Have We Just Seen the iPhone 17 Pro for the First Time?
Credit: Foxy Pupy (@Skyfops) / X
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We may have just gotten a glimpse of one of Apple’s upcoming iPhone 17 Pro models out in the wild. While we’re still likely at least six weeks away from Apple revealing its new iPhone lineup to the world, we’re at the point where it wouldn’t be at all uncommon for some Apple employees to be testing prototypes or pre-release models.
The photos, shared by X user “Fox Pupy” (@Skyfops), show a person who appears to be using one iPhone to film another. The recording iPhone, which seems to be an iPhone 16 Pro, has the Apple logo covered up for some reason, although it’s pretty obvious what we’re looking at.
However, the phone that’s being recorded looks very much like the rumored design of the iPhone 17 Pro, with the standard three-camera array and the flash and LiDAR sensor at the far right (when viewed from the back).
The “target” iPhone is in a relatively bulky case that seems designed to disguise its true identity — so much so that it would be unidentifiable were it not for the spaced-out camera elements, which are a dead giveaway.
Further, the sticker on the iPhone 16 Pro might be about more than just concealing the Apple logo. It “could be hiding a data matrix code that allows Apple to track internal iPhones used by employees for development purposes,” as MacRumors’ Joe Rossignol notes.
While the tweet from a random X’er wouldn’t typically carry much weight on its own, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman picked up on it and reposted it with “Wow. This looks legit.”
There’s some debate as to whether Gurman is being sarcastic here, but the tone suggests otherwise. The profile of @Skyfops, the X user who shared the post, shows them as located in Los Angeles. They followed up on the original post by adding that the person filming appeared to be accompanied by security personnel who were trying to stand in front of the iPhone to hide it, and that the photo was taken in San Francisco’s Union Square.
There’s also no way of knowing if this was a legitimate iPhone 17 Pro model or a mockup created for use by a content creator. The fact that the man was filming the front of the iPhone is interesting, as there would be few design changes there to speak of. However, it could easily be to document field testing of software features like location services or cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity.
After all, there’s only so much testing that can be done in a lab environment. Sooner or later, Apple engineers have to take some iPhone pre-release units out into the real world to see how they perform. This is likely a far more common occurrence than most of us realize; for the past five or six years, the design of the iPhone has changed so little that nobody would be able to distinguish a prototype from a current model, especially when it’s contained in a bulky case. Even the move from the rounded-edged iPhone 11 Pro to the flat-edged iPhone 12 Pro would have easily flown under the radar in these cases.
Either way, while the sighting is interesting, it doesn’t tell us anything that the rumor mill hasn’t already been buzzing about for weeks. It’s a possible confirmation of the new design, assuming it’s real. Still, at this point, all the reliable sources (and a few of the less reliable ones) concur that this is what we’ll be seeing when the iPhone 17 Pro drops in September.
