The iPhone 17 Pro models have been out for almost three months, but a notable omission has only recently emerged that may influence your decision to upgrade.
For a while, there’s a feature exclusive to the Pro models that allows you to take Night Mode Portrait shots. However, as spotted by Macworld, the official iOS 26 user guide from Apple lists the Pro models (since the iPhone 12 Pro) that are capable of shooting Night Mode Portraits except for the iPhone 17 Pro; specifically, these are the supported models listed:
- iPhone 12 Pro / Pro Max
- iPhone 13 Pro / Pro Max
- iPhone 14 Pro / Pro Max
- iPhone 15 Pro / Pro Max
- iPhone 16 Pro / Pro Max
Several discussions on Reddit have mentioned this omission in the past, but for some reason, this “glaring” issue didn’t gain much awareness until recently. It’s unclear why the iPhone 17 Pro models drop this feature. One theory that comes to my mind is that it has something to do with the megapixel resolution, since Night mode photos are shot at only 12 megapixels, and Portrait photos are taken at 24 megapixels. Remember that the Telephoto on the iPhone 17 Pro received a significant improvement in resolution, increasing from 12 megapixels to 48 megapixels, which enabled the Telephoto camera to capture 24MP photos (by default) for optimal image quality. However, that still wouldn’t make sense, as the iPhone’s Pro camera system continues to improve with each generation. Additionally, the LiDAR scanner introduced on the iPhone 12 Pro should still help with producing more accurate Portrait photos. It’s quite bizarre to see the latest iPhone Pro models omit such a neat feature that was available on Pro models for five years.
We hope to hear what Apple has to say about this, and if it happens to be an oversight, Apple will surely push out a firmware update for the iPhone 17 Pro models.
