With one month until Apple’s expected announcements for the iPhone 17 lineup, another report that was posted by Chinese leaker Instant Digital on Weibo indicates that the starting storage for the iPhone 17 Pro could jump from 128GB to 256GB.
The first time that Apple bumped the starting storage from 128GB to 256GB on any iPhone or iPad was with the iPhone 15 Pro Max on September 2023, which increased the starting price by $100; however, had it still offered a 128GB storage tier, it would start at the same price. Therefore, you’d be getting a much better value (and more storage) when going for the base configuration. The M4 iPad Pro also bumped the storage to 256GB for both screen sizes.
Currently, the prices and starting storages for iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro are the following:
- iPhone 16: $799 – 128GB
- iPhone 16 Plus: $899 – 128GB
- iPhone 16 Pro: $999 – 128GB
- iPhone 16 Pro Max: $1,199 – 256GB
As you can see, every iPhone model except the Pro Max starts with 128GB of storage. The standard iPhone 16 models max out at 1TB, and the iPhone 16 Pro models max out at 2TB.
At the same time, several sources indicated that Apple could raise prices across the iPhone 17 lineup by $50 to recoup higher component costs and China’s tariffs. So if Apple were to bump the starting storage to 256GB for the iPhone 17 Pro, the starting price could be $1,199 or so given Apple’s pricing trends. Therefore, the lineup for next year could be something like this:
- iPhone 17: $849 – 128GB
- iPhone 17 Air: $949 – 128GB
- iPhone 17 Pro: $1,149 – 256GB
- iPhone 17 Pro Max: $1,249 – 256GB
Although the pricing for the iPhone 17 Air remains to be seen, it has been rumored to be priced somewhere between the standard model and the Pro models, if this were the actual starting prices, a $200 price gap between the Air and Pro models could be well-justified upgrade given that you’d get a lot more “Pro” features beyond the starting storage.
The entire iPhone 17 lineup is expected to be announced on September 9, so we’ll see all the official details regarding pricing and storage that day.
