3 things I’m wishing for from Apple’s iPhone 17 event

We’re only hours away from finding out exactly what Apple has in store for the iPhone 17. The company’s “awe dropping” September event is set to air during the early hours of the Australian morning, giving Apple diehards a first glimpse at the latest hardware.

Countless publications have speculated about what Apple has in store for this year’s event. Based on reliable reporting from the likes of Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, it’s all but assured that we’ll see the debut of the slender iPhone 17 Air. Of course, there will be a new set of Apple Watches. And there’s a good chance Apple will announce the AirPods Pro 3.

But these are all relatively known quantities. Where’s the surprise, the fun and whimsy, and something truly innovative?

I want something that makes choosing to upgrade a painfully obvious decision. So, here are 3 things I’m hoping for when Tim Cook and Co take to the stage during the iPhone 17 event.

Some of these are absolute pie-in-the-sky ideas. They’re not necessarily grounded in reality or what will likely happen. Still, these are things I hope come to pass in the future, if not overnight.

New features that don’t involve Apple Intelligence

Every phone company wants to be the one that lands the knockout blow in the AI heavyweight bout. But in trying to get there, all we’ve seen is attempt after attempt of lofty claims, followed by underwhelming execution.

Apple is guilty of it; Apple Intelligence has faced its fair share of hurdles, including incorrectly summarising news headlines. A much hyped Siri overhaul won’t arrive until 2026, so troubled its development has become.

Fortunately, for Apple, its competitors haven’t fared much better. Their only main difference is actually shipping various AI features, regardless of functionality.

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Google’s Magic Cue, which is meant to pull information from multiple apps in context-specific situations, straight up didn’t work at launch. Samsung’s Now Brief feature is similarly limited in functionality.

So, when a tech company puts its AI features front and centre as some sort of selling point? To quote the modern-day philosopher Shania Twain: that don’t impress me much.

Give me more stuff like the Camera Control button on the iPhone 16, a new camera, or something obvious that makes it easy to tell I’m picking up a 17, as opposed to any other phone from the past few years.

There’s already a bunch of stuff coming in the iOS 26 update. Just give us something that will reliably work out of the box.

Bring back fun colours

Admission time: I think iPhone design peaked with the iPhone 5C. Yeah, it was made with plastic, and it wasn’t as powerful as the then-flagship iPhone 5S. Still, it had something few other phones have shown since: personality.

I loved my bright green iPhone 5C. Looking back, I shouldn’t be surprised; I grew up using a Creative Zen Vision:M in an almost identical shade of green.

I didn’t have to spend extra money on a fancy case just so I could enjoy some colour with my phone. Unboxing it, the 5C immediately had more charm than most of the black, silver, and muted-tone phones we have today.

I love this thing. Image: Apple.

To be fair, you can still get some reasonably nice-coloured phones. Only if you want the standard model, that is.

So, I was excited when leaks suggested that the iPhone 17 Pro might get a bright orange variant. Too long have premium phones relegated tech enthusiasts to the doldrums of yawn-inducing shades. I want my technology to be fun and functional, damn it.

Apple, give the people (me) what they (I) want: some fun Pro phone colours.

A camera that takes real photos

Modern phones take great-looking pictures. Almost too great-looking, if you ask me.

Trying the Fujifilm X Half earlier in the year reminded me how different the process of taking photos is between a dedicated camera and a phone. Not just in the physical sense of holding down and pressing the shutter, either.

I’m mainly referring to the computational processing that goes on in the background every time you take a photo using a phone. In fact, pressing the virtual shutter on a phone usually doesn’t result in taking a single photo.

If this photo were taken on a phone, the lower third would be as bright as the top part, flattening the overall look. Image: Chris Button.

Instead, it captures multiple images at the same time, which the phone then combines into a single composite image. Rather than giving you full control, AI takes over, attempting to create what it thinks is the perfect-looking image.

While the resulting colours often look nice, the process usually flattens everything. There are no dramatic shadows or highlights, just an evenly lit picture that tries to make everything visible. And by focusing on everything, nothing stands out,

Third-party apps, like Halide, let you disable this degree of processing. However, I’d love for Apple to bake that experience into the native camera app. I’m on Becca Farsace’s side here: let a shadow be a shadow! Let me use my phone’s camera as a camera untethered from the computing power that infests every other corner of the device.

Part of the fun of technology is experimenting, making mistakes, and pushing a device to its limits. If Apple let me do that with the next iPhone’s camera, I’d be a happy chap.

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