomed images might look like. They are not producing photographs, just images.

As I see it, the only downside to Apple's potential zoom upgrade is the design changes, but for that kind of photographic capability, I'm willing to accept the slightly uglier look and potentially start shooting the best iPhone photos ever.

A 38-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases and “on line” meant “waiting.” He’s a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff Davis, Inc. He also wrote a popular, weekly tech column for Medium called The Upgrade.

Lance Ulanoff makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Live with Kelly and Mark, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC.

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The iPhone zoom detail I want

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