Hit-or-miss leaker Majin Bu posted renders, along with additional detail on their blog post, that suggested that the upcoming iPhone 17 Pro could feature an all-new antenna design that would wrap around the camera bump, which is now expected to be elongated across the top edge. Renders also show the lack of antenna lines on the top and bottom edges.
As you may know, having antenna lines made of plastic is necessary for any cellular-enabled device since wireless radio signals can’t pass through metal effectively and thus yielding weaker reception. So some plastic antenna lines along the top of the device will allow for more stable connectivity since you’re more likely to hold the iPhone closer to the bottom edge. We’ve also seen antenna lines on the cellular Apple Watch and iPad models.
We likely won’t see Apple’s own modem technology in the iPhone 17 Pro models since the C1 modem lacks 5G mmWave. So they’ll still rely on Qualcomm for now; however, the iPhone 17 Pro models are expected to feature Apple’s in-house Wi-Fi 7 chip. The iPhone 16 lineup pioneered Wi-Fi 7 already, so this will still be a nice step-up for Apple designing its own parts. Apple is still planning to design the second-generation C2 modem for its next iPhone 18 Pro models.
Majin Bu was right on predicting the iPadOS 26’s menu bar feature; however, they have been wrong on some of the previous rumors. This report could be taken with a grain of salt, but we’ll get all the final details once Apple unveils the iPhone 17 lineup.
