Render of a possible iPhone 17 design
A new leak backs up previous rumors — and previous wishful thinking — that the regular iPhone 17 will finally gain a ProMotion display, making it feel faster and more responsive.
Apple introduced ProMotion with the iPad Pro in 2017, dramatically improving how the screen kept up with Apple Pencil use. ProMotion can raise the display refresh rate to 120Hz where needed, and drop it to save battery power when showing static images.
According to leaker Digital Chat Station on Chinese social media site Weibo, the feature will come to the regular iPhone 17 and expected iPhone 17 Slim in 2025. That’s eight years since it debuted on the iPad Pro, and four since it first appeared on the iPhone with the iPhone 13 Pro.
As it can speed up the refresh rate of just portions of the screen, it’s able to make the iPhone look and feel faster. And it does so without the constant hit on battery life that a display permanently running at 120Hz would cause.
ProMotion is also able to slow down the refresh rate, though, and this is how the current iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max can have an always-on display.
If the claim is correct, it means that feature should be coming to the regular iPhone 17. In which case, that’s both the always-on and faster display features that have previously differentiated the Pro models from the regular ones.
Apple regularly debuts hardware features in the Pro models and then adds them to the regular ones in subsequent years. The fact that it’s taken four years for the regular iPhone to get ProMotion, though, either speaks to the cost of the display — or that Apple recognizes how it has attracted buyers to the more expensive Pro models.
The new rumor does at least back up the same claim from February 2024.
Note that Digital Chat Station has been accurate before, but specifically with camera details. Most recently, this leaker is one claiming the iPhone 17 will have a rear camera layout that is radically different to its predecessors.
