Apple iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air To Have 1 Serious Let-Down, Report Says
Apple's 2025 crop of iPhones will have many innovations, it seems, but one element, the display on two of the iPhones, won't be the ProMotion screen many users have been hoping for.
Apple iPhone 16 — the display technology looks like it's changing for the iPhone 17, but how, ... More exactly?
That's the news from a leaker called Fixed Focus Digital, whose Weibo predictions have included some strong hits and a few misses — so they may yet be proved wrong.
Since 2021, Apple's Pro iPhone models have included what's called a ProMotion display, that is, a screen with a much faster refresh rate than the regular iPhone: 120Hz instead of 60Hz.
This faster refresh means the screen looks smoother when you're scrolling fast down a menu, for instance.
Several reports have claimed that the next iPhone 17 and the slim phone thought to be called the iPhone 17 Air could finally transition to ProMotion displays. And a recent report on screen sizes seemed to suggest this could be the case.
However, the latest Weibo post flatly contradicts this. Talking about the iPhone 17 series display refresh rate, 'just a normal 120hz screen, but not ProMotion adaptive refresh rate,' they said.
Well, a bump up to 120Hz would give that smooth scrolling effect, so this is still definitely a step forward. However, ProMotion has a dynamic refresh rate, meaning the iPhone's battery life can be preserved when there's static content on the display, for instance, and the refresh rate is dialed right down to 1Hz. It's this capability which also enables the always-on display that's such a crowd-pleaser on the iPhone 16 Pro and other Pro models, for instance.
ProMotion is also what enables StandBy, where an iPhone being charged in horizontal orientation can show a clock, for instance, overnight. Without ProMotion, even with a 120Hz display, that clock would only show for a few seconds rather than all night long.
So, where does that leave us? Cautiously optimistic, I'd say, because other analysts, including the well-regarded Ross Young from of Display Supply Chain Consultants, have previously predicted that ProMotion would come to every iPhone 17 handset.
Fixed Focus Digital doesn't have a perfect track record, so there's room to hope.
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