If the iPhone 17 Pro adds these 4 new features I'm already sold

The iPhone release calendar never changes, but that doesn't mean it isn't a complicated part of any tech-lover's annual plans. When Apple unveils its latest suite of phones in (generally) September of each year, it kicks off an internal debate for me every time – am I upgrading this year?

For about four years I was in the iPhone Upgrade Programme, Apple's in-house subscription to the iPhone, which basically sees you pay monthly to get the latest and greatest iPhone, with the option to terminate your loan when the new range comes out and upgrade.

Over time, though, the fact that I never paid these phones off, instead hopping to the next one, made it feel like a losing game financially, so a couple of years ago I finished paying off the iPhone 13 Pro, sold it and bought an iPhone 15 Pro outright at release. Since then I've been happily using my iPhone, and when the 16 Pro rolled around I simply didn't see enough of a reason to jump on it.

Yes, that new Camera Control button looks nice, but I basically never use the Action Button added the year before, and saw no reason to suspect another button would be a different story. That means I'm sitting with a phone that's now 18 months old, as the iPhone 17 Pro continues to be the subject of lurid leaks – so, will I upgrade? Well, that comes down to a few key points that I need Apple to work on.

An updated design

Everything leaking around the iPhone 17 Pro suggests that we might be in for the biggest design departure that Apple has sanctioned in a long time for its phones. There are a bunch of leaks, and they seem unanimous that the 17 Pro will sport a new camera bump that spans the whole of the width of its back, a little like the Pixel lineup's visor, but frankly bigger.

Apple would be relying on the triangular arrangement of its actual lenses to signal to observers that this is an iPhone, and maybe that'll work. Still, I don't love the renders I've seen, and am way more enamoured with the Google Pixel 9a, which finally shrinks its camera bump rather than growing it.

So, in short, while I'm all for design changes, I'm hoping against hope that the leaks are wrong this time out, and that Apple opts for a more toned-down version of that big bar. The one saving grace would be if it were a substantially shallower bump overall, but I'm not sure how optimistic I feel on that front.

Focus less on Apple Intelligence

I'm not necessarily knocking Apple Intelligence here, even if its rollout was clearly slower than intended, and its implementation hasn't exactly been the slam-dunk that Apple or its investors were hoping for. However, I will say that it sucked up a lot of airtime last time Apple launched its iPhones, and I'm not sure it was the right play in retrospect.

The iPhone 16 lineup might in theory be built for the technology, and the bumps in built-in RAM that have rolled out to most new Apple devices as a result are welcome, but in daily use Apple Intelligence doesn't really do much. The only big addition I welcomed was Apple's version of the Magic Eraser for photos, but it's noticeably less effective than Google or Samsung's equivalents.

I'd love Apple to move the focus elsewhere this year, and simply concentrate on actually improving the features it's brought out – so that they don't just match the competition, but surpass them.

Boost battery life

It isn't the most glamorous of points, but the reality is that battery life is a simply seismic part of any phone user's list of priorities. If you upgrade annually, let alone bi-weekly like many phone reviewers, you're likely shielded from battery degradation to a big extent.

For the rest of us, though, as our phones age we watch their battery health tick down and become more and more of a factor on busy holiday days or while navigating. My iPhone 16 Pro's battery health is listed at "normal" after 396 charging cycles, but that's still seen it lose a full 10% of its maximum charge, which is brutal.

I'm feeling that 10% regularly. It's the difference between getting through a day in the red but still working, or being forced to carry a battery around with me just in case. Any boost Apple can provide with the iPhone 17 Pro would be huge, but if it could upgrade to newer silicon-carbon batteries and get a big bonus from that, it would look like a genuine leap forward.

Genuine camera innovation

I don't swap over to Android handsets that often, but I've been going hands-on with a few more lately and one thing has repeatedly stood out – their camera setups feel like they're far more bold than Apple's. Don't get me wrong; the photos my 15 Pro takes are wonderful, and I love Apple's approach to colour science, which is way more natural than the saturated snaps from Google's phones, for instance.

However, one area where the iPhone clearly lags behind is on zoom – Samsung, Oppo, Honor and more all have zoom capabilities that put Apple to shame. These are often AI-assisted to sharpen up blurry distant details, but in many cases they work staggeringly well, and you can't get near that on iPhone.

The 17 Pro added a new level of zoom at 5X optical, which does indeed work wonders and look great, but if Apple can go a big step further and make that at least 10X, it'll be starting to really compete. Of course, it would still have a long way to go to catch up to its rivals, but I think it needs to start signalling that it's making tracks.