Selfie with iJustine and Tim Cook dinner at 2025 Apple Occasion.
Jason Hiner/ZDNET
We all the time knew folks took a number of selfies, however when Apple unveiled its 2025 fall gadgets, it revealed that iPhone customers had taken over 500 billion selfies up to now 12 months. Since there are about 1.5 billion iPhone customers on this planet, that is a median of about 330 selfies a 12 months per particular person.
On this selfie taken on the iPhone 17, you possibly can see the extent of element within the face, hat, and the feel on the wall. You may also see the dynamic vary within the clouds within the sky.
Jason Hiner/ZDNET
No surprise Apple determined to reimagine how the front-facing digicam works on the iPhone this 12 months.
Within the course of, Apple additionally gave the selfie digicam a giant improve in picture high quality. For these of us who take a number of selfies, that is welcome information as a result of the front-facing digicam has been the weakest hyperlink among the many iPhone cameras for years. And as Apple’s information reveals, it could be essentially the most used digicam on the cellphone for many people.
Additionally: I’ve reviewed every iPhone 17 model, and my advice is something different this year
Apple gave all 4 telephones within the iPhone 17 lineup the identical improve to the selfie digicam by taking it from a 12MP rectangular sensor to a 24MP sq. sensor that may take an 18MP picture in both horizontal or vertical orientation.
The truth is, one of many coolest issues in regards to the new front-facing digicam is that as quickly as you invoke it, a brand new button pops up referred to as the Middle Stage button and once you faucet it then it switches your photograph between vertical and horizontal modes with out it’s a must to flip the digicam round. In different phrases, you possibly can maintain it whichever manner is most comfy for you — usually vertical for most individuals — and the software program will do all of the work.
Even higher, you possibly can click on the Middle Stage settings on the high of the window and activate Auto Zoom and Auto Rotate. With that, the iPhone will now use AI to mechanically establish all of the folks in your shot by placing containers round their faces after which it can mechanically change between vertical and horizontal and broad and ultrawide to suit everybody within the shot.
The interface for the front-facing digicam on the iPhone 17 fashions now permits you to change between vertical and horizontal (proper arrow) and set the Middle Stage to make use of AI mechanically zoom or swap between vertical and horizontal to get everybody in your group selfie shot (left arrow).
Screenshot by Jason Hiner
Whereas Apple makes use of “Middle Stage” branding for its new selfie digicam, it is much more highly effective than the Middle Stage function on Mac and iPad that merely retains you within the middle of the body on video calls.
Additionally: I tested the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and here’s one big reason for a year-over-year upgrade
The truth is, Apple’s new selfie digicam within the iPhone 17 lineup is clearly the neatest selfie digicam on this planet. It is so good that it is powerful to return to utilizing a static selfie digicam on older iPhones and on Android telephones. With that in thoughts, I’d not be stunned to see Android cellphone makers undertake the sq. selfie sensor of their smartphones in 2026 and past.
Apple went from lagging different flagship smartphones – which have been utilizing 24MP selfie cameras since as early as 2018 — to leapfrogging all of them in a single technology of telephones.
Right here is the horizontal model of the selfie above, with all the identical high quality advantages of the brand new 18MP sensor. The one distinction is that I hit the Middle Stage button to change to panorama mode.
Jason Hiner/ZDNET
I have been testing the brand new selfie cameras on the varied fashions of the iPhone 17 lineup for the previous a number of weeks and I am comfortable to report that it really works in addition to marketed and the entrance sensor is now worthy of taking high-quality photographs and never simply fast photographs to put up on social media.
