The iPhone 17’s front-facing camera has a brand new sensor that eschews the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio, for a square format. That gives the camera some extra wiggle room around the edges, to enable Center Stage for video calls and live streams from your selfie cam. That means you’ll be better centered during your Zoom calls, even if you’re walking down the street holding your phone out in front of you (not recommended) while discussing your latest work project.
Another perk of this change is that you no longer have to rotate your phone to take landscape selfies. In fact, the phone can use AI to automatically adjust the framing and give you options from 4:3 portrait, to 16:9 landscape or even square. At its maximum the sensor can deliver 18MP images, which is an improvement over the 12MP of the iPhone 16, though you’ll obviously sacrifice some of that resolution by cropping to different aspect ratios.
In addition, the iPhone 17 Pro can capture video from the front and back cameras simultaneously. The combination of being able to film your surroundings, while also being a talking head in a stabilized video will have obvious appeal to content creators and heavy social media users. Demo videos, unboxings, and all sorts of other clips will be much easier to capture now without the need for dual camera setup.
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